Imagine the Future Blog

     Philip K. Dick was an American writer of novels and short stories. His focus was the Science Fiction genre, totaling 121 shorts and 44 published novels. While Dick was influential during his life, it is amazing to see how impactful he has been to modern SciFi in his death. Philip K. Dick was an interesting man. He had some mental problems, which led to hallucinations and a wild imagination which he attributed to paranormal activity, but he also abused drugs quite frequently. Through these visions, Dick created many of his stories and novels.       Dick is said to have been “the writer who witnessed the future” as well as the most influential author of the SciFi genre. Dick was unlike most other SciFi writers because he did not focus on the predictable, ultra-futuristic side of SciFi. He liked the genre because it was an outlet for his imagination, and he was not so much infatuated with things such as flying cars. Dick focused on themes such as life being a simulation, time travel,

2001 Space Odyssey:  End of the 1960s, beginning of the 1970s Everyone was high on hallucinogens Extremely long introduction to the movie with music; comparable to the opera THE DAWN OF MAN: Enters on a desert dry area with warm color tones and bones The apes and antelopes seem like be cohabitating a shared space, but the apes are superior, until the cheetah comes along There are different groups of apes that seem to be fighting over resources A perfectly geometrical shape in nature; the background music seems to start as humming then turned into a type of chanting as the apes surrounded the shape After seeing the shape, the apes’ characteristics changed because they were not longer afraid and began using objects to hit things (the animal bones); they had an imagination Could represent how the beginning of humankind was foreseeing the destructions of life (they were eating other animals instead of just plants) The apes are now standing on two feet, but still fighting over the water. Th

 

One of my favorite short films from the Love, Death, & Robots series is “Pop Squad”. “Pop Squad” is set in an ultra-futuristic world where people have the option to live forever through a treatment called “rejoo”. In order to get this treatment, the only condition is that you can not have children. Because so many people are choosing to never die, overpopulation has become a serious problem. The director of this episode is Jennifer Yuh Nelson. Nelson based this futuristic episode off Paolo Bacigalupi’s story where rules and regulations are enforced by the elite who see no need for “breeders” (parents) to birth “unregistered offspring” (children). The main character in this short, Officer Briggs, is tasked with finding hidden families and killing the children, who he refers to as “it” and “thing”. However, the audience quickly learned that Briggs is facing a moral dilemma of whether his actions are for the greater good.  The difference between the lifestyles of those who choose to t

     Metropolis is a film that depicts the future of Germany throughout the clear division of social classes. As a psychology major, I watched this film with the mindset of attempting to analyze the character development between all of the main characters. For instance, Maria is the protagonist, Freder is the mediator, and, of course, Joh Fredersen is the antagonist who leads the upper class. Joh Fredersen, father of Freder, is a power hungry villain who views the working, lower class as expendable. He overworks these people and gives them numbers instead of names to symbolize their insignificance within society. For the majority of the movie, Fredersen does not care what happens to the lower class. However, toward the end of the movie, Fredersen's character develops. At 2:07:24, a scene with Joh Fredersen begins and he begs to know where his son is. The "Skinny Man" he is speaking to responds by saying "Tomorrow, thousands will ask in fury and desperation: Joh Frede