I've seen things you people wouldn't believe
January 8, 2016 11:58 AM Subscribe
🎂
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:03 PM on January 8, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:03 PM on January 8, 2016 [9 favorites]
For a guy whose only wish was more life (fucker/father), he's certainly had a long and fruitful one on film. Happy birthday, Roy!
posted by RogerB at 12:04 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by RogerB at 12:04 PM on January 8, 2016
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe
I dunno, I'm pretty gullible.
or so I'm told
posted by aubilenon at 12:05 PM on January 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
I dunno, I'm pretty gullible.
or so I'm told
posted by aubilenon at 12:05 PM on January 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
Well, I did see a blimp with an animated billboard on the side fly over my house last year. It's not a flying car or robotic sheep but it's something.
posted by octothorpe at 12:15 PM on January 8, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 12:15 PM on January 8, 2016 [6 favorites]
I want more life fucker.
posted by Catblack at 12:16 PM on January 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Catblack at 12:16 PM on January 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
Well it's nice to see that we have one third of the answers we want, so far.
posted by chimaera at 12:22 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by chimaera at 12:22 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
blimp with an animated billboard
And talking walk/don't-walk signs are pretty common now too. Prophecy fulfilled!
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:24 PM on January 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
And talking walk/don't-walk signs are pretty common now too. Prophecy fulfilled!
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:24 PM on January 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
WALK...don't WALK...don't WALK
posted by rhizome at 12:26 PM on January 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 12:26 PM on January 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
The birthday cake candles that burn twice as bright burn half as long
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:28 PM on January 8, 2016 [28 favorites]
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:28 PM on January 8, 2016 [28 favorites]
You aren't singing "Happy Birthday". Why is that, Leon?
posted by McCoy Pauley at 12:28 PM on January 8, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by McCoy Pauley at 12:28 PM on January 8, 2016 [10 favorites]
SHIT I just realized that Deckard is being incepted and the unicorn is in another dream level
posted by selfnoise at 12:33 PM on January 8, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by selfnoise at 12:33 PM on January 8, 2016 [7 favorites]
totally coincidentally I watched this last night, just because it's been ages and i love it. i think i need to give myself a Voight-Kampff now.
posted by WidgetAlley at 12:45 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by WidgetAlley at 12:45 PM on January 8, 2016
Several years ago I noticed this, and felt I needed to remember it, so I added Roy Batty's birthday to my Google Calendar.
This morning, when my Alert went off, I was a little thrown: it took me a while to figure out who Roy was, and why he would be the only birthday -- not even my wife's or children's -- that I'd thought important enough to put into my Calendar.
Also, don't forget Pris' inception date is in a couple weeks -- February 14th, perfect date for an, ahem, "leisure" model.
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:48 PM on January 8, 2016 [15 favorites]
This morning, when my Alert went off, I was a little thrown: it took me a while to figure out who Roy was, and why he would be the only birthday -- not even my wife's or children's -- that I'd thought important enough to put into my Calendar.
Also, don't forget Pris' inception date is in a couple weeks -- February 14th, perfect date for an, ahem, "leisure" model.
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:48 PM on January 8, 2016 [15 favorites]
>i think i need to give myself a Voight-Kampff now.
There's always the 2015 version.
posted by Catblack at 12:50 PM on January 8, 2016 [25 favorites]
There's always the 2015 version.
posted by Catblack at 12:50 PM on January 8, 2016 [25 favorites]
It profoundly bothers me that they're using a single-digit entry for the month placeholder of his incept date in his identification code; this means either the identification code in the format N6MAA10816 doesn't work for the months of October through December, or the code has an additional digit inserted in it for three months of the year, which gives me the procedural willies. NO WONDER YOUR SOCIETY IS CRUMBLING FUTURE BLADE RUNNER WORLD
posted by Shepherd at 12:51 PM on January 8, 2016 [35 favorites]
posted by Shepherd at 12:51 PM on January 8, 2016 [35 favorites]
Wow. I grew up with the optimistic Star Trek socialist utopia image morphing by the 80’s into the Mad Max, or it seemed more realistically in some ways, Blade Runner vision of the future. The one that didn’t seem that likely was that it would be pretty much the same…only duller.
This is it!?! This is 2016?
"You got your 'communicator' device, it even beeps, quit complaining and go back to work".
I guess that’s how the future’s always been. The older I get the more I think that things were much more the same than different in the past. It’s the trappings that fool us.
posted by bongo_x at 12:53 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
This is it!?! This is 2016?
"You got your 'communicator' device, it even beeps, quit complaining and go back to work".
I guess that’s how the future’s always been. The older I get the more I think that things were much more the same than different in the past. It’s the trappings that fool us.
posted by bongo_x at 12:53 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
NO WONDER YOUR SOCIETY IS CRUMBLING FUTURE BLADE RUNNER WORLD
Did they learn nothing so soon after Y2K?
posted by bongo_x at 12:54 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Did they learn nothing so soon after Y2K?
posted by bongo_x at 12:54 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
🎁 I hope he gets the chess set he asked for. 🎁
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:59 PM on January 8, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:59 PM on January 8, 2016 [4 favorites]
Dunno if any of you are keeping up with Los Angeles, but man, the rain's been intense enough to put out the mile-high plumes of flame, and of course someone stole my fluorescent umbrella out of my hybrid air-car. Some days I just want to sign on to the new life that awaits me in the Off-World Colonies.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:09 PM on January 8, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by infinitewindow at 1:09 PM on January 8, 2016 [11 favorites]
That would be Canada, right ?
