A Geek History of Time - Episode 188 - Blade Runner Part I

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

I'm not here to poke holes and suspended this belief. Anyway, they see some weird shit. They decide to make a baby. Now, Muckin' Merchant. Who gives a fuck? Oh, Muckin' which is a trickle, you know, baby. You know what I mean? Well, you know, I really like it here. It's kind of nice and it's not as cold as Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or M So yeah sure I do for them settle if I'm a peasant boy who grabs sword out of a stone. Yeah, I'm able to open people up

You will yeah anytime I hit them with it, right? Yeah, so my cleave landing will make me a cavalier If syscloth it was empty headed Plabian trash Really good I thought it was empty headed, pluby and trash. It's really good and gruey. Because cannibalism and murder, pull back just a little bit, build walls to keep out the rat heads. And it's a little bit of a ground tunnel. A thorough intent doesn't exist.

Some people stand up quite a bit, some people stay seeing a lot of the rats. Let me just... This is a geek history of time. Where we connect Nurgere to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock, I'm a world history and English teacher here in Northern California. And just recently in the past week, my in-laws came by for a couple of days, which was useful, because my son's daycare had a day off

that neither I nor my wife had off because our schedules did not match up with obviously his daycare. And so they were here to look after our little boy for the day. And while they were my father-in-law, because he is the human embodiment of a shark, and will drown if he sits still for too long, he installed outlets on the outside of the house, so that in a certain period of time, we have outlets available for us to put up holiday lights, which is a very big deal, because without getting too

specific, we are coming into a time of the year when decorating for various and sundry holidays becomes a thing. And so this is a very, very big, what's written looking for, not benchmark. Watershed? Well, Watershed, it's an achievement. It's a road marker for us. Milestone. Milestone, thank you. That's what I was looking for. It's a really big milestone for us, and for. Milestone, thank you. That's what I was looking for. It's a really big Milestone for us,

and for me particularly, because being able to have a house to put up lights for the winter holidays has been a thing I have wanted to be able to do for a long time. And this year, we will be able to do it. And I'm very, very happy about that. And yeah, it's also worth noting that of course, they came here to do this babysitting and for my father-in-law to do this electrical work immediately on the tail end of a two-month trip to Europe, they got back on the Saturday, stayed with my brother-in-law and his family

for part of the Sunday and then came out the art place on Sunday afternoon and then headed home on Tuesday morning. and then headed home on Tuesday morning. So like I do not know where they get the energy. I am consistently boggled by their ability to just like keep moving. So yeah, that's what I've had going on. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony.

I am an erstwhile barely Latin teacher and a history teacher, US history teacher at the high school level up here in Northern California. And a couple things. One, if you hear a pause, it's because the mint ice cream got to me. Okay, good to me. Okay. Good to know.

Picked up a, you know, a container of Briar's ice cream. They're not paying for this plug, but I'll be paying for it probably. But they, I picked up a container of mint chip Briar's ice cream, go to standard. And it has no chips in it whatsoever, which has made it so that I just finished off my third bowl before starting this show. It's, I really like mint ice cream without the chips apparently. Yeah, yeah, really cow. So and the second thing and this is much by the time this hits it will be much further along than what I'm about to say. But very few people will actually be able to mark the time of year based on this. I have just taught the Jaron D'Enterund for the last time in my career in Latin. So this year is going to be a year of my milestones of like, well, this is the last time I'll ever teach this. Next, what do you feel about that?

It's bittersweet. Shouldn't happen. It's happening. And there it is. So shouldn't happen. And since it's happening, it should have happened three years ago. It's kind of like watching Muhammad Ali's last fight.

You're like, oh, he showed a retired before this. Yeah. Is that kind of feel? Yeah. Um, you know, for the last couple of games at Brett Farff played after he went back to the NFL. Yeah, like, you know, although now that we know the kind of person is, yeah, it's one of the few times I'm rooting for CTE. So, yeah. So, that's kind of what's feel bad for laughing. Oh, you think? Yeah, not. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's that's kind of what's happening around here. Okay. So, yeah. So, I got a question for you. Okay. That's going to lead into, I can always does,

and it's going to lead into what we're talking about. So we have a conversation online, or didn't really have a conversation online earlier in a week, but there was a post I shared. Earlier in the week, I'm from a prominent science fiction author, a literary science fiction author, of the new wave school of science fiction. And it had to do with the adaptation of one of his works into a film. And it was his response to that. Do you remember the question is, do you remember who the author was?

Philip K. Dick. Yes. Huh. What about the only one? Philip K. names. Yes. So yeah, that's true. Well, no, Asimov's not in age name. Sure. I've done Highland Herbert done as Mava mentioned other authors, but you're okay, so yeah, yeah

But yeah, it was it was Philip K. Dick Philip K. Dick well known for his role in the new wave as I just mentioned a moment ago of science fiction in the 60s and into the 70s. And he was talking about the adaptation of one of his works to the screen. And it was real quick. If you may, what is new wave science fiction? I'm going to get into that. Okay, cool. Excellent. Because I shared this quote and I mentioned how, you know, he's a little bit prone to hyperbole because he talks about how, you know, flat and stale science fiction had gotten. He wrote this thing shortly before his death in 1981 or 82.

And he was writing to the people responsible for this adaptation and saying how pleased and thrilled he was by it, even though it was in many ways significantly different from his own novel. Sure. And do you remember how you respond to that? Well, I mean, his name is Dick, so I'm pretty sure I just did like a string of penile puns. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And so in that moment, I decided that what I had to do this week, I was give your balls a tug. Well, I mean, I do that anyway. You know, and I really want to try to do a sh-yeah, surezy. Yeah, surezy. Surezy. I want to try to do a surezy voice and say something about your mom. I know I'm not going to be able to let off. Tain to a good idea. Yeah. No, not.

Um, and so I decided that, um, you hate noir with a burning fury. And we've mentioned repeatedly, well, you've said you, you dislike it. Hey, yeah, I can't get into it. I can't get into it. It is very different than I can. It's different from hating with a brain fear. Yeah, no, yeah. Granted, but I'm infected by, you know, Phillips,

hyperbole at the moment. Sure. And so I decided that because I got rather a bit fired up by you choosing that moment to vent your inner well-veoral to the extent that you did. It basically, I decided that what we needed to do was you needed to be educated on blade runner. Oh, boy. And on Philip K. Dick's original novel,

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Oh wow. And I'm gonna get it in that bin. The differences, oh, historically I've fallen asleep both times that I've tried to watch Blade Runner. That is not a knock against you. That is not a knock against you.

