Minority Report: A Review

Although this book is technically called Minority Report, it should really be called Minority Report (and other Cyberpunk short stories) by Philip K. Dick. Indeed, nowhere on the back of the book nor on the cover does the book reveal that Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report is in fact only a short story of 45 pages. The contents of this book are actually as follows:

1. Minority Report
2. Imposter
3. Second Variety
4. War Game
5. What the Dead Men Say
6. Oh, to Be a Blobel!
7. The Electric Ant
8. Faith of Our Fathers
9. We Can Remember it for You Wholesale

This book has no less than nine short stories! And of particular note is the last short story, We Can Remember it for You Wholesale, is none other than the short story that inspired the famous Cyberpunk 1990 flick Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger (and its subsequent 2012 reboot).

Reviewing each Cyberpunk / Alternate Reality Story

So how good are these short stories? Are they worth your time? Absolutely. But, like anything else, some are much better than others, both in excitement level and in mind-bending ideas. So without further ado, here’s my review for Minority Report (and other short stories by Philip K Dick).

Minority Report: 8/10

John Anderton is the commissioner of Precrime, a futuristic division of the police that prevents crimes before they happen with the help of three precogs. Unlike the film with Tom Cruise, the source material is a lot more tame–the short story reads more like a detective mystery novel, as Anderton must race against time to solve the mystery of how he is supposed to kill a man he has never heard of before in the next 48 hours. As the story develops and Anderton goes to different places to piece together the clues, the story’s message is a lot more about political power than it is about broken families or Anderton surviving. Indeed, Anderton’s survival almost seems to take a back seat to his ascertaining if the system itself suddenly has a flaw or not, which would put into question everything he had done before that moment. Still, with a short but exciting moment when Anderton is on the run, this story was one of my favorites of the nine, as it is different enough from the film that it kept me guessing until the very end.

Imposter: 8.5/10

Imposter apparently got the movie treatment as well, but the film is obscure enough that I’m fairly sure no one has heard of it. This story is about Spence Olham, a man who is suddenly arrested and taken in because the police claim that he is an unwitting spy of the enemy, an android who replaced the real Spence Olham without knowing it, for the purpose of carrying out a terrorist attack. As he is taken back to HQ Olham must try to escape and solve the mystery of who, or what, he is before it is too late. This felt like a real sci-fi thriller as Olham questions whether he is human or not, and how he would even know. It was exciting and fast-paced from beginning to end, and is another one of my favorite stories of the nine.

Second Variety: 9/10

Second Variety is about a group of American soldiers sitting in the trenches on Earch fighting a long, drawn-out war against the Russians in a dystopian future. In this story, the Americans were able to develop a technologically advanced set of robots called Claws that burrow into the ground and attack any living flesh they can. The Americans, who apparently developed the line of robots, are protected from the claws by radioactive “tabs” signalling that they aren’t the enemy.

As one Russian soldier tries to cross no-man’s land and inevitably dies to the Claws, the Americans recover a message from the soldier asking for a chance for negotiating a cease-fire. This leads to the American leader deciding to cross no-man’s land to the Russian trenches in order to negotiate a cease-fire, when he discovers that the robots the Americans had developed have learned to self-develop, resulting in a Second Variety of robots that take on a human appearance in order to kills their prey. What happens next is an incredibly exciting tale of a dystopian future as the humans fight against the robots, and themselves, as they try to determine who the threats really are.

Second Variety was my personal favorite of the nine stories, because of its dystopian setting and truly anxiety and fear-inducing story. It was perhaps the most dystopian and thrilling story of the nine.

War Game: 6/10

War Game is basically a story about quality assurance testers, who are testing kits of technologically-advanced toys for children. It was perhaps my least favorite story, and is very curious. The toy they are testing in question is a castle that is defending itself from toy soldiers who are trying to get into the castle to conquer it. As the toy soldiers slowly get in one by one as the game resets, the testers ponder what will happen when they eventually all get in. It’s a loose reflection on the values that we teach our children, done in a dystopian sci-fi form.

What the Dead Men Say: 6.5/10

What the Dead Men Say is basically the short story that led to Ubik, so if you’ve read Ubik, then this story will look very familiar. It actually has a couple pages that were copied directly into the book. This story is about a world where people can go into cryo-sleep called half-life when they die. When they do, they can have their consciousness connected to a telephone to the outside world, so that the dead may communicate their wishes to the living. Things go awry, however, when the famous head of enterprise Louis Sarapis dies and can’t be reached in his cryo-sleep to determine what his wishes are. Instead, his consciousness starts invading all media sources–newspapers, TV, telephone lines, etc. This complicates things as a major election is about to occur. I personally much preferred Ubik to this short story, as Ubik relates more to the nature of reality, whereas What the Dead Men Say is more of a mystery of what is happening.