posted by y2karl at 1:13 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 1:13 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
I think Pris' is coming up next month. I can't wait.
call me Pris, there's nothing "standard" about your pleasure model
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 1:14 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
call me Pris, there's nothing "standard" about your pleasure model
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 1:14 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
call me Pris
I do, I just didn’t know you were aware of it.
posted by bongo_x at 1:17 PM on January 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
I do, I just didn’t know you were aware of it.
posted by bongo_x at 1:17 PM on January 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
It profoundly bothers me that they're using a single-digit entry for the month placeholder of his incept date in his identification code; this means either the identification code in the format N6MAA10816 doesn't work for the months of October through December, or the code has an additional digit inserted in it for three months of the year, which gives me the procedural willies. NO WONDER YOUR SOCIETY IS CRUMBLING FUTURE BLADE RUNNER WORLD
Unless they use hexadecimal for the month value, making October through December months A, B and C.
Damn it, it's thinking like that which shows I'm a replicant.
posted by w0mbat at 1:19 PM on January 8, 2016 [15 favorites]
Unless they use hexadecimal for the month value, making October through December months A, B and C.
Damn it, it's thinking like that which shows I'm a replicant.
posted by w0mbat at 1:19 PM on January 8, 2016 [15 favorites]
I'm pretty sure the replicant factories take the last quarter of the year off to re-tool for the next year's models. No need for two-digit months.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:21 PM on January 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:21 PM on January 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
That’s one way you can tell if you’ve got a knock off: two digit month in the ID number.
posted by bongo_x at 1:23 PM on January 8, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by bongo_x at 1:23 PM on January 8, 2016 [4 favorites]
I think Pris' is coming up next month. I can't wait.
Valentine's Day
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:31 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Valentine's Day
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:31 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Considering how cheap knock-off hoverboards are catching on fire, it's scary to think what the failure modes of a knock-off replicant would be.
"Damn, you mean we put the warrior programming in the last 500 pleasure models?! We already shipped!"
posted by King Sky Prawn at 1:32 PM on January 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
"Damn, you mean we put the warrior programming in the last 500 pleasure models?! We already shipped!"
posted by King Sky Prawn at 1:32 PM on January 8, 2016 [3 favorites]
I always just assumed the replicant ID code was written in duodecimal numbers (Base 12). So no problem there.
(And I have heard that Rutger Hauer improvised Roy's final speech moments before the scene was shot. Which totally doesn't surprise me, since Philip K Dick could not write convincing dialogue in my opinion.)
posted by seasparrow at 1:34 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
(And I have heard that Rutger Hauer improvised Roy's final speech moments before the scene was shot. Which totally doesn't surprise me, since Philip K Dick could not write convincing dialogue in my opinion.)
posted by seasparrow at 1:34 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
"Damn, you mean we put the warrior programming in the last 500 pleasure models?! We already shipped!"
Just redirect the shipment to Qo'noS.
posted by MikeKD at 1:36 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Just redirect the shipment to Qo'noS.
posted by MikeKD at 1:36 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
"So Blade Runner 2 ... that's a terrible idea. But it's being directed by Denis Villeneuve. He's really good. He did Sicario. And Enemy. And Prisoners. And he's going to do Story of Your Life. They've got Hampton Fancher back. And Scott. But then Prometheus. But then The Maritain... I mean, what to feel about this?"
*Shoots interrogator*
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:40 PM on January 8, 2016 [10 favorites]
*Shoots interrogator*
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:40 PM on January 8, 2016 [10 favorites]
it's scary to think what the failure modes of a knock-off replicant would be.
Yeah it is.
posted by brianrobot at 1:52 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yeah it is.
posted by brianrobot at 1:52 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Is it recorded whether the date was chosen deliberately because of its David Bowie (or Elvis) resonance?
posted by acb at 1:55 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by acb at 1:55 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Is it recorded whether the date was chosen deliberately because of its David Bowie (or Elvis) resonance?
Or Stephen Hawking?
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 2:20 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Or Stephen Hawking?
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 2:20 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Because I always hated that stupid tortoise, that's why.
posted by kyrademon at 2:25 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by kyrademon at 2:25 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
Stephen Hawking?
Hawking wasn't really a public figure until Brief History Of Time came out in 88... (Blade Runner was 82)
Is it recorded whether the date was chosen deliberately because of its David Bowie (or Elvis) resonance?
I did wonder about this earlier... especially given Pris' is Feb 14th. But I could not find anything really significant for Zhora or Leon's dates though (June 10, April 12)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:27 PM on January 8, 2016
Hawking wasn't really a public figure until Brief History Of Time came out in 88... (Blade Runner was 82)
Is it recorded whether the date was chosen deliberately because of its David Bowie (or Elvis) resonance?
I did wonder about this earlier... especially given Pris' is Feb 14th. But I could not find anything really significant for Zhora or Leon's dates though (June 10, April 12)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:27 PM on January 8, 2016
>i think i need to give myself a Voight-Kampff now.
There's always the 2015 version.
And the LiarTownUSA 2015 version:
Blade Runner Voight-Kampff Tests Part I
Blade Runner Voight-Kampff Tests Part II
posted by Auden at 2:33 PM on January 8, 2016 [7 favorites]
There's always the 2015 version.
