Back in 1982, when
Blade Runner was released, I was a 19
year-old nerd who was into space operas and fantasy books. I was aware of hard
science fiction, the works of artists such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov,
Ray Bradbury (though his genre was more “dark fantasy”), Arthur C. Clarke and
Philip K. Dick, but I never seemed entranced with them. As noted before, I
found them difficult to read, and since I cared less about the mechanics of
real science (how space travel was really difficult and that the “warp speed”
the Enterprise traveled at was more made up magic than real science), I found
the lectures that these writers tended to do about real space travel boring. I
wanted action; I wanted adventure without all the explanations on how much fuel
was need to get in and out of orbit of a planet, or how much water and air was
really needed to sustain humans traveling between the stars. Then there was the
fact that –in real life- traveling out of solar system and to the closest star
system (Andromeda) would take generations upon generations to accomplish.
Movies like
Star Wars and TV series like
Star Trek just ignored that aspect of
space travel and I was fine with it.
As best as I can remember (because I really have very little
memory of my first 10 to 12 years of life), reading was not huge in my family.
While it never was encouraged or discouraged, I don’t remember any of my family
members entranced by reading. And a lot of science fiction fans of my age and older
started reading pulp magazines like Astounding Science Fiction, The Magazine of
Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, and Weird Tales along
with many others. Those contained many stories written by authors, during what’s
called The Golden Age of Science Fiction, like E.E. Smith, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan
Ellison, Asimov, Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, Lester del Rey, HP Lovecraft and
many others. While I think I was aware of them, I never read any of them. I
later realized that I just started reading full length novels, and skipped over
the whole short-story era of all genres, not just science fiction.
So since I jumped over the short-stories –and even today, I
don’t read that sub-group of fiction- I seemed to miss out on all those classic
authors I list above. And now, as I try to find things to read, I’ve discovered
that maybe my future reading lies in the past.
This brings me back to Blade Runner and the novel it was
based upon.
As noted, by 1982 I was in full fantasy and space opera
mode. While I saw Blade Runner when it was released theatrically back then, I
think I more or less saw it because it starred Harrison Ford, who had two Star
Wars films and Raiders of the Lost Ark under his belt. He was, at the time, a
certified action star. I also had seen Alien and was intrigued by director
Ridley Scott, so I think I went into the film with the idea that while it was
hard science fiction, it was still going to be an action film.
I think, maybe, I liked the film, even if I did not fully understand
it. Yes, you would think a 19 year-old would have ability to fully comprehend the
film, but because of mind set –fantasy books and space operas- perhaps I chose
not to fully grasp the themes of the film.
Then there was Philip K. Dick, who died just months before
the film’s release of heart failure after suffering a massive stroke. I was
aware of him, and Starlog Magazine (which had become a part of my life in 1979)
had done many stories on him and the making of the film. I knew at the time
that Dick was an important writer, one of the first post “Golden Age” writers
who sort of took science fiction into the dark corners of our Id. He wrote
about “sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by
monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states.”
He also wrote tales that “reflected his personal interest in
metaphysics and theology, drawing upon his own life experiences in addressing
the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences.
He also wrote extensively on philosophy, theology, the nature of reality and
science.”
But at that time, I felt little interest in reading that stuff.
Again, perhaps, I felt not smart enough and incapable of fully understanding
the themes, the analogies and metaphors that were spring up from the pages like
a dark bean stalk. And so, over the last three decades, I’ve not read much of
what I call hard core science fiction.
But again, I feel maybe I’ve lost something by not reading
this genre. As I struggle to find books that engage my mind and make me ponder
what little time I have left in this mad, mad, mad world, I’ve found that –maybe-
this genre will help me understand why I am the way I am, why I’m a social
invert and why I cannot seem to understand my place in the living world.
Though, I think also, I might be asking too much of this genre.
What really made me want to read Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep was re-seeing the movie for the first time in, perhaps, twenty years. I
knew that since the film adaptation was released Ridley Scott and the studio
have tinkered with the film. According to Wikipedia, there have been several
different versions of it: “The releases seen by most cinema audiences were: the
U.S. theatrical version (1982, 116 minutes), known as the original version or
Domestic Cut; the International Cut (1982, 117 minutes), also known as the
"Criterion Edition" or "uncut version", which included more
violent action scenes than the U.S. version. Although initially unavailable in
the U.S., it was later re-released in 1992 as a "10th Anniversary
Edition". Scott's Director's Cut (1991, 116 minutes) was made available in
1993. Significant changes from the theatrical version include: the removal of
Deckard's voice-over; re-insertion of a unicorn sequence; and removal of the
studio-imposed happy ending. Scott's The Final Cut (2007, 117 minutes) was
released by Warner Bros. theatrically on October 5, 2007, and subsequently
released on DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray Disc in December 2007. This is the only
version over which Scott had complete editorial control.”
I saw the film under the stars at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery
in West Hollywood about three-weeks ago. This was, apparently, the first time
the film had been authorized to be played this way, and it was, also, the 2007
edition. What struck me was how good the film really is, and how many films of
this genre have emulated it in the thirty-two years since its release. I actually thought about the 2012 release of
John Carter, the long-waited adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs series of
novels. While we can argue about how good the film is or was not until we’re
blue in the face, one the many things that made it not work was it took too
long for Hollywood to adapt it. In the end, writers stole whole heartily from
the book, released in 1918. All those themes Burroughs helped create where
woven into other books, other films and by the time John Carter was finally
made, everyone sort of said, “have we not seen this before?”
