Illustration: imaginary view of the city of Atlantis, perhaps the first Utopia in literature.
Well, it took a while, but finally here is the second installment of this review of dystopian science fiction, those tyrannies imaginary future, covering the period from the decade of 60 until today. Come and enjoy, or rather, come and fear the future that awaits us.
In 1967 published Logan's Run, a novel by William F. Nolan and George C. Johnson . Is set in a society emerging from a generational conflict become, due to overcrowding, open war, War Child, which comes a society ruled by artificial intelligence, the Thinker, which the law is forced slaughter of over 21 years. All citizens are implanted in the palm of an electronic circuit that computes the time remaining before surrendering to the forced ritual suicide, and betrays those who seek to escape their fate. The protagonist, Logan 3 , a member of the elite responsible for the capture and execution of these fugitives, the Rangers. During a routine mission seems more he discovers that the fugitive who just ran did not act alone but in connection with an organization. This organization, the Shrine, is a kind of urban legend among the Rangers. Logan 3, which is approaching the age of forced suicide, is the way to close his career with a brilliant snap, dismantling the rebel group and capturing the legendary Ballard, the legendary rebel leader of the Sanctuary. To infiltrate this organization posing as another one of the deserters. However, as the decline of the system it serves you will be revealed, his determination falter. This novel was adapted into a film in 1976 , with some changes (the age of forced suicide become 30, and artificial intelligence ruler is replaced by a council of elders) and a TV series in 1977. This project is still pending a remake of the 1976 film, in principle by Brian Singer.
Rollerball Movie Poster, 1975.
In 1975 Rollerball premieres, film directed by Norman Jewison . The action takes place in a future world dominated by large corporations, in which individual initiative is discouraged, in favor of conformity with the status quo. To feed this conformity, the masses are offered spectacles with which to escape, the most popular rollerball, a brutal mix of skating racing, motorcycle racing and wrestling tournament in format global tournament, which regulation is permissive to violence, and where serious accidents are frequent. Jonathan (James Caan) is the star team based in Houston. It is an idol of the masses ... in a society that welcomes the masses have idols, even simple sports stars. The energy corporation that owns the team offers a retreat with honor, and charging a higher pension at the end of the regular season, but Jonathan is not satisfied, want to contest the play-off. To force him to accept the withdrawal, the owners of the league, a group of large corporations are tightening the rules, first, to make him see that is already old for the game, but finally, with the clear idea that Jonathan suffered a fatal accident during the dispute of the game. So to reach the final, played with only one rule: anything goes, that will become a real slaughter, which Jonathan will be the piece to hunt. This movie was a forgettable remake in 2002.
In 1982 published the first installment of the comic book V for Vendetta , written by Alan Moore drawing and David Lloyd . The story is set in Britain at some future post-nuclear war, in which a party has fascist-inspired seized power, discriminate and repress anyone who does not fit the pattern of white, heterosexual, Christian and conservative. A masked anarchist who calls himself V begins a terror campaign against the regime, killing senior party leader, and planting bombs in government buildings, while flooding London with subversive propaganda. In a final confrontation with the police, was mortally wounded V, being the last act of revolt in the hands of his pupil, Evey Hammond, a girl he rescued from a group V of the secret police pretended to rape her, and then indoctrinated. The story was filmed in 2005 by Wachowski brothers, but the film departs in several aspects of the graphic novel (among others, is not a nuclear war, but an attack with biological weapons crisis that favors the rise of fascist). In fact, while the comic is considered a complaint against Thatcherism, the film is a thinly veiled metaphor for the thesis Conspiranoids September 11 as inside job. In 1984 published one of the most influential novels in the history of science fiction, Neuromancer, William Gibson's , considered the founding work of the cyberpunk movement. Is set in a future world, again dominated by large corporations, where technology is ubiquitous, the brain-computer is possible, and organ implants and artificial limbs, type cyborg, are common. Henry Case is an old hacker, now disabled for brain-machine after being poisoned in retaliation for stealing the mafia group where he worked. Become a hustler over the suburbs of Tokyo, will be contacted by an organization that promises to repair the damage to his nervous system in exchange for his cooperation as a hacker in a daring theft of information. Case so will be wrapped in a web of espionage and corruption involving multiple bands to the highest levels of society, while to discover that they are artificial intelligences that are actually in charge of the world we live.
In Gattaca, 1997 film, directed by Andrew Niccol are biology and eugenics obsession which is responsible for building a world of nightmare. At some point in the future, medical advances have enabled the possibility of eliminating, not the same defects, but the simple propensity to suffer for genetic manipulation in vitro. Also, there is also the possibility to compute, based on the genome, the possibility of developing specific diseases. As a result, created a new discrimination, human IVF, with the corrected genome to eliminate hereditary defects, and humans conceived naturally. The first qualify for top jobs, while the latter are viewed and treated as a lower caste. The protagonist, Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) , young brilliant intellect, but belonging to this breed of disadvantaged, want to be an astronaut. But obviously, this is a job reserved for upper caste members. So to circumvent the discrimination uses a common ploy in that society: a broker will contact you a member of the upper caste, confined to a wheelchair after an accident. It accesses aa identity exchange to him for money. However, things get complicated when the direct superior of Vincent is murdered, and police found out that a "no improvement" has been accessing restricted areas.