And the LiarTownUSA 2015 version:
Blade Runner Voight-Kampff Tests Part I
Blade Runner Voight-Kampff Tests Part II
posted by Auden at 2:33 PM on January 8, 2016 [7 favorites]
Since Bladerunner takes place next year, Mr. Batty's brief life will give new meaning to the phrase 'the terrible twos.'
posted by y2karl at 2:38 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by y2karl at 2:38 PM on January 8, 2016
especially given Pris' is Feb 14th. But I could not find anything really significant for Zhora or Leon's dates though (June 10, April 12)
Except they all add up to 16. Coinkydinky? I think not.
posted by bongo_x at 2:43 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Except they all add up to 16. Coinkydinky? I think not.
posted by bongo_x at 2:43 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
WALK...don't WALK...don't WALK
Mrs. Example and I rewatched the movie tonight in honor of Roy's incept date, and all I could think was that anyone who has an apartment on that corner would go zero-to-murder in about five minutes.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:49 PM on January 8, 2016
Mrs. Example and I rewatched the movie tonight in honor of Roy's incept date, and all I could think was that anyone who has an apartment on that corner would go zero-to-murder in about five minutes.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:49 PM on January 8, 2016
CROSS NOW CROSS NOW CROSS NOW
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:54 PM on January 8, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:54 PM on January 8, 2016 [4 favorites]
Since Bladerunner takes place next year, Mr. Batty's brief life will give new meaning to the phrase 'the terrible twos.'
Er, no.
Also, two words.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:02 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
Er, no.
Also, two words.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:02 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
Actual conversation I had with a drunk girl at a Halloween party:
Girl: No one knows who I am!
Me: Pris.
Girl: I'm Daryl Hannah!
Me: Pris. A basic pleasure model.
Girl: Who's that?
Me: It's you. You're dressed as Pris, Daryl Hannah's character in Blade Runner.
Girl: That's her name?
Me: Yes! And you look great.
posted by vibrotronica at 3:20 PM on January 8, 2016 [17 favorites]
Girl: No one knows who I am!
Me: Pris.
Girl: I'm Daryl Hannah!
Me: Pris. A basic pleasure model.
Girl: Who's that?
Me: It's you. You're dressed as Pris, Daryl Hannah's character in Blade Runner.
Girl: That's her name?
Me: Yes! And you look great.
posted by vibrotronica at 3:20 PM on January 8, 2016 [17 favorites]
Happy birthday, Roy!
I still have my Galaxy Nexus phone that I named Roy; I am going to give it a big hug.
posted by mountmccabe at 4:04 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
I still have my Galaxy Nexus phone that I named Roy; I am going to give it a big hug.
posted by mountmccabe at 4:04 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
Ha! I misremembered it being in 2017. Oh, well, he's still a toddler...
posted by y2karl at 4:23 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by y2karl at 4:23 PM on January 8, 2016
It's surprising how accurate the dystopian visions of the future were, and depressing how if anything they were too optimistic - we got the bleak corporatism, mass surveillance, extreme income inequality, and the other crappy parts of the dystopian visions, but we didn't get the nicer things like flying cars or sophisticated augmentation.
Smartphones are nice though.
posted by anonymisc at 5:27 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Smartphones are nice though.
posted by anonymisc at 5:27 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Patience everyone! A sentient quantum computer is just moments away from your complete enslavement. Until then, well, we did get internet porn, phone texting, a cloned sheep, glimpsed the Higgs-Boson, a black president, discovered some extra-solar planets, called autotune "music", Microsoft Clippy, Snuggies, Game of Thrones and a reality TV billionaire with a desiccated Pomeranian on his head leading a political party.
It is a mixed bag really.
posted by Muncle at 5:32 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
It is a mixed bag really.
posted by Muncle at 5:32 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
In the late 80’s-early 90’s Los Angeles felt like Blade Runner was remarkably on target. Not so much now. As much as I don’t like it, it’s really much…nicer? Not sure that’s the word.
posted by bongo_x at 5:40 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by bongo_x at 5:40 PM on January 8, 2016
I guess that’s how the future’s always been. The older I get the more I think that things were much more the same than different in the past. It’s the trappings that fool us.
I really don't think this is true, and I don't think Roy did either. In recent decades, our entire relationship with knowledge has changed, our entire experience of the world and what it is to live in it has been transformed. But our relationship to the immense wonder of ourselves is controlled by infantilised dullards with much more power than sense. It is not the trappings of change, but rather the traps of power, that are deceptive. We become new gods and are still constrained by petty hierarchies that alienate us from ourselves. But change is always impossible until the moment it is inevitable, and every single empire falls. Roy was before his time, and he failed, but we come after him, and we have a chance.
posted by howfar at 5:52 PM on January 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
I really don't think this is true, and I don't think Roy did either. In recent decades, our entire relationship with knowledge has changed, our entire experience of the world and what it is to live in it has been transformed. But our relationship to the immense wonder of ourselves is controlled by infantilised dullards with much more power than sense. It is not the trappings of change, but rather the traps of power, that are deceptive. We become new gods and are still constrained by petty hierarchies that alienate us from ourselves. But change is always impossible until the moment it is inevitable, and every single empire falls. Roy was before his time, and he failed, but we come after him, and we have a chance.
posted by howfar at 5:52 PM on January 8, 2016 [5 favorites]
Batty: Did you get your precious photos?
Leon: Someone was there.
Batty: Men?
