Thursday, November 25, 2010

Gabriel Week 8

Blade Runner by Ridley Scott is the most famous of the films developed from Phillip K. Dick's novels. It is set in the future with the technology for androids being developed even further and memories being imprinted from which they develop emotions, we can see that Dick is not only expressing a deep concern for what may happen to humanity, should the same things occur, but it also plays to the audience, giving them a setting which is not too far off set from reality, for instance the opening scene in Tokyo. We can clearly recognize the language of the signs and unlike many SF movies there are not strange disfigured aliens, no super sophisticated technology in such a simple place, even the vehicle used, despite being able to fly, appears to be damaged and worn. These are the sort of details that make Dick's work so much more different from other SF writers.


And as with most of Dick's work there is always a subliminal message behind even the smallest detail. Sam pointed this out in his blog, but I think I need to reiterate it. The memories which have been implanted into the 'brains' of the Replicant are obviously artificial but as Dick has also implied in the article by Brown (2001) from last week;  "the universe is only apparently real, an illusion behind which the truth might dwell". So is he trying to put in our minds that it's a possibility that our own memories are not real, that the universe is constructed for us, similar to themes from The Matrix trilogy.


These pseudo-realism that Dick creates in his SF is one that is not only entirely different from most other narratives in the genre, but they also attract audiences for the philosophical mental discussions that undoubtedly occur each time a novel or short story of his is written or one of the films based on his writings.

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