8
Mar
Robot Stories / Philip K. Dick
Topic: TV, Movies, and Music
Tags: Movies, Sci Fi
The other day I heard an interview with the director of the new low-budget sci-fi film Robot Stories. Here’s the web site: http://www.robotstories.net/ - unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s going to make it to Philly. The film consists of 4 short stories. I’m most keen to see the last of the four “Clay”. It’s about an aging sculptor, trying to finish his final work, but his body is falling apart on him. In this story, people can have their consciousness scanned and uploaded, and that’s what old folks and the dying do, so they can live on. Once uploaded, they can merge with all the knowledge and experience of others who have been uploaded, and they live in a sort of digital nirvana. So his kids and his already-dead-and-scanned wife are gently telling him, “Dad, it’s time to upload.” I gather the story focuses on his internal struggle between fulfilling his families wishes, the innate desire to live on, and trying to retain an important aspect of his humanity: his mortality.
To me this is what good science fiction is all about. It’s not about big budgets and battles in space. It’s about understanding our own humanity, and providing some kind of moral framework for understanding where we, as a society, may be headed. Through the use of plot devices not available in other kinds of story telling (e.g. another one of the stories in the film is about a couple that’s required to adopt a robot baby before they will be given a real baby), science fiction can offer a fresh perspective on what it means to be human.
This is why I’ve been a fan of Philip K. Dick for so long (the movies Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report were based on his stories). He was writing these kinds of stories in the 50s, long before anyone else was. (And long before we were hit over the head with Data in Star Trek). If you’re looking for a good read, I’d recommend his novels VALIS and and Time Out of Joint . BTW, the short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” is what they based “Total Recall” on. I like the short story title better, but I suppose that’s too many words for the title of a Hollywood movie 
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