No, I know. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know. Yeah, no. Yeah. Okay. So do do you do an extreme of electric sheep? Yes. Okay. So and essentially, it's another kind of kind of a book versus movie and look at, you know, what was going on when the two books were when the two works were written. Yeah. Absolutely. Like like with Iroh bot. Absolutely. Like like with Irohbot previously. Right, right. So in 1960, I still have KDIC. No, no, as a gasmoth. I was a gasmoth. There we go. Okay. So in 1968, so this is this is already later than almost almost. and almost 68 you you do the do and then they owe you one. Okay. All right. There you go.

It's going to be that kind of episode. But I put your author in the mashed potatoes. I don't. It's yeah. Well, I did say it's going to be that kind of episode. All right. We did. Yeah. Okay. So in 1968, Philip K. Dick, visionary science fixed writer, and generally out their personality, wrote the novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It's a very deeply philosophical novel, examining what it means to be human through the lens of a noir adventure story.

to be human through the lens of a noir adventure story. Now it's important to note that it's a noir adventure story and not a noir detective story because he's not trying to solve any kind of a mystery. He does have to do some hunting down of some androids, but there's no like who done it elements. It's so technically I wouldn't I wouldn't classify it as a mystery story. Okay. And so to start Philip K. Dick was born in 1923. His first published work came out at age 30 and then at Wait between 1923 and 1953 when his first published work came out. Yeah Did he serve in the Navy during World War two? No, oh, oh, this is different. Yes Yeah, so he first really gained a claim and public attention for the man in the high castle and attention for the man in the high castle. And alternate universe novel that he got published in 1962

and which under completely different social context got adapted by Amazon Prime video into a series starting in 2015. Which I think honestly, I'm going to interrupt you. I think that series ran out of steam specifically because the what if we were taken over by Nazis was no longer a question worth asking. Well one and and two it tried it ran into the same writer's room problem. Wums that game of thrones ran into when I got ahead of the books. Yeah. And that I assume the handmaids tail ran into when they got to the end of the original novel. And like, okay, well, where do we go from here?

Now, in the case of the handmaids, to my understanding is that that has continued to hold up narratively. But I know that, you know, Game of Thrones, like famously, did not. And certainly plenty of anime fans who watch any kind of series based on manga will point out that when something gets beyond what the manga artists have actually managed to write and they're creating filler episodes and they're trying to come up with new storylines stuff tends to flag and fall apart. It's just a problem when you're doing an adapted kind of thing. Now one of the things that is kind of a hallmark of Philip K. Dex work is that it's marked

by a level of deep-seated existential uncertainty. So in Duran's dream of electric sheep, there is blurring of the line between human and Android. The man in the high castle blurs the line between universes and the no ability of history. And then another one of his works, probably one of his most famous, is through a scanner darkly, which is a very direct commentary on the war on drugs and and governmental control of drug using behavior. And it is on heroin-wide. And it deals with issues of deception and self-deception along with a lot of psychedelia kind of issues tied in. So I'm not hearing from those three. I'm not hearing you standard existentialism.

What I'm hearing ultimately is epistemology. It sounds like he's playing with, and he's writing before Derry Dodd does deconstruction stuff in the 70s. But this does feel like he's writing, I'd say, scanner darkly is probably concurrent. Oh, okay. With that. So he's certainly influenced by by those kinds. Because yeah, what I'm hearing is a lot of the logical stuff going on. Okay. Yeah. When I

when I say existential uncertainty within the framework of one's existence, we're one's identity. Okay. So not with a capital E, existential, but tied to existence. That makes sense. But yes, yes, you are on a philosophical level. You are far more correct. And that's a better area of your knowledge than mine. So yes, epistemiological issues are definitely a thing. Okay.

And I mentioned earlier that he's an important part of the new wave movement in science fiction. He's one of the, you might consider one of the founding part of the new wave movement in science fiction. He's one of the, you might consider him one of the founding voices of the new wave movement. And that started in the 60s ran through the 70s. And then by the end of the 70s, you don't hear anybody talking about the new wave anymore, because everybody else in science fiction had basically adopted the things that the new wave was kind of trying to do and trying to work with. The new wave, first of all, moved away from utopian tendencies in science fiction that had existed

up until that point. And new wave had more literary ambition, and the style was more literary. They were doing more with their grows, they were doing much more consciously artful things with their with the language they were using. Were they including women more or no? You hit and miss. There were four hosts. Yes, yes, although there were several very important female authors that were part of the new wave So there was more representation on that level Ursula K. Again is One of the one of the important voices That's part of that She's very well known during this period for the left hand of darkness

Which is held up as one of the examples of the new wave gadget. And new wave science fiction also dealt with controversial social issues in a more direct way and consciously was trying to approach and consciously was trying to approach social issues. Those for those who walk away from Omelus is an example of the new wave. Okay. And to summarize, for those who walk away from Omelus, I wanna say it's Ligin's work, but I could be mistributing it,

but I know it's a female author, and I'll have to look it's Ligin's work, but I could be mistributing it, but I know it's a female author. And I'll have to look it up here in a minute. But the people of the city state of Omeloss live in this beautiful utopia where everything is provided for them. They have this super high tech, like to the point of it being magical high tech kind of existence No one ever suffers from disease. No one ever goes hungry none of that But every year they hold a festival where they open up the the inner workings of

the the temple essentially the center of the city and Everyone in the city and especially young people in the city are encouraged to go in and look at the source of their prosperity and happiness. And what they find is there is a single orphaned child who is suffering immensely and their utopia depends upon the suffering of that child. And so there are, there are many of them who walk away from Omelos out into into the distance into into the wilderness and nobody in Omelos knows what happens to them, but there are people who consciously make the choice to walk away. Wow. So I mean, like it's a really stark kind of social commentary. And that is a defining feature of a lot of kind of our typical new wave science fiction.

