Communion Of Dreams

Via BoingBoing, an extensive interview in Wired with Ridley Scott about the upcoming release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. From the prologue:

At age 69, Ridley Scott is finally satisfied with his most challenging film. He’s still turning out movies at a furious pace — American Gangster, with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, is due in November — building on an extraordinary oeuvre that includes Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down. But he seems ready to accept Blade Runner as his crowning achievement. In his northern English accent, he describes its genesis and lasting influence. And, inevitably, he returns to the darkness that pervades his view of the future — the shadows that shield Deckard from a reality that may be too disturbing to face.

It’s an excellent interview. But then, I’m biased - I consider Blade Runner to be one of the best movies ever made, and certainly one of top SF movies. (In this I am hardly alone, of course - even Diane Rehm of NPR considers it one of her favorite movies.) The 1992 ‘Director’s Cut’ was a huge improvement over the original release, even with the crappy quality of the DVD. I particularly enjoyed this bit from the interview itself:

Wired: Dream kitchens aside, it’s a rather bleak vision of the future.

Scott:I was always aware that this whole Earth is on overload. I’ve been that way for 30 years. People used to think I was — you know, not exactly depressive, but dark. And I’d say, “It’s not dark, mate, it’s a fact. It’s going to come and hit you on the head.”

Exactly. Yesterday I wrote about the tension between visions of the future and the reality of scientific achievement. Clearly, the world of 2019 depicted in Blade Runner is not going to be here, at least not on that schedule. But that’s OK. It is still a very valuable cautionary tale and damned fine alternative future history. And I think that is all that any author or artist or director can ever hope to accomplish.

Jim Downey

There was a very interesting segment on the Diane Rehm show this morning about how reproductive science has advanced considerably in the last few decades, and the impact that is having on both individuals and society. In the course of the discussion, the participants touched on a number of issues both of interest to me personally, and pertaining to Communion of Dreams.

In this post in March, I discussed the genetic disease which runs in my family, and how that helped inform my decision not to have children. At the time I entered the normal child-rearing years, the appropriate testing wasn’t available. Now it is. And while I could still make the decision to have children, my wife and I are content without those additional responsibilities.

Anyway, in the course of the discussion on Diane Rehm’s show, there was mention of the fact that couples seeking IVF treatment have the option to perform genetic testing on the individual embryos produced by the procedure, and could then select which embryos to have implanted with the hope that they would quicken and grow. Huxley’s Brave New World is potentially here with this level of scrutiny and selection.

So, what about Communion? In it, I stipulate a history of a pandemic influenza, which kills hundreds of millions, and leaves most of the surviving population sterile. But here I left off from my usual attention to scientific detail, in not specifying exactly what the mechanism in effect was. Because, knowing full well the potential that modern medical science has to offer, I thought it might be a simple answer to just have non-sterile couples producing lots of viable embryos using current IVF tech, and then have those embryos implanted in host mothers, thereby circumventing the threat of human extinction. Like the parents who can now pick and choose which embryo has the greatest potential for survival, I made my own selection of what plot mechanisms were most viable. (Please note, I am not trying to equate the two!)

This is something that all writers have to do: make decisions on what to include, what to exclude. Science fiction writers have to do more of it, since in theory you can decided to invent just about any new technology or science to suit your purpose. But for me, I try to establish a given technological level, and see what makes sense within those constraints. According to most who have read the book and responded to me (either in person or in comments here), I did a pretty fair job in resolving most of the issues. But I know that in this particular case, I pulled a little sleight of hand, and my own sense of honesty pushes me to acknowledge it.

Jim Downey