Oh, to Be a Blobel!: 6.5/10

This story is about George Munster and his struggle with Blobels, who are an alien blob-like race that humanity fought decades ago.  Munster fought in the war against the Blobels, and was genetically altered to spend half a day each day in the form of a Blobel in order to infiltrate their ranks as a spy. Nowadays, however, he is simply a war veteran, and Humans and Blobels live in relative peace with each other (although both humans and Blobels still live on their respective planets, for the most part). Munster must learn how to live a normal, happy life, despite the fact that he keeps on turning into a Blobel every day. The message here seems to be pretty clear that Blobel is just another word for Communist or Soviet, as PKD lived in the time of McCarthyism and spies hiding their true nature was a serious concern of the times.

The Electric Ant: 7.5/10

The Electric Ant is a fun little story about a man that learns that he is in fact an android, and decides to tinker with the mechanical systems within himself that process reality. This story felt like what would happen if a robot tried mind-altering drugs and it actually worked. Very interesting thought experiment once again about the nature of reality.

Faith of Our Fathers: 6/10

This is perhaps one of the oddest of all the stories, and that’s saying a lot for PKD novels. Set in Hanoi, Vietnam, Comrade Chien lives in a 1984-style society where the TV must be on at all times and citizens’ viewing times are recorded, to ensure they watch and listen to enough of the party propaganda. Chien is looking to rise up the ranks in the government when he is given a test of two papers, one a fake and one real, and the party values. This leads to him meeting a member of the resistance and then a later invitation to meet the party leader, but in the process he starts to question reality once again when he is told to take a drug to counteract drugs that are supposed in the water supply, keeping all citizens doped to a certain party level. The meeting of the party leader felt very surreal in this story and its ending felt very open and unfinished, which is why I gave it a lower score compared to other stories on this list.

We Can Remember it for You Wholesale: 7/10

If you’ve seen the beginning of either Total Recalls, then you know the gist of this story. We Can Remember it for You Wholesale is about a man called Douglas Quail who wants to pay for a memory to be implanted in his brain of him having been a spy on Mars, in order to escape his boring life and because he can’t afford an actual trip to Mars. Except things start to go wrong when the implanting process is halted due to previous subconscious memories that indicate that he already went to Mars as a spy. This results in him trying to figure out what he is, as his previous employers race to find him and contain the threat of him learning too much about who he is and what the did. Unlike the movies, however, PKD takes this a couple more levels and then leaves it at that, which was a fun way to once again question reality as the reader is left trying to figure out what truly was real and what wasn’t in

So to review, here’s my aggregate rating of each short story:

1. Minority Report: 8/10
2. Imposter: 8.5/10
3. Second Variety: 9/10
4. War Game: 6/10
5. What the Dead Men Say: 6.5/10
6. Oh, to Be a Blobel!: 6.5/10
7. The Electric Ant: 7.5/10
8. Faith of Our Fathers: 6/10
9. We Can Remember it For you Wholesale: 7.5/10

So that’s my list! Have you read any of the stories on this list? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below 🙂

(Note: This is a re-post of a piece I wrote for Cyberpunk website Neon Dystopia, where I am a regular contributor.)

Today’s post centers around my new personal inspiration for Cyberpunk, Richard K Morgan. Most of you may know him as the guy who wrote the source material for the Netflix hit TV series Altered Carbon. Some may know him as the write of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, of which Altered Carbon is the first book (and you should definitely read the other two, since Season 2 will be based on the other 2 books!).

But Richard is a very interesting guy, and I think it’s worth delving into this talented writer’s past to get to know him better, and also to help us understand what we might be able to expect from him in the future, as well as gauge what kind of influence he might have on the Cyberpunk genre.

Early Years

So let’s start at the beginning. Richard was born in London and was brought up in the village of Hethersett, near Norwich. He went to good schools, buried himself in reading and music, was rather solitary with few friends, and had no interest in drinking or girls.

He then started his first year at Queens college in Cambridge, and all that changed. He discovered alcohol and drugs, but most importantly, he experienced a heart-breaking first love relationship that wrecked his first year at the university.

So as a result, he shifted his studies to history, scraped by as he struggled with putting actual effort in his studies, and finally finished college disillusioned with no purpose or direction.

Being a writer isn’t easy.

He always knew he wanted to be a writer, but in a comfortable middle-class upbringing, he was sure that it would eventually just happen. “I just assumed I’d wander out into the world and be discovered as a brilliant novelist.”