And so finally, one of the things that's kind of defining about the new wave is that it is very consciously a response to, and in most cases a rejection of the pulp style or the pulp era of science fiction, the style of writing and many of the tropes that were associated with it. So it was, yeah. And the name New Wave was consciously taken from the New Wave of French cinema, which was similarly this new development of the use of the art form that about the same time. Yeah, I mean, I'm hearing a lot more sophistication than what had come generations previous. Yes. lot more sophistication than what had come generations previous. Like, yes, your descriptions of prior authors, you know, it's like they didn't, they didn't care about, you know, the details they wanted you to get to the place and,

and, yeah, the story. And this is like, oh, there's some serious moral shit going on here. Yeah, there's, there's a lot more, let's, let's, let's deconstruct these tropes. Let's take a look. Okay. Well, wait a minute. If we do this, what's going to happen here? Right. You know, in a way, the caves of steel and the robot series is a precursor to some of the stuff because it's psychological and social science fiction, psychological science fiction. And so this was, okay, yeah, we're going to take what he did there. And we're like going to go deeper on that. Yeah, it really feels like, specifically, the one you just mentioned upon which I wrote

about is based loosely. Yes. It's, it feels very much like that was kind of knocking on the door. And this is like, you know, doing way more than that. Like this is going much. This is kicking the door open and rushing in with a fire hose. Yeah. Yeah. So now, um, electric cheap, um, do Andrews dream of them, isn't

almost codifying an example of what new wave looked like. Okay. Um, as a mob wrote a story about human-like robots, and he was looking at, well, you know, how would people react to that? And what, what kind of, what kind of situations would that create and how would people react to that? What kind of situations would that create and how would that work? And it's great and all, but Dick isn't just concerned with Asmons' questions of how society going to change. He's going for like, what actually makes us any different from robots? When robots get sufficiently advanced, where do we draw the line? Why do we draw it there?

Right. You know. So to summarize the story, the world of 1992. Oh. Pushed forward to 20 days. Pushed forward to 2021 and later additions to the book. Oh, really? Yeah. The earth has been devastated by nuclear exchange referred to as World War Ultima.

Lingering radiation has made long-term human habitation of Earth a bad idea because of sterility, mutation, etc. So the United Nations has put together a program that strongly encourages citizens to move to off-world colonies. And one of the things that they are enticed with is the promise of personal servants. If you go out to the out-world colonies, you'll have androids to do your work for you. In the electric sheep universe, these androids are only distinguishable from humans two ways. Either through an empathy test

and via autopsy and analysis of bone marrow. So even the bones themselves are there bioandroids, bio-robots. Okay. So like the end of bicentennial man what he turned himself into. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So like the end of bicentennial man, what he turned himself into. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. From time to time, androids escape and lead to earth. Okay. And a police officer named Deckard gets assigned to find and retire six highly advanced androids and he's going to be paid a bounty for hunting them down. But he's a official government authority or no, I don't think I don't think it's a good idea But yeah, so he has this job to find and retire six highly advanced and now the title new androids dream of electric sheep is a

Kind of secondary plot point, pets. In the wake of the nuclear war, pets have become a major status symbol, and people who have money spend a lot of money to get animals like sheep or goats and keep them as pets. Okay. And first of all, the complete collapse of the planet's ecosystem has made animals very rare, which means they're very expensive. And there is a push for empathy as a social value. Like there is a, you know, the theme of empathy is a very big deal throughout the whole book. And so keeping having an animal, keeping an animal is a way of exercising empathy, generating, you know, and you flexing your ability to empathize

and has moral status associated with it. Right, okay. So, Deckard, in some instances, it's like fostering a child from a marginalized community. Yeah, kind of, Yeah, actually, yeah. It feels a little blind-sighted. It feels a little Sandra Bullock. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A little bit. Okay. And so, Deckard, one of the very first things that Deckard thinks when he gets this job is he'll be able to with the bounty he'll be able to afford to buy a real animal for his deeply depressed wife. Okay. His wife is apparently is suffering from crippling depression. Sure. And they have a robot sheep that is essentially a sheep droid. Okay.

Like, externally, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Right. You know, but it's, but it's not an actual animal. Right, right. Okay. Now, in the book, there's also this new religion called merciless, in which practitioners link together via empathy boxes in this virtual exercise of mass suffering centered on the figure of Wilber Mercer, who they all collectively witness continually climbing a steep slope while being bombarded with stones. And there's a lot of emphasis on how difficult the climb is.

And there's a lot of emphasis on him getting hit and bleeding and the pain of it all. Is it just because it's so utopian? Oh, no. No, it ain't utopian at all. No, no, okay. So then why fetishize bloodletting? Because, of course, it's coming from, because normally you see that kind of thing.

Where it's, you know, like, the thing that brought to mind was in season one of, no, season two of Star Trek, the next generation, worth going through the age of ascension, and doing the painsticks and all that. Yeah, yeah. And there's high value on that. And of course, it's contrasted against the communist utopia of starfleet and the federation. Yeah, and everybody's like, why would you go through this pain? And it's no, this is important for his culture. And so is this nice little juxtaposition? So I'm wondering. Well, why?

There's a couple of, it is for the participants, the world is dead. And so there is no nature to go out and experience any kind of spirituality through Christianity and Buddhism and other faiths aren't equipped to deal with the level of in mercerism is the, we are all sharing in his pain. We are all empathizing with him. It was, you know, lack of empathy,

lack of understanding that led to the war that got us all here. We have to, we have to feel one another's pain. You know, we all have to find our inner Bill Clinton. I feel your pain, you know, and exercise that and and through that achieve some level of spiritual emotional fulfillment, okay, the only the only mechanisms like there's no There's no mention of mass media. There's no mention of what these people do

in this setting for entertainment. There's no, the only things that we find out that people are doing for any kind of fulfillment or emotional or spiritual respite are the keeping of pets, right? Right. And, and the empathy boxes. Okay. All right. So, and, um, I, I, I, I, I had your, I knew that you were going to ask a question at

that point, but you, you went into left field. Sorry, because what I was expecting, was that you were going to bring up the obvious parallel between Mercer and Cicifus. I was actually going to go with the flagellance. Okay, well, there's that because I was swinging for both poles here. Either this is a reaction to utopianism, which is impossible given the world that you've described, or this is a, we're so sorry, God. Clearly, we have to vlog ourselves more. Yeah, and there's there's no one of that too.