Leon: (nods)
Batty: POLICE men? (Scowls)
(Note: Pris' incept date is Valentine's day. Leon is nearly 14 months younger.)
posted by Twang at 6:28 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Leon: Someone was there.
Batty: Men?
Leon: (nods)
Batty: POLICE men? (Scowls)
(Note: Pris' incept date is Valentine's day. Leon is nearly 14 months younger.)
posted by Twang at 6:28 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
seasparrow: "Which totally doesn't surprise me, since Philip K Dick could not write convincing dialogue in my opinion."
Blade Runner is *significantly* different than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:04 PM on January 8, 2016 [7 favorites]
Blade Runner is *significantly* different than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:04 PM on January 8, 2016 [7 favorites]
Much of the aesthetic of Blade Runner was borrowed from Osaka, particularly the Ebisubashi and Dotonbori districts, which Ridley Scott would later use to similar effect in Black Rain.
So, as Mr. Gibson puts it, the future is here- it is just unevenly distributed.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:12 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
So, as Mr. Gibson puts it, the future is here- it is just unevenly distributed.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:12 PM on January 8, 2016 [2 favorites]
Blade Runner/ Road Warrior my two favorite dystopian films, nah-my two favorites but Blade Runner wins for pure aesthetic excellence, and smidgeons of humanity throughout. This film entered my way of being.
posted by Oyéah at 8:56 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by Oyéah at 8:56 PM on January 8, 2016
In recent decades, our entire relationship with knowledge has changed, our entire experience of the world and what it is to live in it has been transformed.
Like when the telephone came out?
I really think this "everything’s different because of the internet" shit is way overstated by people selling things. I’m the perfect age to have lived though both sides of it. It doesn’t seem that different. Some things are more convenient now, that’s what happened.
posted by bongo_x at 9:18 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Like when the telephone came out?
I really think this "everything’s different because of the internet" shit is way overstated by people selling things. I’m the perfect age to have lived though both sides of it. It doesn’t seem that different. Some things are more convenient now, that’s what happened.
posted by bongo_x at 9:18 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Blade Runner is *significantly different* than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Where I now work, there are three feral cats, all kittens of the same mother, all vaxed, fixed and tipped by the local feral cat rescuers. All black and white -- I call them the Three Tuxedos.
And the poor tenants try to feed them the most awful things. Joints of meat, tubes of ground chicken, bowls of sour milk and the piece de resistance -- chicken carcasses with heads and feet and all skeleton in between.
And not a shred of muscle left. No tissue save the alimentary tract -- stomach, guts, cloaca, sometimes a liver. Some people think this constitutes appropriate cat food. The Tuxedos think otherwise.
Those macerated carcasses come to mind when I think of Bladerunner as compared to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Dick sold a title, from which the names of three characters, an allusion to artificial animals were taken along with some fragments of plot elements. And, of course, the androids.
Someday, maybe, someone will make a movie out of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
A movie where the earth is a depopulated radioactive wasteland following a nuclear war with China, from which the healthy few are fleeing to Mars and the outer planets.
Where Deckard and his wife live in a deserted haunted conapt and fight over the Penfield Mood Organ.
Where the Buster Friendly Show, a Carson era Tonight Show parody, complete with an overblown faux Zsa Zsa is on 24 hours a day.
Where John Isidore works for the Van Ness Pet Hospital, an artificial animal repair shop. Where the pathetic chickenhead Isidore picks up a living cat sick with distemper, and thinking it electric and fumbles for an access panel when, to his horror, it dies in his hands.
With the Mercerism and the fusion with every other person who grabs the handle of their Mercer boxes and wills Wilbur Mercer up the hill.
Not to mention Buster's big expose thereof.
And where later, Wilbur Mercer walks out of a wall and restores to life a dead spider in Isidore's hands before he sees Deckard in to dispatch Roy Batty. The Roy Batty of the book.
And, if done well, that could be a great movie. The book, as slender as it was, was so rich in themes, comedy, pathos and soul, that a good movie could be made therefrom, which might ring a few bells here in the Anthropocene.
Bladerunner, for all its style and charms has its wonders but it was not a movie at all faithful to Do Androids... story, heart or soul.
But then, with the possible exception of A Scanner Darkly, has any movie made from Philip K. Dick short story or novel resembled the original work any more than the chicken cadavers the tenants toss to the Three Tuxedos resemble a living hen.
All it takes is the name Philip K. Dick, next to no resemblance to the story and it's a wrap. Talk about down right Dickian...
posted by y2karl at 9:53 PM on January 8, 2016 [10 favorites]
Where I now work, there are three feral cats, all kittens of the same mother, all vaxed, fixed and tipped by the local feral cat rescuers. All black and white -- I call them the Three Tuxedos.
And the poor tenants try to feed them the most awful things. Joints of meat, tubes of ground chicken, bowls of sour milk and the piece de resistance -- chicken carcasses with heads and feet and all skeleton in between.
And not a shred of muscle left. No tissue save the alimentary tract -- stomach, guts, cloaca, sometimes a liver. Some people think this constitutes appropriate cat food. The Tuxedos think otherwise.
Those macerated carcasses come to mind when I think of Bladerunner as compared to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Dick sold a title, from which the names of three characters, an allusion to artificial animals were taken along with some fragments of plot elements. And, of course, the androids.
