Internet Apocalypse

One of the most famous and celebrated sci-fi authors celebrates his 80th birthday this week! Well, unfortunately, he is dead already, he died in 1982. However Mr. Philip K Dick was responsible for a massive body of science fiction that has permeated society in the form of classic novels that will live on for the rest of time, which in turn gave rise to some of the best movies ever to be made.Everyone knows the book "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" which inspired the film by Ridley Scott "Blade Runner". This is, by the way, one of my favourite films of all time. This film was released just a few months after his death. I think it is a tragedy that he never got to see it before he died.But what about the author himself? Well to be honest, until I had started to research this post, I knew little about him. Unfortunately for the budding writer in me, it seems that Philip K Dick joins the long list of visionary masters that I aspire to who suffered from serious mental health problems and heavy drug use. Dick claimed that he wrote many of his works while high on amphetamines and LSD and later on in his life suffered from what sounds to me like paranoid schizophrenia. He would be plagued with flashes of visions into ancient Rome and as these got longer and more intense, Dick decided that this could well me a past life or that perhaps he was leading two lives at the same time. Interestingly, he also had a recurring dream that he was looking for a story entitled "The Empire Never Ended" in a magazine. He convinced himself that if he ever found the magazine in his dream that it might send him mad.

In tribute to Phillip K Dick, I've pulled my finger out and made a start on "The

 Man In The High Castle", one of his most celebrated works that I, for some reason, have never gotten round to reading I'll no doubt post about it here once I've finished it.

To find out more about Philip K Dick:

BoingBoing.net have a radio tribute to him archived on this page
The Philip K Dick tribute blog (amazing name) Total Dickhead

Films

I've listed the films of his that i really enjoyed in no particular order. I guess in the order of most awesome as voted for by me (I'm typing them as they pop into my mind). There are 9 films that I am aware of in total but these four are the ones that I have seen, remembered and enjoyed.

Blade Runner

Directed by Ridley Scott. Film Noir about a dark and not so distant future where a private detective hunts down rogue androids, while questioning his own humanity. "Do androids dream of electric sheep"

A Scanner Darkly

A strange method of filming live action scenes then animating over the top of them was used in this movie. It explores an alternate reality where a small group of friends live with their addiction to the psychoactive drug "Substance D". "A scanner darkly"

Total Recall

Truly, one of the most awesome Arnie movies of all time! This was released in the cinema in 1990 apparently (I thought it was older than that!) This film is about a man who thinks he has paid for memories of adventures to be implanted in into his mind. He quickly begins to discover that he has gotten more than he bargained for. "We can remember it for you wholesale"

Minority Report

Adapted into a blockbuster movie and directed by Stephen Spielberg,

 Minority Report is set in a future where murders are kept to an all time low by a police force that relies on the pre-cognitive abilities of three young psychics. The main protagonist is a cop, accused of a murder he has yet to commit and pursued by the very police force he used to serve. "Minority Report"

I saw the Manga movie of Battle Angel Alita when I was still in high school and it was then that the film became firmly cemented in my mind as one of the most amazing cyberpunk universes of all time. I've just finished reading one of the graphic novels about her that a friend has very generously sent over to me and it just left me totally gobsmacked.

A Little Background

Alita is a cyborg. Her head and torso are discovered in rubbish dump beneath the floating city by a scientist called Ido, who takes her home and fixes her up. Alita has no memory of her life before she is found by Ido, but as she adjusts to her new home in the city, it emerges that she has abilities in combat that are unusual, even for a cyborg.

Battle Angel Alita is based in a city where the useful, wealthy or just plain lucky members of society have fled to a floating city in the sky called Tiphares (Zoram in the movie). The city that sits below the floating utopia of Tiphares is left to rot and ruin, completely overrun by crime, drug abuse and violence. As this is set far into the future, most of the most prevalent criminals are cybernetically enhanced and therefore unstoppable by normal humans. To counter the lawlessness, the governing body of the sprawl known as "the factory" uses bounty hunters to bring in the heads of vanquished thugs and villains. Alita puts her awesome combat skills and abilities to use as a bounty hunter and that is pretty much the beginning of the story.

Awesome!

Why is Alita so awesome? So far, I haven't found out much about Alitas background before she became the cyborg you grow to know and love in the stories. However this mystery is an essential part of what makes her character so interesting. She is plunged into a cyberpunk city of sin with a wealth of colourful characters, most of whom aren't totally "good" or "evil" but instead doing a mixture of moral and immoral acts in order to survive. I really like that in characters that I am trying to connect with in stories. This is because, not only is it more realistic than just having a metaphorical Dumbledore or Yoda or any other totally pure character, but also because you just never know if your main character will be screwed over by them on the next page, or if they will be saved by them from the brink of death, albeit for a tidy sum of money or other aspect of personal gain.

Maybe this story, this world just appeals to my pessimistic side which tells me constantly...

"There is no 'Good', just varying degrees of Evil."

There ARE bad guys in this world and some of them are addicted to BRAINS. Yes! One of the more awesome aspects of this crazy cyberpunk future is that some of the massive killing machine cyborgs are addicted to the adrenaline found in human brains and this need drives them to horrific murders for their own personal gratification. It also means that brains and spines are hot property on a black market flooded with other human body parts and this trade in human tissue can also lead characters into interesting and sometimes terrifying situations.

I think if i reveal much more about the Alita universe I might give away too much or spoil it for the future initiated fan so I'll leave it at that, with an additional recommendation that Battle Angel Alita should most definitely be checked out.