Yeah. So, but the specifics of Mercer's suffering are... Mercer is pacifist. Okay. And we have to imagine pacifist happy. Right. And so I cannot believe that anybody who was as intensely counterculture and philosophical and everything else was not on some level referencing Kamu. Yeah. Like, you know, and and this is a

obligatory. Yeah. Here's Kamu. Yeah. Yeah. So as I already mentioned, Decker owns literal electric sheep. Over the course of the novel, and he does eventually after he retires, I want to say it's the first two, androids. The bounty from those two is enough for him to buy an actual very, very prestigious, you know, very, very shishie breed of goat as an animal for his wife. And so there's the plot device of the distinction

between the robotic sheep and the actual physical animal. And like outwardly, he can't tell the difference in their behavior because the programming of the robotic sheep was, you know, as good as it was. Yeah, this is the singularity writ large. Yeah, yeah. And the turn test, I'm sorry, the turn test. Yeah, the turn test, yeah, very much writ large.

And so it's a convoluted kind of story, but over the course of it, Decorate at one point actually begins to doubt his own humanity briefly, but has it confirmed. And he has a significant moral crisis because of the emphasis on empathy. He realizes that there is pain that he is inflicting and these are nearly human

people who he is retiring. And he has a moral crisis about his job. He has a trist with an android named Rachel. And there's no stigma against that. No, not for the fact that she's's an Android that doesn't come up. There's a little bit of the ethical question of like, you know, he's married and he's doing this, but you know, the reader has left the Androidness. Yeah, and the and the the question that the reader is left with at the end of the book, the question that you're left with is whether the humans or the Androids are more truly human.

Because we see over the course of the story, the Androids going to very great lengths to protect themselves, to survive, to get away from record. And the humans have become more robotic. The humans have this limited level of spiritual outlet. The humans don't have any of the other hallmarks that we look at as making us human. You know, there's no, you know, the society has become clinically depressed. Right. Decords wife essentially is a stand-in, much like in Fahrenheit 451. The protagonist's wife there is kind of the stand-in or avatar for the rest of the society.

there is kind of the the stand-in or avatar for the rest of the society. Okay. The decades wife in the book is a stand-in of the rest of society and she's clinically depressed. Okay. And so the question then becomes, you know, okay, who's really more human here? Right. And so more importantly, what does humanity mean? Yeah. yeah.

Because if you have to ask a question quantifying it, then it's probably time to reassess what the definition is. Yeah, yeah. So, okay. So now, to kind of get an idea of where the world was when this was written. This, of course, is written in 67 into 68. And so, oh boy. Oh boy. Yeah. So, US involvement in Vietnam had started in 61.

The Tomkin Gulf incident was in 1964 and by 68, the United States is in a full scale war in Vietnam. Right. There are daily protests all over the world against the US's involvement in Vietnam. And it's on the nightly news and there are images on the nightly news of what's happening in theater, you know, the devastation being wrought by US bombing campaigns, you know, and the efforts of the army to try to,

you know, decommunize villages, you know, throughout the country, I mean, all that kind of stuff. Um, yeah, well, and since we're talking about the epistemological implications of like his writing in general, this war is a really good example of that. Like, America had clearly been the bastion of democracy. It marketed itself as such in World War I, and in World War II, it kind of proved it by toppling the Nazis. Doesn't America wasn't guilty of horror for war crimes by all definitions, but by and large, they were on the right side of things. Now, you get to Korea and it's questionable, but we'll look the other way, and it's not questionable. But, you know, but then you get to Vietnam, and like, not only are we bombing the hell out

of a civilian population to maintain our credibility for having backed a former colonizer that itself decided, no, we're getting the fuck out of here in 1954 leaving us holding the bag and us going like, well, I guess we have to finish it. Yeah, and dropping up right when. Yeah. And that's the other thing government. Exactly. Like and having and then assassinating a loud sanctioning a loud assassination. Yes, sanctioning his assassination. Yeah. And so like who are the good guys here? And I mean, the very people that the United States is trying to suppress are the ones who are quoting Thomas Jefferson.

You know, and not ironically, like saying, hey, can you help us with this since this is what you stand for? So like, there's a lot of epistemological contortions that need to be done to understand the United States involvement in Vietnam, especially going into 67 and 68 68 because now you're talking about the Johnson years going into the Nixon years, right? And you're talking about the Ted offensive. Yeah. We're talking about Ted offensive and in March of 68, we're talking about me lie. Yeah. So although in March of 68, is that when me lie comes out? And that's when that's when it took place.

When it took place. So me like me lie wasn't in was in Dix head at the time he was writing the book, but it it it was something the environment that led it to me lie. Right. Right. Kind of the point I'm trying to make the environment that led to me lie is the environment in which he was writing. Yeah.

And I would say you know you got the Ted offensive happening in January, I believe, because Ted. Um, but that's happening in January, where, you know, United States thought it was winning. And then the Ted offensive happened. And the United States was like, well, this was a victory for us. Yeah. And Cronkite comes back and goes like, there's no fucking way we can win. We can't we're not. yeah. It's not even a pirate victory. It's a tactical and strategic victory. And yet it's the death knell of US efforts in Vietnam.

Cause they lost many, many magnitudes more. And yet they proved, oh, you thought you were safe? We were in the first floor of your, your, your, your embassies. Embassies, yeah. And it took you the whole goddamn month to fight us back out. Oh, you thought you were safe? We were in the first floor of your, your, your, your embassy. Embassy. Yeah. And it took you the whole goddamn month to fight us back out. Like it was, oh, no, historically speaking, the defense of is not, uh, not considered, uh,

to have been, uh, fully pushed back until September 23rd. Yeah. Of 68. So, yeah. So, like, it was going on and Cronkite is like, nope, it's done. And I mean, that's when Johnson realized, fuck, I can't run again. Like despite us being told, all these things about American exceptionalism,

American brilliance, where the the bastion of democracy, all the evidence coming out of Vietnam is like the direct opposite, the facts are the direct opposite of what the United States is, is proffering forth. So, Dick is writing when the truth is absolutely not what we say.