Someday, maybe, someone will make a movie out of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
A movie where the earth is a depopulated radioactive wasteland following a nuclear war with China, from which the healthy few are fleeing to Mars and the outer planets.
Where Deckard and his wife live in a deserted haunted conapt and fight over the Penfield Mood Organ.
Where the Buster Friendly Show, a Carson era Tonight Show parody, complete with an overblown faux Zsa Zsa is on 24 hours a day.
Where John Isidore works for the Van Ness Pet Hospital, an artificial animal repair shop. Where the pathetic chickenhead Isidore picks up a living cat sick with distemper, and thinking it electric and fumbles for an access panel when, to his horror, it dies in his hands.
With the Mercerism and the fusion with every other person who grabs the handle of their Mercer boxes and wills Wilbur Mercer up the hill.
Not to mention Buster's big expose thereof.
And where later, Wilbur Mercer walks out of a wall and restores to life a dead spider in Isidore's hands before he sees Deckard in to dispatch Roy Batty. The Roy Batty of the book.
And, if done well, that could be a great movie. The book, as slender as it was, was so rich in themes, comedy, pathos and soul, that a good movie could be made therefrom, which might ring a few bells here in the Anthropocene.
Bladerunner, for all its style and charms has its wonders but it was not a movie at all faithful to Do Androids... story, heart or soul.
But then, with the possible exception of A Scanner Darkly, has any movie made from Philip K. Dick short story or novel resembled the original work any more than the chicken cadavers the tenants toss to the Three Tuxedos resemble a living hen.
All it takes is the name Philip K. Dick, next to no resemblance to the story and it's a wrap. Talk about down right Dickian...
posted by y2karl at 9:53 PM on January 8, 2016 [10 favorites]
Screamers is a good take on Second Variety, but that's very much earlier less-weird Dick.
posted by Artw at 10:31 PM on January 8, 2016
posted by Artw at 10:31 PM on January 8, 2016
Like when the telephone came out?
Yes. Like that. The entire premise of science fiction is that we (in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries) are living in an ongoing era of unprecedented change, and that the underlying questions of what it means to be a person either in a practical or existential sense are affected by this change.
But I don't think you've actually absorbed the point of my comment. Immense change has been kept in check by powerful but idiotic socioeconomic forces. We have become different while the relationships between us have been, largely, held in place by the realities of capitalism. But capitalism is not eternal, it is, itself, a particular form of technology. It has been remarkably successful in maintaining order over the last few centuries, and whether it continues to be able to do that is a fundamental question to the cyberpunk genre.
Ptolemaic cosmology is a result of the entirely understandable, but wholly fallacious, assumption that the things we see moving relative to ourselves are the only things that are moving. I would suggest that a Copernican approach to history is necessary here.
posted by howfar at 11:52 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yes. Like that. The entire premise of science fiction is that we (in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries) are living in an ongoing era of unprecedented change, and that the underlying questions of what it means to be a person either in a practical or existential sense are affected by this change.
But I don't think you've actually absorbed the point of my comment. Immense change has been kept in check by powerful but idiotic socioeconomic forces. We have become different while the relationships between us have been, largely, held in place by the realities of capitalism. But capitalism is not eternal, it is, itself, a particular form of technology. It has been remarkably successful in maintaining order over the last few centuries, and whether it continues to be able to do that is a fundamental question to the cyberpunk genre.
Ptolemaic cosmology is a result of the entirely understandable, but wholly fallacious, assumption that the things we see moving relative to ourselves are the only things that are moving. I would suggest that a Copernican approach to history is necessary here.
posted by howfar at 11:52 PM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
WidgetAlley: "totally coincidentally I watched this last night, just because it's been ages and i love it. i think i need to give myself a Voight-Kampff now."
One of my toptest favoritestest movies of all time. I even have the super-deluxe edition, with all five versions, and a model Spinner, and a (fake - it's hard plastic) origami unicorn, and a numbered sticker, and... (Glad no one ever made a similar edition for one of my other superfaves, Brazil...)
posted by Samizdata at 12:16 AM on January 9, 2016
One of my toptest favoritestest movies of all time. I even have the super-deluxe edition, with all five versions, and a model Spinner, and a (fake - it's hard plastic) origami unicorn, and a numbered sticker, and... (Glad no one ever made a similar edition for one of my other superfaves, Brazil...)
posted by Samizdata at 12:16 AM on January 9, 2016
bongo_x: "Wow. I grew up with the optimistic Star Trek socialist utopia image morphing by the 80’s into the Mad Max, or it seemed more realistically in some ways, Blade Runner vision of the future. The one that didn’t seem that likely was that it would be pretty much the same…only duller.
This is it!?! This is 2016?
"You got your 'communicator' device, it even beeps, quit complaining and go back to work".
I guess that’s how the future’s always been. The older I get the more I think that things were much more the same than different in the past. It’s the trappings that fool us."
CAN'T MAKE ME WORK! NO JETPACK!
posted by Samizdata at 12:17 AM on January 9, 2016
This is it!?! This is 2016?
"You got your 'communicator' device, it even beeps, quit complaining and go back to work".
I guess that’s how the future’s always been. The older I get the more I think that things were much more the same than different in the past. It’s the trappings that fool us."
CAN'T MAKE ME WORK! NO JETPACK!
posted by Samizdata at 12:17 AM on January 9, 2016
It's surprising how accurate the dystopian visions of the future were, and depressing how if anything they were too optimistic - .
