At npr.org, you can listen to a story that ran yesterday on Weekend Edition Sunday about the controversy in SF circles over the film version of I, Robot:

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3444025

It's actually an interesting story that gets most of the nuances right. I was startled early on to hear a familiar voice, which moments later was identified as Geoff Landis, award-winning SF writer, NASA Mars scientist, and Clarion pal of me and ❦bobhowe and ❦holyoutlaw. Also interviewed at length is Harlan Ellison, who in typical entertaining, exaggerated, and self-serving fashion helps report why his screenplay never made it to the screen.

Alex Proyas is interviewed as well, and proves one and for all that, for all that he made an intensely personal, atmospheric, and idiosyncratic SF film in Dark City, he's abandoned his artistry and is now a corporate tool.

And Asimov's widow Janet Jeppson, who wouldn't consent to be taped for the story, is reported as saying that Isaac wouldn't have cared much whether Ellison's version or the Proyas bastardization made it into theaters. "He didn't envision his work cinematically," she says.

Well, duh. He wasn't a screenwriter. Envisioning the work cinematically is the screenwriter's job, and Asimov's appreciative introduction to I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay would seem to put the lie to what Jeppson says. Who knows? Maybe she's right. But if she is—R. Daneel Olivaw wept. That's sad.

Update: Geoff Landis posted about I, Robot in his and my newsgroups at SFF.net. Excerpts:

Despite a clear, clear warning from Bill, right here on the electronic frontier, since I was interviewed about it, I decided I had to see the "I, Robot" film. Short summary: Bill was right. It does severe violence to Asimov.

STAY AWAY.

It's stupid. It steals cliches from a couple of dozen sources-- you can almost tag them as they go by... Westworld, Bladerunner, et nauseum... but almost nothing from Asimov....

I hope nothing I said on the radio could be interpreted as being complimentary toward the film. I see that the news stories about the film say that the screenplay writer is working on an adaptation of "Foundation". God, somebody please stop him.

Take heart, Geoff. Maybe a murderous robot will get to him first.