Yeah, precisely. So now at the same time, so we have that going on in Vietnam and at the same time, both the US and the USSR had built doomsday scale nuclear arsenals. Yeah. Now at this point in history, the US was still way ahead of the USSR in number of warheads. But combined, there were still enough to destroy the world more than once. Literal overkill. Yeah, literal overkill. And the specter of nuclear annihilation was close. It was, you know, the, oh god damn it. Cuba.

The Cuban Missile Crisis? Cuban Missile Crisis, thank you. Yeah, Jesus. You know, Cuban Missile Crisis had been just a few years before. Right. And, you know, so the theme of what's going to happen after, after both sides pulled the trigger was on everybody's mind. And this, this was part of, well, that sets the part of the answer. Yeah. This is part of Dick's answer as well, you know,

it's, it's, it's not going to look good. You know, humanity is dying a slow psychological death in the wake of it. The civil rights movement in the United States and anti-colonial movements worldwide. Yeah, we have to keep bombing the shit out of these people so that we can push Civil Rights activity too. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Um, and for the great society.

Like there's nothing about this that isn't twisted up non-existent. Yeah. Yeah. And so this, both of these things, the anti-colonialism and the civil rights movement make questions of common humanity and equality a running theme on the evening news. Yeah. You know, you have to ask the question, if we're all human, don't we all have the right to the same rights? And if you're denying one group of people their rights, what are the defining characteristics you're using?

Right. In order to deny them those rights and that doesn't somehow make them less human. Yeah. You know, well, isn't and worth noting was it? it where was it from it might have been in the 80s where like and in which case this is Anachronistic, but it was along the lines of we just tapped a hope that the Russians loved their children as much too Well that I know Stain made a song Yeah, okay, I'm gonna make a song. Yeah, okay, I'm being an Acredistic. Well, I don't know. So I don't think, um,

I don't think sting took that from from another source. Yeah, I'm. Yeah, so it's an Acredistic. It's it is an Acredistic. Yeah, um, but I'm, but I'm going to hold on's an acronym. It's it is an acronym stick. Yeah, but I'm but I'm going to hold on. I'm going to put that in my pocket, though. For when we talk about the movie. Oh, okay. So, so I'm going to I'm going to hold on to that. Oh, because that's there's there's meaning there. Yeah. So at the same time that that's going on, at the same time that Dick is writing, existentialism,

nihilism, and absurdism were all major, major, major cultural, I don't quite want to say cultural movements, but there were philosophical ideas and philosophical movements that had a very great deal of influence on the countercultural movements of the 1960s. Dick was very much encounter culturalist. He was a believer in psychedelia. In the 70s, particularly he was a regular user of, if I remember correctly, was LSD and Silasibon at different times. Both of which used for epistemological growth for most people, like in a lot,

ostensibly for that, and it was for that. That is for that, yours a perception, et cetera. All of that, yes. Yeah, doors of perception, et cetera, like all of that. Yes. And he notably had a spiritual, a very intense moment of had a spiritual experience in, it was either 70 or 71, related to all of that. But he was working toward that for a long time. And that's that epistemological kind of questioning, and that kind of thought is very clearly very big part of what he was working with in this book. And so now we're going to fast forward to 1982. Okay.

And by 1982 we have thatcher and Reagan in Downing Street and White House, respectively. And I'm just, I'm sorry, let me just back out. Yeah, of course. Yeah, keep bringing up epistemology and then it occurs to me. Carl Popper was doing his shit right around that like the father of the philosophy that is epistemology. Like, yeah, he's, he's doing his thing in that time. Like, that's, that's when a lot of his stuff is, is, he's getting recognized for it.

He's, you know, he's adding a lot to the philosophical zeitgeist. Like that is him. He's, yeah. Yeah. No, that's, yeah, well worth noting. Yeah. And, yeah, and so.

Okay, so back to Reagan. Yeah, well, yeah. So we have, so the novel comes out in 68. 14 years go by. Okay. Yeah, so we have, so the novel comes out in 68. 14 years go by. Okay. And we have the 70s, which was just kind of a shitty decade all around. Yeah, terrible for everyone.

It's just bad for everybody. All kinds of chickens come at home to roost in many ways. Mm-hmm. And we have two, count them two fuel crises, gas crises. There are major economic downturns. Yeah. Tensions in the Cold War kind of fluctuate, but never go away. They kind of calcify. Yep. And Carter notably tries to try to work a system of datant with the Soviet Union to try to reduce tensions.

Right. There are some there are some arms treaties that get signed during this time. But, you know, the decade just sucks. And, you know, you look at, you look at kind of what happens in, in art and in movies and in a lot of things. And we just kind of, there's a really heavy downer vibe in a lot of, in a lot of places in the seven, kind of all over. Yeah. And then so, that turned Reagan both come into power in the two largest Western democracies. Turning him into not that. Yeah. Yeah.

On the on the promise of this right wing sunny optimism based on, you know, we're just, you know, we're going to come in and we're gonna come in and we're gonna fix everything. And there's no reason for us to be sad anymore. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna find our strength. Then we're gonna, you know, and find our strength. That's one thing. It's find our once great strength. It is an approach that's all just from the jump. Like, that you're about empire, Reagan about some sort of mythological time. The immediate post war prosperity of the 50s. Maybe.

40s? I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. There was this sunny, sunny nostalgic kind of rose color view, pleasantville kind of looked everything. Yeah. And they get into power and one of the things that they immediately take action against is this perception that we have been moving too far toward socialism.

We've been moving too far toward the middle with the evil empire. Right. And so that has, that's, that's, and they blamed government programs, government regulation for the economic downturns and for gas prices being too high and for, you know, the oil crises

and everything that by Reagan explicitly and by thatcher, not quite as explicitly, but just as forcefully, if that makes sense. You know, government is not the solution, government is the problem. Right. And so they immediately made this dramatic shift toward a pro-per-it, remarket, policies. Antiounion. I'm about to get there. In the global West.