Speak for yourself: the dystopian futures I was shown were A Dog and his Boy, Planet of the Apes, Logan's Run, Damnation Run, Le Denier Combat. The books were Z for Zachariah, Children of Morrow, Star Man's Son, The Hydronauts. Every SF book I read as a teen accepted it as a given that World War III would happen. EVERY FUCKING BOOK. The corporate dystopias of Neuromancer and current fiction was OPTIMISTIC compared to what I grew up with.
So I don't want to hear complaints about how the future we were promised didn't happen, how it sucks compared to flying cars and shit. The world of Bladerunner is a paradise compared to what I was promised, compared to what I expected to be my reality by 1989.
posted by happyroach at 12:29 AM on January 9, 2016 [8 favorites]
Speak for yourself: the dystopian futures I was shown were A Dog and his Boy, Planet of the Apes, Logan's Run, Damnation Run, Le Denier Combat. The books were Z for Zachariah, Children of Morrow, Star Man's Son, The Hydronauts. Every SF book I read as a teen accepted it as a given that World War III would happen. EVERY FUCKING BOOK. The corporate dystopias of Neuromancer and current fiction was OPTIMISTIC compared to what I grew up with.
So I don't want to hear complaints about how the future we were promised didn't happen, how it sucks compared to flying cars and shit. The world of Bladerunner is a paradise compared to what I was promised, compared to what I expected to be my reality by 1989.
posted by happyroach at 12:29 AM on January 9, 2016 [8 favorites]
I was really happy with the Criterion Collection set for Brazil.but now that I think about it, it would have been nice if it came with a present and a non-compliant, incomplete 27B/6.
posted by mountmccabe at 12:48 AM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by mountmccabe at 12:48 AM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
i think i need to give myself a Voight-Kampff now.
Easy tiger.
posted by bongo_x at 1:12 AM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Easy tiger.
posted by bongo_x at 1:12 AM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
In recent decades, our entire relationship with knowledge has changed, our entire experience of the world and what it is to live in it has been transformed.
Like when the telephone came out?
My grandfather is 93. I've had the immense privilege of hearing him talk about what life was like in the 1930s and 40s. I honestly think that the world has changed considerably less from 1980-2015 than it did from 1935-1970. What they experienced was the explosive culmination of a century-long process which brought an end to a set of realities which humans had accepted going back to the dawn of civilization. What we have experienced are just the aftershocks, the slow spread of that revolution beyond its core within the Atlantic world, variations on the theme.
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:16 AM on January 9, 2016 [6 favorites]
Like when the telephone came out?
My grandfather is 93. I've had the immense privilege of hearing him talk about what life was like in the 1930s and 40s. I honestly think that the world has changed considerably less from 1980-2015 than it did from 1935-1970. What they experienced was the explosive culmination of a century-long process which brought an end to a set of realities which humans had accepted going back to the dawn of civilization. What we have experienced are just the aftershocks, the slow spread of that revolution beyond its core within the Atlantic world, variations on the theme.
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:16 AM on January 9, 2016 [6 favorites]
It does remain my favourite film of all time (well, when it isn't Alien)
Fiery the angels fell. Deep thunder rolled around their shoulders... burning with the fires of Orc.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:16 AM on January 9, 2016
Fiery the angels fell. Deep thunder rolled around their shoulders... burning with the fires of Orc.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:16 AM on January 9, 2016
Blade Runner/ Road Warrior my two favorite dystopian films,
I have previously mentioned the biggest screen and auditorium in the city I grew up in. Although it was 99% first run stuff, weirdly they somehow managed to paper over the occasional gap in the schedule with some second-run films. I recall being there once in the mid-eighties and seeing this very double bill. It was good.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:31 AM on January 9, 2016
I have previously mentioned the biggest screen and auditorium in the city I grew up in. Although it was 99% first run stuff, weirdly they somehow managed to paper over the occasional gap in the schedule with some second-run films. I recall being there once in the mid-eighties and seeing this very double bill. It was good.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:31 AM on January 9, 2016
My parents took me to see Blade Runner when it came out but I was a bit young to understand what was happening. I can remember being especially confused by the scene where Deckard kills Zhora. It made no sense to me why he was shooting the nice lady in the bikini.
Watching it now it's the replicants that I sympathize with and like, which I think is the filmmaker's intent. It's a beautiful film, and one of the more immersive films I have ever seen. It's a rare case where the movie is better than the book (and so different as to have almost nothing in common).
posted by Dip Flash at 6:19 AM on January 9, 2016
Watching it now it's the replicants that I sympathize with and like, which I think is the filmmaker's intent. It's a beautiful film, and one of the more immersive films I have ever seen. It's a rare case where the movie is better than the book (and so different as to have almost nothing in common).
posted by Dip Flash at 6:19 AM on January 9, 2016
I really think this "everything’s different because of the internet" shit is way overstated by people selling things. I’m the perfect age to have lived though both sides of it. It doesn’t seem that different. Some things are more convenient now, that’s what happened.
bongo_x, with all due respect, I too have lived both sides of humanity's mass access to the Internet and I'd say your perspective is a bit limited.*
The effects of instantaneous global information transfer has, in 30 short years, transformed everything from medicine, politics, activism, espionage, manufacturing, finances, physics… I'm sorry. This is pointless.
My point is everything is different.
One only need look with one's eyes to see how much has changed, how much is changing, and to know the world will be vastly different in the 30 years to come.