So with that in mind, he moved to London, planning to become a writer immediately get published with the snap of his fingers, and then travel the world with his royalty checks.

But that didn’t happen. London made sure of that. Everyone wanted to be a writer there, and no one encouraged you to write since it was so common.  Morgan had wanted to do two things, to travel and to become a writer, and the latter clearly wasn’t happening.

Fortunately, becoming an ESL teacher is quite easy in comparison.

So he signed up for a 4 week intensive CELTA course in Istanbul to become an ESL teacher, and then easily got a job teaching and being paid at a local salary that was higher than a hospital doctor.

And he ended up staying in the English Language Teaching (ELT) field for 14 years, the field that he fell into to make a living while traveling. He started as a novice, read the literature, joined professional associations, signed up for further training, and before he knew it he became a director of studies, a seasoned ELT pro, and finally a teacher trainer.

As he taught English, he continued writing, as much as he could. Short stories, articles, a screenplay that no one took seriously, a bad first novel, letters to editorial staff, and so on.

Until the day came when he got Altered Carbon published.

And then, in 8 months, Hollywood bought it and he gave up his day job.

Just like that.

The Hollywood figure who came to him? Joel Silver, who produced the Matrix.

Warner Brothers wrote him a seven-figure check to buy film rights for the book.

And then Richard Morgan waited and waited, for seven years every 18 months they paid him more. It eventually fell out of option, and then Laeta Kalogridis snatched it up. After another film option fell through, Netflix stepped up and took it on as a series.

The rest is history.

Between publishing his first book Altered Carbon in 2001 and the series being released on Netflix in 2018, however, Richard kept busy. He finished the 2nd and 3rd book in the series, and then continued writing full time.

Then he wrote two 6-issue miniseries for Marvel about Black Widow.

His screenplay became a novel (Market Forces), and was optioned as a film and won the John Campbell memorial award.

Another novel of his, Black man, won the Arthur C Clark award.

And then he wrote a fantasy trilogy between 2008 and 2014.

Finally, alongside all this work, he had the great opportunity of being brought on board as main writer for both the 2008 cyberpunk video game Syndicate, and for Crytek’s 2011 video game Crysis 2.

What an incredible career, right? And it’s not even close to being finished!

Morgan is now 52 years old, with a wife and a young son. He moved back to the town that he grew up in. He was in his mid-30s when Altered Carbon got published.

When he was asked what was one writing tip he would recommend, he said the following:

“Have your protagonist do something unacceptable early on. You need to step away from him, so he’s not an insert or a wank fantasy. You can take the hero ride, but you’ve got to distance yourself. This is not me, this is not you, this is a man you might enjoy being in some ways, but there’s always a price to be paid. He’s morally compromised, I guess.”

Sources:

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/gaming/interview-richard-morgan-on-rebooting-syndicate-7581320.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_K._Morgan

about

If ever a book could be considered the father of Cyberpunk, Neuromancer would be it. Written in 1984 by William Gibson, Neuromancer tells the story of a punk hacker called Case who is down on his luck until a mysterious client gives him one last shot at redemption to complete a heist with a rag-tag team against an unknown wealthy entity.

This book has a couple different settings with a couple different main characters. The two main characters are Henry Dorsett Case and Molly Millions, an augmented mercenary. Case is a ‘console cowboy’ who used to be good at hacking the virtual reality dataspace called “the Matrix” until he was infected with a toxin that left him unable to access the Matrix ever again. That is, until a persuasive benefactor offers to cure him in return for one last job, which of course he is unable to turn down. The benefactor, someone name Armitage, hires him along with Molly and a couple others to complete a series of hacking and heist jobs.

This story takes place in a couple of different settings. The first is in Chiba City, Japan, in the underbelly of this dystopian world. The second is in Istanbul, Turkey. The third is in a cylindrical wealthy space habitat called Freeside.

If this all sounds pretty confusing, that’s because it is. The plot and the settings are highly confusing, as are all the character’s backstory. And Gibson makes sure to throw the reader into all of this without explaining any of it.

One of the things I loved about this book was in Gibson’s ability to describe these fantastical places, as well as his penchant for incredible gritty punk dialogue. He shines most in the Chiba City settings, so much so that it actually added to my already dying wish to visit Japan by adding Chiba City to the list. His description of the luxurious city of Freeside was also incredible, especially considering when the book was written.

The problem with Gibson’s writing, though, is that he really needed to take some more time to explain what in the blazes is going on.

It was so bad at times that I had to consult Wikipedia and different sources online to figure out what was happening in the story, where they were, what they were doing, and why it was important. In order for a book to be truly great, it should be able to stand on its own, and not confuse its reader such that they need external sources to explain what is happening.