And a big part of that was anti-union, of course, in the UK, there were the miners' strikes. And thatcher shattered the miners unions. And in 81 here in the United States, the federal air traffic controllers union went on strike and Reagan basically said, fuck you and just fired all of them like in an un... I want to say unprecedented, but for many decades, unprecedented. He went back to the Henry Ford School of Labor Relations and just said, all right, fine, fuck you, you're all fired. Well, there was a regulation that said that the federal government could, in fact, fire striking workers of this particular type of job, but every every president up till that point

had refused to do that. You know, it's kind of like, okay, we're not going to do that. That's that's the button. We're not going to push the button on. And he's like, I'll push it eight times with my dick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna push it twice with my dick. Yeah. So like, when there's a visual. Nancy was, was, yeah, she was a fan of dick. She, she, oh man, you, yeah, I don't, visuals anyway, moving on. Well, she was younger when she was a GM,

this is true. DJ assistant. Yeah, so, so, you know, they immediately come in and they do this anti-union shit and the FATURE administration, or FATURE, yeah, FATURE cabinet in the UK just basically says, oh yeah, that whole post-war agreement that we had. Yeah, no, fuck that. Yeah, no. The post-war consensus is, that's old news. No, we're, we're, we're going to keep the parts of that that we decide we think are important, but we get to decide what that is. And by the way, labor party fuck you, like, no. Right. And here in, in the United States, it was we're going to slash tax rates in

this pursuit of supply side economics. We're just going to hand rich people more money. Right. On the assumption that if we just let corporations, you know, keep more of their profits, somehow they're going to be motivated by what I don't know out of the goodness of their hearts to then let that money trickle down to their workers. Anorizing tide will lift all boats and know. Which is a weird way to get a rising tide. Yes. Trickle in to the bay.

Yeah. Yeah. It's bizarre. So, and of course, no, no less distinguished figure than George Herbert Walker Bush in the primary races against Reagan had referred to it as voodoo economics himself. Right. Like. to it as voodoo economics himself. Right. Like, and then it became, you know, just stated economic policy for the Republican Party for wherever since. And then, you know,

the new Democrats decided that they were going to try to steal the middle by adopting it themselves. Right. You know, and so that just became a given in American economic policy ever since, which spend a lot of time talking about, but like anybody who listens to the podcast has already heard us talk about it at Nazi number four. The short version though, you essentially yanked the Overton window of discussion of any kind of economic policy, so that supply-side economics does seem like a reasonable option. This was a failed experiment. We all know. Instead of like treating it like ether after 1927. Yeah, I like the reference very good. Instead of treating it like that, everybody's like, well, well, and it's like, no, it's

never. No, fucking no. And multiple economists, like people who studied, it did like no. And politicians and pundits have just ignored them. It was almost like we could hear them. I don't know what happened to them, but they're gone. Anyway, about supply side, like they're walking between the raindrops. Yeah, yes, they must be. So beyond economics in 1980, the United States had roughly 23,000 nuclear warheads stockpile. I'd like to know how many air traffic controllers

got fired because of the number of similar. That's fun. Yeah, I didn't look that up, but That's fun. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't look that up, but yeah, the USSR had roughly 33,000. Yeah, see, they're going to win. Yeah, killing us the most times. Oh, this is the only people that would like have like take issue with, oh, you killed me more than once, would be people who believe in reincarnation. Yeah. And they didn't have the bomb yet. Like the largest nation of people who believe in reincarnation. Yeah. And they didn't have the bomb yet. Like the largest nation of people who will believe in reincarnation did not have the bomb until 98. Yeah. So this situation is the source of the infamous missile gap argument, right, which led to the Reagan administration's attempts to build the Star Wars defense system SDI, SDI, space defense initiative.

Right. Yeah, and at the same time, the Reagan administration, because right wing and toxic masculinity, I guess, moved away from Dayton and toward a far more aggressive stance toward the USSR. Right. Okay. We've declared the US's are illegal. The bombing campaign begins in five minutes. My go to Reagan quote, right, he was on a hot mic, like, but that just encapsulates the mindset.

It really does. Like so brilliantly. He's joking, but he's also saying it's it's also saying the quiet part of the yeah, yeah, yeah. So at the same time, as that's going on, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 81. And both the United States and the USSR began deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. In 1980, we boycotted the Moscow Olympics. Right. Then they boycotted 84s of Olympics. They boycotted 84, but we're talking about, I'm focusing on 382 right now,

so that that part hadn't happened yet. But... Although, I will say, by that point, we knew that the Olympics were going to happen in LA. Yeah. And at that point, they there was a lot of effort put into we're going to show the world what a privatized Olympics can be. Go capitalism. Like it was that was already in. Yeah, that was that was already that urine was already in the shallow end of the pool. Yeah, that was that was already that urine was already in the shallow end of the pool. Nice. Talk about images again.

So because of these tensions, the bulletin of atomic scientists moved the doomsday clock ahead by three minutes in 1981 to four minutes until midnight. Okay. Can you explain that clock? I think I remember it. I think I remember it. I think I know it, but I never had it fully explained to me. It is. It is. The anytime.

Okay. It is, it is still a thing. Um, and the drama of it being set to four minutes until midnight in 81 is a little bit. Um, uh, uh, the, the drama is a little bit, the drama is a little bit undercut. When I tell you that not only is it still a thing, but right now we're at 100 seconds to midnight. They've actually gone away from minutes

and said no, we're less than two minutes from midnight. Largely because of, at this point, it's largely because of climate change, although tensions between the United States and North Korea, and of course right now the situation in Ukraine and India and Pakistan, both now having the bomb and just all of these things all together, but really the biggest driver in the last two years has been climate change. But the, the internet, the,

the bullet of atomic scientists is a publication by nuclear scientists or by and for nuclear scientists. And it's also the name of the organization that puts out the the bulletin. And we're going to pause in there. Sorry again. You got to work on your pausing there. Yeah, sorry. The name of the organization that puts out bulletins. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so I think that you have the potential to be a huge dick Yeah, but yeah, so I think that you have the potential to be a huge dick

Tater. Yeah, yeah, that was that was unfortunate But if you're finishing that word with Tater the first part still applies Yeah, true in that particular case, but anyway, yeah, I don't know about the promiscuity of the organization of the bulletin of atomic scientists. But in starting in 1953, they created the clock as a measurement of how close we are to the end of the world. Midnight is human civilization becomes untenable. We can't continue, like we're done game over.

