Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds by Jeff Wayne (1978) The album was released in 1978 but did not attract a strong critical reception. Sir Christopher Lee - inevitably a strong fan of the book - was cast as the King of Elfland and also the narrator. Johnson and Knight worked on the album after leaving Steeleye Span, and combined original music with spoken word excerpts from the novel with a full voice cast. More obscure today, it was much better-known in the 1970s. Released in 1924, Lord Dunsany's novel has been cited as one of the taproot texts of modern fantasy, featuring political intrigue, war and adventuring in a well-realised secondary world, all more than a decade before J.R.R. In the 1970s, bandmembers Bob Johnson and Peter Knight hit on the idea of adapting the classic fantasy novel The King of Elfland's Daughter for music. The King of Elfland's Daughter by Bob Johnson and Peter Knight (1977)įounded in 1969, Steeleye Span are one of Britain's most successful folk rock bands, still touring today. The record did extremely well on release, perhaps helped by being released just days after the film Star Wars, which had re-awoken a hunger for science fiction material in the United States (and, later, in the UK). Asimov was keen on the idea, but noted that he had sold the media rights to a studio who was planning a big-budget feature film (which ultimately would not be released until 2004, with the most tenuous of connections to Asimov's book), so it could not be an official project but he gave his blessings for a "spiritual tribute" to the book.įor these reasons, the title was adjusted to I Robot (what a copyright difference a comma makes) and specific references to Asimov's universe and characters were omitted, with more general themes related to robots and artificial intelligence instead referenced. Bandmember Eric Woolfson was particularly enthusiastic for the project and contacted Asimov himself, hoping to make it an official record. I Robot by The Alan Parsons Project (1977)īritish rock band The Alan Parsons Project conceived of a soundtrack album based on Isaac Asimov's Robots series of science fiction novels and short story collections, particularly the first book, I, Robot, in the mid-1970s.
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