In 1999 the Wachowsky brothers carry their ultimate cyberpunk nightmare end to make the human being part of the hardware in his most famous film, Matrix . In it, human beings live in tanks enclosed in a state of suspended animation, feeding electricity from your body heat to the machines, while their minds, connected to a supercomputer, living completely outside reality, locked in a fantasy that recreates the world of the late 90's, prior to the war between humans and machines that devastated the world. The protagonist, Thomas Anderson, aka Neo (Keanu Reeves) , lives a double life-gray clerk by day, hacker by night. A string of strange occurrences lead him to contact Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), a legendary hacker, who will reveal to Neo the real world they live in, and offered the chance to release to join his fight against the tyrant cyberspace. We could fill pages with the metaphors that contains this film and its two sequels (the beginning and end of 2003, in my opinion very lower than the first film in the series), its philosophical and mythological background, as well as his great influence on aesthetics and film, especially for action films, which was felt throughout the next decade. No doubt there was a before and after Matrix in the cinema. In 2000 Japanese film premiering Battle Royale, directed by Kinji Fukasaku and starring Takeshi Kitano . Shows a near future of chaos and violence, where violence is out of control youth and schools are the realm of the bands. A group of students from one of these conflicting schools is abducted to an island to participate in Battle Royale, a cruel battle of all against all punishment intended as examples for students in troubled schools. Each of the kidnapped students will receive a random weapon, to fight each other with the only rule that can only be one. But a group of them conspire to escape the island, attempting an assault on the control center. Finally, two students, the pair formed by Shuya and Noriko, manage to escape. The end of the movie shows us the converted fugitives, accused of murder. The film got up in time a great controversy due to its high violent content.
In 2002 Equilibrium premieres, film directed by Kurt Wimmer. Shows a future post-World War III in which the central idea that holds any society is the denial of human passions, considered responsible for the destruction of the world in the past. All the inhabitants of this society should take a daily dose of a drug called Prozium, which acts as a sedative of emotions. Anything that appeals to the feelings, especially art and literature, is strictly prohibited, and the clergy, an elite trained in a manner similar to warrior monks, is charged with enforcing the ban. The protagonist, John Preston (Christian Bale), a member of this body accidentally lost one of its daily dose of that drug, and the feelings you experience when your mind be free brake it you are prompted to continue ignoring it. This starts a chain of events that eventually led to contact with a resistance group, and participate in a plot against the government. In the movie The Island of Michael Bay, opened in 2005 , we face an alleged post-apocalyptic future. Disaster survivors living in a shelter in recovering from ailments resulting from exposure to outdoor pollution that have been rescued, waiting to be transferred to The Island, the last unpolluted place left on the planet. Spaces are limited, and the transfer is done by lottery. However, as the film progresses, we notice that something is not right. Something in the strict regulation of the establishment makes it seem more a prison than a refuge where they concentrate the last survivors of the human race. The protagonist, Lincoln 6 (Ewan McGregor) , is one of these cases survived. Following a trapped insect, access a restricted area of \u200b\u200bthe building, and discover the truth: the outdoor pollution is a farce, and residents are actually clones of wealthy people outside, ready for slaughter when their organs are needed for transplants . From this point the plot focuses on Lincoln's flight 6, and his search for his other self in the outside world in an attempt to report what goes on behind the walls of what, in theory, is a respectable company Biomedical.
To end this article, I will discuss the latest contribution to the genre appeared so far, the literary saga The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, whose first installment, with the same title appeared in 2008 . The action takes place in a place called Panem, whose location is undetermined but the narrative suggests that it is North America in the future after a devastating civil war and in which the winning side descendants live in opulence while oppressing the descendants of the losers, reduced to slavery. Collins takes to build a world of nightmare a historical pattern is clear: the decadent Rome of the first century of our era (an interesting game for the reader of the novels is to find the secondary characters whose names are direct reference to that historical period: Seneca, Plutarch, Claudio ...) So, the life of the privileged runs between pleasures, banquets, orgies, and of course, the circus. The games referred to in the title are futuristic and violent gladiatorial combat, in which only one can survive. In the first installment of the series, the protagonist, a teenage Katniss Everdeen, is selected by a cruel lottery to participate in this cruel spectacle. His unexpected victory turn into an idol of the masses, while his refusal to kill his last opponent, a young native of the same village, becomes a symbol of rebellion against the tyrant. In second installment of the series, published in late 2009 with the title of In Flames, and as violent as the first, this aspect of the story is still developing, leaving us at the point of outbreak of revolt at the end of it. And we are here in this review of the genus, which has become more extensive than had initially expected, and yet I have discarded several very interesting titles. A genre that is still very much alive, because we do not really talk about the future but the present, and the nightmarish worlds can inadvertently be building at this time.
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