Right. Bye bye. We had a good run. It's all over. Thanks for all the fish, you know. I'll say that too. And so the clock had been set at, I want to say, five minutes to midnight in 1953, right after US nuclear tests that were Operation Ivy and the Soviets had performed the Joe tests.

And that's the point. The one that blew out the windows from wherever the hell. No, that's that's Sarbamba. That's that's just the and interestingly, although Sarbamba was an example of holy shit, look at what we're capable of doing now. Oh, God, it by itself did not lead to a shifting of the position of the clock because yes, that one individual bomb is gobsmackingly terrifying, like on an on an epistemological level. Yeah, you know, but existential level. Yeah, well, yeah, that point. Yeah, but but the number of warheads that were already in existence of that point meant that it

doesn't really matter how big it is. Oh, you landed a haymaker after landing a hundred on the answer shots. Cool. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so in 81, uh, the clock, the clock got moved to the closest point. It had at that point, Ben that point Ben to Middite.

At the same time, that was happening. The Reagan administration, there's a recurring theme here. The Reagan administration pushed hard back against environmental regulation and against the environmental conservation movement. They worked very hard to try to limit the ability of the APA to enforce things. They worked very hard to try to deregulate as much as they could. Because again, their philosophy was government acid rain was an issue Reagan denied. Like he didn't, he didn't believe it was a thing until he made a visit to Canada and was directly confronted with the damage it caused. Does he just like deny things alphabetically?

Because you got acid rain,, AIDS, air traffic controllers, air traffic controllers, uh, right to stride. Yeah. Makes you wonder. Yeah. Um, I think, I think you can just organize everything alphabetically because there was just so much stuff. So much. True. Yeah. We search, you know, pattern recognition is something we do reflexively whether there's a pattern there or not right right monkey brains like what we do. Oh, he, it wasn't until he made it made a visit to Canada and was directly confronted with oh, hey, look at the damage that's being caused to the trees and the buildings and all of this stuff here. and the buildings and all of this stuff here. And at which point when he actually was confronted with, oh no, this actually is a real thing. And by the way, this is caused by the smoke coming out of the smokestacks of power plants on the American side of the border. At that point, he went, oh, okay, so maybe I should have

some people look into this. And, you know, but it took, but it took literally being, you know, having it held in front of his face for his, the, the, the, acknowledging. This leads to my favorite quote by Leia Eccolca, because at this point, they were not putting screens over the, uh, the, the, the smokestacks, as I recall. And, and they're like, this will never work and blah blah blah. And then they did and they're like, Oh, shit, we have a whole new fuel source. It's even better because the

Coke would gather up. It's called. Yeah. Um, and but Leia Cokka said very shortly after this, we have to ask ourselves just how much fresh air do we need? just how much fresh air do we need? Just... All of it, please. Right, yeah, like, why are, why? Fuckin' all of it, like, what? Yeah, Lee, Lee Iacoka is a real life general ripper. Like, he's the industrialist version of general ripper.

Yeah, like what? You're a parody. Right. We've been doing this for a long time. Like you're not a dummy. Right. You're not a dummy, but like you have no capacity for self-reflection, because if you did,

shit like that would not come out of your mouth. Well, I think what's really happening there, though, is this is, I spoke of the overtune window just a minute ago, but this is what you do to yank the overtune window. You don't push it from within, you yank it from without so that the next thing you say seems reasonable by comparison, and then people will head toward that. So how much fresh air do we really need? Oh my God, are you fucking kidding me?

Oh my God. Okay, but do we really need all these regulations for moose? Well, you know, okay. Yeah, you know, I see what you're saying. And that's, I mean, that's how you know, it's you don't, you don't actually expect, and then you just keep ramping up the crazy. Like you don't actually expect people to get on board with like genocide, you know?

Yeah. But ethnic cleansing, we need a new sports stadium. Yeah. You know, so sure. Yeah. You know, it's that kind of thing. And you just kind of keep that pressure on. And I think in many ways, I think that's what he was doing.

He was anchoring in the basket area. But at the same time, that quote on its own is, it's one of my like four favorite quotes in American history, the number one being General John Sedgwick of the Union Army, saying they couldn't head an elephant at this disc right before a sharpshooter. Right before a Confederate sharpshooter took him out. It's I had that in my wallet for at least a decade. I couldn't hit an elephant at this disc.

Yeah. Well, it's up five feet. That's power. So isn't it ironic? Um, okay. So Reagan is faced with acid rain. He actually confuses in all right fine. But don't you wish? Don't you wish we didn't have to wish for the days where Ronald Reagan

Was the reasonable one like like all of that feels like Yeah Quaintly reasonable doesn't it though it really doesn't though. Yeah, there's there is so much ugly shit It really doesn't know. Yeah, there's there is so much ugly shit That I can talk about about like what the what the state of the world was in 1981 and how bad the Reagan administration was and you and I are gonna sit here the whole time going. Oh, yeah, that sucks Yeah, yeah, can we get back to that? Yeah, can we can we can

Can we climb in the way back machine? Right? Like, you know, yeah. At least go there. Yeah. Oh, damn it. Yeah. So, but in the popular imagination, environmental issues had become a theme of concern and subject of debate. Sure.

The Clean Air Act had been passed in 1970. In Water Act in 1972. Yep. The ETA had been passed in 1970, the Water Act in 1972. Yep, the ETA had been created under Nixon. Yep, the first Earth Day was in 1970. And now the history of scientific consensus on climate change is complicated. But by the 1970s, there was consensus, like scientists, the majority of scientists all agreed, human-influenced climate change was a thing. There was some disagreement up until the 80s about whether carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was going to lead to warming long-term or if other stuff that we were like smog and other pollution

was going to lead to an increased albedo effect and reduce the amount of light coming from the sun and lead to a cooling phase. And there was a very brief cooling phase for several years, I want to say, into the 70s. And then that reversed, and by the 80s, the scientific community had determined the trend overall was one of greatly concerning planetary warming. Yeah, and it wasn't just scientists funded by And it wasn't just, you know, scientists funded by the government that we're doing this. Like as early as the 1950s, a lot of the major oil companies were like, you know, we could run out of this stuff. Why don't we take a look at the effects that it's having? And then they, like,

they did studies and they knew as, again, as early as the 19 late 60s early 70s, I think. And they buried it because they're like, okay, let's not tell anybody about this and squeeze as much out of this turn up as we can. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And deforestation, especially in the Amazon, was it growing issue? Started receiving media attention in the 1980s? That's right. Asset Rain, I remember reading about Asset Rain as a kid in, you know, 82, 85, 3, all of this environmental, like we became aware, like the Zitgeist became aware of the parless state of the environment and the fact that things were getting worse.

