ZARDOZ (1973)

ZARDOZ. John Boorman, dir. USA: John Boorman Productions / 20th Century-Fox, 1973.

Zed (Sean Connery) brings love and death to a static, computer-run "utopia" appropriately called a Vortex. Includes some shots of huge mechanical wombs and a sequence with Zed in the computer ("the Tabernacle," a mysterious crystal). See under Fiction, Boorman's novelization, Zardoz. Cf. and contrast ZARDOZ, as both novel and film, with A. C. Clarke, The City and the Stars (q.v., under Fiction at link).

Discussed by V. Sobchack in The Limits of Infinity (see Sobchack's index). Also discussed in Casey Fredericks's The Future of Eternity: Mythologies of Science Fiction and Fantasy, ch. 5, pp. 133-35, who characterizes "the Tabernacle" device preserving in light "all the Eternals' scientific knowledge" as a "godlike machine" (more recently it's been called AI, "an artificial intelligence").[1][2]

Both Wikipedia[3] and IMDb[4] agree on a release date early in 1974.

RDE, addendum, 13Jul21, 19Occt23