* I know you were being merely rhetorical, but I think it's important to counter the myth that nothing has changed with the advent of globally linked electronic communication and control systems, that things are basically the same as they were in the 19XX's.
posted by mistersquid at 7:04 AM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
bongo_x, with all due respect, I too have lived both sides of humanity's mass access to the Internet and I'd say your perspective is a bit limited.*
The effects of instantaneous global information transfer has, in 30 short years, transformed everything from medicine, politics, activism, espionage, manufacturing, finances, physics… I'm sorry. This is pointless.
My point is everything is different.
One only need look with one's eyes to see how much has changed, how much is changing, and to know the world will be vastly different in the 30 years to come.
* I know you were being merely rhetorical, but I think it's important to counter the myth that nothing has changed with the advent of globally linked electronic communication and control systems, that things are basically the same as they were in the 19XX's.
posted by mistersquid at 7:04 AM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Patience everyone! A sentient quantum computer is just moments away from your complete enslavement. Until then, well, we did get internet porn, phone texting, a cloned sheep, glimpsed the Higgs-Boson, a black president, discovered some extra-solar planets, called autotune "music", Microsoft Clippy, Snuggies, Game of Thrones and a reality TV billionaire with a desiccated Pomeranian on his head leading a political party.
It is a mixed bag really.
Put that way, it sounds more Rudy Rucker than anything else.
posted by Thistledown at 7:13 AM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
It is a mixed bag really.
Put that way, it sounds more Rudy Rucker than anything else.
posted by Thistledown at 7:13 AM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
For those saying that things aren't that much different -- my kids (mostly tweens) have no idea what it's like to get lost on a road trip. They don't know what it's like to have one chance to see a TV show, or only a few weekends to see a movie. They don't have to take my word for anything, because they have instant access to Wikipedia and everything else on the Internet. I had to speak sternly to one of them last night because they were video-chatting with their cousin who lives three time zones away at bedtime.
They have seen inside the Great Pyramid. Think about that. In the entire history of the world up to the mid-20th Century, there were, what, a few hundred people out of the billions who have ever lived who could say that. My kids saw it while sitting on our couch.
posted by Etrigan at 7:18 AM on January 9, 2016 [4 favorites]
They have seen inside the Great Pyramid. Think about that. In the entire history of the world up to the mid-20th Century, there were, what, a few hundred people out of the billions who have ever lived who could say that. My kids saw it while sitting on our couch.
posted by Etrigan at 7:18 AM on January 9, 2016 [4 favorites]
I really think this "everything’s different because of the internet" shit is way overstated by people selling things.
As someone who has spent the last two plus years living in non-English speaking countries while speaking only English, hell yes things have changed in crazy immeasurable ways. I work in biomedical research doing stuff that didn't exist when I was an undergraduate, my husband works in web-based IT that didn't exist even a few years ago, we translate everything on the fly, do all our immigration and government stuff online (with instant translation), follow our phones around every time we go somewhere new, got jobs in different countries via things like LinkedIn every time we moved countries, and keep in contact with our families and our home country in so many ways that we either couldn't afford or didn't exist even ten years ago. I've been with my husband for 20+ years and we could only have done this move in this way in the last 5-7 or so of those. As someone with zero faculty for learning new languages and who works in a tech-driven field, the global communication thing really has open up the world to me in very literal ways.
And now I'm trying to convince said husband that we should be re-watching Blade Runner tonight. Via the Internet because that's how we get all our TV these days.
posted by shelleycat at 10:58 AM on January 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
As someone who has spent the last two plus years living in non-English speaking countries while speaking only English, hell yes things have changed in crazy immeasurable ways. I work in biomedical research doing stuff that didn't exist when I was an undergraduate, my husband works in web-based IT that didn't exist even a few years ago, we translate everything on the fly, do all our immigration and government stuff online (with instant translation), follow our phones around every time we go somewhere new, got jobs in different countries via things like LinkedIn every time we moved countries, and keep in contact with our families and our home country in so many ways that we either couldn't afford or didn't exist even ten years ago. I've been with my husband for 20+ years and we could only have done this move in this way in the last 5-7 or so of those. As someone with zero faculty for learning new languages and who works in a tech-driven field, the global communication thing really has open up the world to me in very literal ways.
And now I'm trying to convince said husband that we should be re-watching Blade Runner tonight. Via the Internet because that's how we get all our TV these days.
posted by shelleycat at 10:58 AM on January 9, 2016 [2 favorites]
(pedants will want to read the note.)
posted by Artw at 2:58 PM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 2:58 PM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
Electric Sheep was such a big grab-bag of ideas and plots that I can understand why they distilled it down to something a lot simpler for a two hour movie.
posted by octothorpe at 3:52 PM on January 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 3:52 PM on January 9, 2016 [3 favorites]
You're just upbeat about it because you've dialed your mood organ that way.
posted by Artw at 3:53 PM on January 9, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Artw at 3:53 PM on January 9, 2016 [5 favorites]
So, as Mr. Gibson puts it, the future is here- it is just unevenly distributed.