Which, of course, you had; John Carter of Mars was so
original in 1918, but by 2012 it seemed that film version was stealing from
other films, when, in a sense, it help create the genre we love today. Today’s
franchises, the superhero films, the Star Wars, the Star Treks, even (somewhat)
the Golden Age of Science Fiction was created by picking the bones of authors
like Burroughs and Jules Verne.
Anyways, after watching the film (and seeing a special
appearance by Sean Young, who in a brief and scattered speech, proved to the
audience that all the rumors she was a few tacos short of a combination platter
are pretty much true) and thinking on how good it was, how important this film
was to the science fiction genre, I needed to read the book it was based upon.
So while waiting for the book to be transferred in from some
outer place within the Los Angeles County Library system (the Philistines that
live in the suburbs do not seem to take kindly to novels that offer stories set
outside popular fiction), I started reading stuff on the internet about Dick’s
and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner. One thing I learned
was the book would be somewhat different from the movie (so much so, that the
studio wanted Dick to write an adaptation of the script into new novel instead
of re-releasing his novel. He, of course, refused and eventually the novel was
released, but under its new title of Blade Runner).
The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who is
faced with "retiring" six escaped Nexus-6 brain model androids, the
latest and most advanced model, while a secondary plot follows John Isidore, a
man of sub-par IQ who aids the fugitive androids. In connection with Deckard's
mission, the novel explores the issue of what it is to be human. Unlike humans,
the androids possess no sense of empathy. In essence, Deckard probes the
existence of defining qualities that separate humans from androids. It is set
in 2021, sometime after something called World War Terminus where Earth is
suffering from radioactive fallout. A lot of humans have left the planet (The
U.N., it seems, is encouraging this emigration to off-world colonies, in hope
of preserving the human race from the terminal effects of the fallout. One
emigration incentive is giving each emigrant an "andy"—a servant
android) and have colonized the stars (though how far they’ve gotten is never
fully explored; only Mars gets any real attention) and the remainders –those with
little wealth- live in cluttered, decaying cities in which radiation poisoning
sickens them and damages their genes. Animals are rare and keeping and owning
live animals is an important societal norm and status symbol. But many people
turn towards the much cheaper synthetic, or electric, animals to keep up the
pretense. Prior to the story's beginning Rick Deckard owned a real sheep, but
it died of tetanus, and he replaced it with an electric one.
The story is set in and around the San Francisco Bay Area,
one of the last places affected by the radioactive dust, especially on the
peninsula to the south. It is monitored daily by meteorologists using the
Mongoose weather satellite in Earth orbit. While still relatively habitable,
the sandy deserts of Oregon to the north are highly contaminated by radiation.
Rick Deckard stays in a building on the east side of the bay with his wife,
Iran, who is depressed. J.R. Isidore lives on the peninsula south of San
Francisco.
The main Earth religion is Mercerism, in which Empathy Boxes
link simultaneous users into a collective consciousness based on the suffering
of Wilbur Mercer, a man who takes an endless walk up a mountain while stones
are thrown at him, the pain of which the users share. The television
appearances of Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends, broadcast twenty-three
hours a day, represent a second religion, designed to undermine Mercerism and
allow androids to partake in a kind of consumerist spirituality.
The main theme that runs through this novel (an apparently his
other works) is the question, "What constitutes the authentic human
being?" The androids appear to be human is every respect, but lack compassion
or a soul. But as Deckard continues his job of eliminating the androids (they’re
illegal on Earth) he begins to wonder if these andys –despite doing horrible
things in pursuant of their goals- are more human than he is.
In the end, the book is a wonderful read, filled with darkness,
a wit and puzzling metaphors that make the reader ponder our own reality. His
themes of blurring reality makes us wonder if we are truly the masters of our
fate or just playthings to a grander master who has convinced us that we do
have control over our fates.
See the film, for it offers some of its own great metaphors
(director Scott always thought that Deckard was a replicant, while star
Harrison Ford wanted him to be human) that do not often appear in films, but
the book is another thing altogether.
Brilliant.
Desperate to find a case to justify the team’s existence,
with budget cuts and a police strike on the horizon, Quill thinks he’s struck
gold when a cabinet minister is murdered by an assailant who wasn’t seen
getting in or out of his limo. A second murder, that of the Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police, presents a crime scene with a message… identical to that
left by the original Jack the Ripper. The
new Ripper seems to have changed the MO of the old completely: he’s only
killing rich white men. The inquiry into just what this supernatural menace is
takes Quill and his team into the corridors of power at Whitehall, to meetings
with MI5, or ‘the funny people’ as the Met call them, and into the London
occult underworld. They go undercover to a pub with a regular evening that
caters to that clientele and to an auction of objects of power at the Tate
Modern. Meanwhile, the Ripper keeps on killing and finally the pattern of those
killings gives Quill’s team clues towards who or what is really doing this.