I think I may be in the minority here in being underwhelmed by the book, even though by the end I did thoroughly enjoy it. It simply wasn’t what I was expecting. I wish the plot were a little less complicated, or explained a bit more, and I would have also liked to see a more driving plotline. Although there is a sense of urgency as Case is on a pressing timeline for finishing the job in time, the sense of urgency is diminished a bit by the confusion of the whole story.

Nonetheless, it was a great read, and the contributions the book made to the cyberpunk community can’t be stressed enough. I think if you take the book Neuromancer and combine it with the 1982 movie blade runner, you would have the seeds of all the main cyberpunk genre. While Phillip K Dick did have a lot of ideas and contributed to the genre, it didn’t exist before these two, and then when Snowcrash came along it was considered post-cyberpunk I believe. Gibson created the idea of the Matrix 15 years before the seminal 1999 movie came out, and I suspect it had a big influence on that movie. I am grateful to all that came after Neuromancer, but upon taking the book by itself at face value, there is a lot that could be improved.

Overall, I would give the book 7.5 out of 10.

P.S. The first line of the book is considered by some to be a work of art, so I figured I’d include it below so you get a small taste of Gibson’s incredible writing style.

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Well, it only took me about three months, but I finally finished Snowcrash (to be fair it’s long and I read slowly). Here’s my review of the novel.

Published in 1992 by Neal Stephenson, Snowcrash is considered by many to be among the perennial novels in the cyberpunk genre. It is a relatively modern favorite, written in the 90’s instead of many of its older predecessors written in the 60s and 80s, and thus has a more modern flair. The story revolves around two main characters. The first is called Hiro Protagonist (no, I’m not kidding), a hacker extraordinaire that is also a skilled katana sword-wielder. He was also one of the original coders of big parts of the online virtual world called the Metaverse. The second main character is called Y.T., and is a courier in the real world, a line of work that involves Y.T. delivering packages using an advanced form of skateboard that she “poons’ cars with (attaches a suction cup connected to a strong retractable cable) in order to weave around the traffic on the highways. The story takes place in the future, where all governments have collapsed and corporations have become the de facto countries of the world, leading their own organizations with their own areas, security, and borders with passport control.

The title “Snowcrash” refers to a new type of drug that can be transmitted via the blood, but also virtually, by looking at a specific screen online. This new scary drug is the main plot driver in the book, and the story revolves around learning more about Snowcrash, who is using it and why, how it came to be, and what it is meant to do in the future as a dangerous weapon.

In terms of Cyberpunk stories, I liked this one a little more than Neuromancer and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which were the first two cyberpunk novels I read before this one. The dialogue shines through in the story, with casual witty banter among the characters. The novel feels like a 20-something wrote it, or perhaps it was written for that age group, and with the deferential main character’s name the novel definitely feels a bit like a parody of other cyberpunk novels.

Still, though, the fact that a dangerous drug is on the streets was not compelling enough of a plot point for the story to keep me reading. In addition to the fact that the novel is quite long, I found myself putting down the book many times and picking it back up. AS you read you see that things happen, but the pace feels somewhat slow, especially with nothing really to build up to until the very end. Even then, I felt that things were just happening in the story, and I was following along.

Nonetheless, there were a lot of cool ideas that I picked up in this novel. The first is the idea of corporations ruling the world, instead of governments, as I feel the current reality is a mix of corporations and governments truly ruling. I also quite like the concept of loglo which was introduced in the book. Loglo is the lighting of logos on highways and the world in general.

Another favorite was perhaps one of the most overpowered pseudo-villain of all time, Raven. In addition to being highly skilled with spears and knives, his enemies are afraid of killing him for reasons that I can’t explain without spoiling the book.

One thing I didn’t like, however, is how much Stephenson likes to explain things to the reader. Early on Hiro explains aspects of his reality to the reader, as if he knows that you are reading. This was a stark contrast from reading Neuromancer, which read as if all the lingo was already common knowledge for the reader, which can be quite confusing. This wasn’t too bad, until I got to the artificial virtual character called the Librarian. This read like a teacher’s dream student scenario, with Hiro asking all the right questions and the Librarian happily supplying them, with me drearily reading the back and forth while never having wanted to know the questions or  answers. A good chapter and a half is dedicated to the Librarian explaining archaic mythology and ideas from old civilizations, something that I suspect Stephenson loves knowing about but that didn’t quite fit with a cyberpunk novel.

Despite its drawbacks, it’s a good read, just be prepared for a long novel and if you’re a fast reader it’ll be a quick read. I’d give it 8/10.