Globally, the USA is 20 years ahead when it comes to having (and addressing) diseases of affluence, and 20 years behind the times on social policy. :-/
posted by anonymisc at 5:05 PM on January 9, 2016
Globally, the USA is 20 years ahead when it comes to having (and addressing) diseases of affluence, and 20 years behind the times on social policy. :-/
posted by anonymisc at 5:05 PM on January 9, 2016
Current discussion in rpg.net: Isn't The Sex Scene In Blade Runner A Little Creepy (And By "Creepy" I Mean "Rapey" And By "A Little" I Mean "Holy Shit")
posted by happyroach at 7:19 PM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by happyroach at 7:19 PM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]
That's a good thread. And yes it is. Of course, as a commenter there mentions, the whole relationship between Deckard and Rachael is creepy. Her trauma is so profound, and her choices so entirely constrained that he is, in the context of his slaveholding society, utterly incapable of acting in a moral way towards her. What's useful about this scene is that it is clear that he's not "doing his best" but rather remains complicit in the evil of his society.
posted by howfar at 12:07 AM on January 10, 2016
posted by howfar at 12:07 AM on January 10, 2016
...because you've dialed your mood organ that way.
Note that's the Penfield mood organ, Artw -- another example of the wicked Dickian wit. He was one very well read science fiction writer.
And I would argue that Do Androids... was more than a grab bag of ideas. The book was a meditation on a weave of themes -- isolation, despair, reverence for life, what it means to be human. The story of the religion of Mercerism was both an elaborate aside and the heart of the book. People all over became, through a machine, one, grabbing the handles of their Mercer boxes to suffer with their savior as he stumbled through a lifeless desolation, struck by rocks thrown by hands unseen, seeking to climb back into the flow of living time. And Wilbur Mercer turned out to be both an alcoholic fraud and a divine being.
Man, those novels he wrote through the 60s and early 70s, from Solar Lottery through The Man in the High Castle, Martian Time Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, to name but a few, were bravura juggling acts that just soared, elaborate castles that crumbled into dust all too often at the end as the amphetamines wore off.
But it was the explosion of endless creativity that gave his books with their dystopias in which dieties called into talk radio programs or walked out of walls; where people had themselves artificially evolved only to devolve instead; half lived half lives in cryonic coffins or manifested stainless steel prosthetic stigmatas such hallucinatory intensity.
Now one can -- and most do -- strip out all those fantastic architectures, rip out the warp, woof and weave of all these multidimensional, multitemporal tapestries and firework displays of themes, memes and conceits and reduce it all to something that could be plotted onto a 5 x 7 index card.
Which is why films bearing the name Philip K. Dick novels have next to nothing to do with everything that made even his more flawed novels so powerful.
Bladerunner is a beautiful looking movie but it takes place in a universe that is at 180 degrees to that of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. One is stepping into a river and one turns out to be standing still, looking at a cardboard sign on a stick that reads RIVER on another world in another solar system populated by forehead aliens.
This has caused a rift in spacetime that will not be healed until the human race is put into a state of fused consciousness and, via the mass implantation of false memories, any phrase containing the name, in any form or fragment, of Philip K Dick is replaced by that of K.W. Jeter.
posted by y2karl at 2:55 AM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
Note that's the Penfield mood organ, Artw -- another example of the wicked Dickian wit. He was one very well read science fiction writer.
And I would argue that Do Androids... was more than a grab bag of ideas. The book was a meditation on a weave of themes -- isolation, despair, reverence for life, what it means to be human. The story of the religion of Mercerism was both an elaborate aside and the heart of the book. People all over became, through a machine, one, grabbing the handles of their Mercer boxes to suffer with their savior as he stumbled through a lifeless desolation, struck by rocks thrown by hands unseen, seeking to climb back into the flow of living time. And Wilbur Mercer turned out to be both an alcoholic fraud and a divine being.
Man, those novels he wrote through the 60s and early 70s, from Solar Lottery through The Man in the High Castle, Martian Time Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, to name but a few, were bravura juggling acts that just soared, elaborate castles that crumbled into dust all too often at the end as the amphetamines wore off.
But it was the explosion of endless creativity that gave his books with their dystopias in which dieties called into talk radio programs or walked out of walls; where people had themselves artificially evolved only to devolve instead; half lived half lives in cryonic coffins or manifested stainless steel prosthetic stigmatas such hallucinatory intensity.
Now one can -- and most do -- strip out all those fantastic architectures, rip out the warp, woof and weave of all these multidimensional, multitemporal tapestries and firework displays of themes, memes and conceits and reduce it all to something that could be plotted onto a 5 x 7 index card.
Which is why films bearing the name Philip K. Dick novels have next to nothing to do with everything that made even his more flawed novels so powerful.
Bladerunner is a beautiful looking movie but it takes place in a universe that is at 180 degrees to that of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. One is stepping into a river and one turns out to be standing still, looking at a cardboard sign on a stick that reads RIVER on another world in another solar system populated by forehead aliens.
This has caused a rift in spacetime that will not be healed until the human race is put into a state of fused consciousness and, via the mass implantation of false memories, any phrase containing the name, in any form or fragment, of Philip K Dick is replaced by that of K.W. Jeter.
posted by y2karl at 2:55 AM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
“The Question Is Not Whether Deckard Is a Replicant, But Whether Roy Is a Person,” Joshua A.C. Newman, Xenoglyph, 07 January 2016
posted by ob1quixote at 3:12 AM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by ob1quixote at 3:12 AM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
Policing Traumatized Boundaries of Self and Nation: Undocumented Labor in Bladerunner
posted by y2karl at 8:57 AM on January 10, 2016
posted by y2karl at 8:57 AM on January 10, 2016
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posted by brianrobot at 12:03 PM on January 8, 2016 [20 favorites]