(x-posted to This Is Where The Voices Go)
So recently I saw that Ridley Scott is committed to a new Blade Runner film and I had the predictable reaction of feeling nothing was sacred anymore, followed by hoping, really hoping, that this film is not a sequel, prequel or remake, but merely further stories set in the Blade Runnerverse. There's enough unused material in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? to make that possible without much creative effort.
My predominant, non-reactionary thought however, is that not only should any new Blade Runner material be set in the original film's timeframe of 2019, but that it most assuredly won't be.
Face it. We can't imagine it being only a mere 8 years until off-world colonies, human-like replicant robots and flying police cars. The idea is as much a joke to us as the classic science fiction assumption that we'd all be sat around in foil suits by the year 2000.
Every generation rolls back the placement and expectations of their science fiction by another fifty or more years, and as time passes, new science fiction seems to be getting even further and further away from present day. Who's to say that the new Blade Runner won't be set in the 25th or 35th century, in a time so distant and unreal that the writers can do whatever the hell they want with settings and expectations?
Classic science fiction was never about the impossible or the mythic, but the possible and seemingly achievable, the extraordinary made ordinary and how the human spirit deals with the challenges and developments of these fantastical worlds and advancements. It was never about the unlikely or the ridiculous, but rather the predicted evolution of life, based on all human endeavour from the dawn of time right up to the point of writing.
If we keep rolling back the date of our expected future, then we will stop expecting our future, and hide it behind so many supposed great leaps forward until its distance makes us feel the impossibility of reaching for it, doubt our personal and global potential, and be content to wallow in a present without goals, dreams, or ambition.
Nick
xx
P.S If it is a remake, I am going to be fucking livid.
My predominant, non-reactionary thought however, is that not only should any new Blade Runner material be set in the original film's timeframe of 2019, but that it most assuredly won't be.
Face it. We can't imagine it being only a mere 8 years until off-world colonies, human-like replicant robots and flying police cars. The idea is as much a joke to us as the classic science fiction assumption that we'd all be sat around in foil suits by the year 2000.
Every generation rolls back the placement and expectations of their science fiction by another fifty or more years, and as time passes, new science fiction seems to be getting even further and further away from present day. Who's to say that the new Blade Runner won't be set in the 25th or 35th century, in a time so distant and unreal that the writers can do whatever the hell they want with settings and expectations?
Classic science fiction was never about the impossible or the mythic, but the possible and seemingly achievable, the extraordinary made ordinary and how the human spirit deals with the challenges and developments of these fantastical worlds and advancements. It was never about the unlikely or the ridiculous, but rather the predicted evolution of life, based on all human endeavour from the dawn of time right up to the point of writing.
If we keep rolling back the date of our expected future, then we will stop expecting our future, and hide it behind so many supposed great leaps forward until its distance makes us feel the impossibility of reaching for it, doubt our personal and global potential, and be content to wallow in a present without goals, dreams, or ambition.
Nick
xx
P.S If it is a remake, I am going to be fucking livid.
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