Well, I think you had Earth in the 70s. Well, yeah, yeah, it was in the 70s into the 80s. This is something that's becoming something people are aware of. Oh, I was thinking about the point that I'm trying to make. Yeah, because as music festivals started lighting up to like be benefits. I remember there's farmaid and live aid and and I forget exactly what either of those was for presumed made was for farmers right in the Midwest live aid was a was for famine relief that okay so it was yeah because I remember Ethiopia was a big deal, right? That's the blight in the ongoing famine civil war, if I'm remembering, right?

Yeah, yeah. I'm like, part of it was man-made. Like, there was... Most of it. Yeah, we could always feed people. That's always the thing we've been able to do since modern transportation. But human intervention gets in the way of doing exactly that. And so all of this stuff is in the public consciousness. And so to restate kind of what we've already gone over in a bit

more detail, the Reagan-Thatcher combined economic policy was intensely pro-corporate anti-labor and anti-regulation across the board. Now in the UK, these changes gave rise to dystopian work like AD 2000 and Warhammer 40K, which we talked about back in the very, these changes gave rise to dystopian work like AD 2000 and were him a 40k, which we talked about back in the very beginning of the podcast. Yep, episode three for fans of the podcast. In the US, we see an adaptation to get made of Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep. So in 1980, in, well, so people wanted to make a film about Android's dream of electric sheep from, like, almost from the get-go.

In the very early 70s, Scorsese wanted to do something with it, but he never optioned it despite being really interested. And Robert Jaffey wrote a screenplay in the early 70s. And Philip K. Dick hated it so much that when Jaffey showed up in Santa Ana to talk to him about the project, Dick asked him, should I beat you up here at the airport or beat you up at my apartment?

Whoa. Hahaha. Like, Okay. Yeah, it was, yeah, he, though that still that went nowhere. In 1977, Hampton Fansher wrote a screenplay that got optioned. Okay. And it was going to be, it was produced by Michael Deely,

who then brought Ridley Scott on board to direct. Now, all of these decisions got made without anybody talking directly to Philip K. Dick. Ha, ha, ha. So, and he had long running suspicions of Hollywood, like even before this, he was really suspicious of the studios and anybody wanted to do anything with his work. But when the movie got made, and this was the whole

jumping off point for me doing this podcast, he was abusive in his praise of what he was able to see of the script and a special effect sequence reel that he was able to view. He mentioned that the visuals of the film perfectly captured what he had envisioned in his head in electric sheep. Okay, so I'm sure you're in the title just because Dewey Andrew and Dream of Electric sheep is just this to much. So he had a very strong visceral reaction to one person doing it is like no. And then this he's saying this is good. This is amazing. So it's not him simply praising just for the sake of praising or look, I got a mortgage. It's he took a stand against someone else doing it. Yeah. Having looked at it and now he's looking at this and he's going, this is it.

This is perfect. Yeah. Okay. Well, that solves it for any of the fanboys who are like, you know, what would the artists say? Yeah. They really have his words. Yeah.

And he. Yeah. He passed away. I want to say while the movie was in final, final editing and production, the movie was dedicated to him after his passing. Okay. It was dedicated to him.

Okay, now the title of the movie has, has no relationship to the events of the film. Decorate in the movie is referred to as a blade runner, but there's no explanation of why they're called that. The title of the movie is actually taken from a completely unrelated science fiction novel written in 1974 by Alan Enorse. Now that novel is similarly dystopian, but it has, there's no androids in it at all. It's about a smuggler who runs illegal medical supplies for black market medical treatment. And he is a blade runner. Right, okay.

Because he smuggles syringes and other, yeah, syringes scalpel's another surgical equipment. Wait, that, that, oh Jesus, clumsy hands. Sorry, listeners. But that, that aspect, that, that right there gets folded into, is it minority report where Tom Cruise has to get new eyeballs? Yeah. And you've got that whole underground thing. Okay. So they grabbed that and put that in there. Yeah.

But they've got the title and put it over there. Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. And um, I'm scared, Crow. Because by Nordy report, by the way, is based on another dick novel.

Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Similar, similar issues of like, where do we draw the line? Uh-huh, you know Well, yeah, what's the gray area against the business? Yeah, how do you know? How did you know that that was going to fall? How do you know that these people will actually commit these murders if you stopped them before they do? Which is also David Hume level shit. Yeah, I mean, the billiard ball example is like,

almost verbatim, they use the wooden ball. Yeah. But that is straight from David Hume. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. So now what's interesting is just germane to our current political situation. In Norse's novel,

the reason there is an underground medical industry is because the government provides remedical care to the population. But you have to meet eugenics standards for it. Oh. And in order to receive medical treatment, you have to agree to undergo sterilization for population control. Oh.

So it's, so it is, so it is, uh, government-funded healthcare being used as a tool by a right wing government. Okay. Just to make the noodle of anybody involved in, you know, all right, you know, American society, discussion of healthcare. So,

and so now that we've explained why the title is what it is, I think before I get into the intricacies of the actual plot of the movie, this is probably a good place to pause. So based on that, right now, at this point in the discussion, what do you take away? It's, you know, here's the thing. I'm now starting to wonder if we need to do a discussion on what sci-fi of the 80s and 70s to some extent. But what sci-fi movies, once movies, were really, really a popular medium. What those sci-fi movies did to influence present day sci-fi? Because all the people who are making movies now

are the ones who grew up on those movies. And so that's in their literacy. So I am fascinated to see, you know, you remember what I've said about John Williams and how he learned, like he was, he was an apprentice musician, musical scoremaker, guy. he was at the elbow of all the guys that started doing the score when movies started. Yes. Right. So they'd been in it for 40, 45 years once he jumps in in the 1950s. Yeah.

So he's literally just a second generation of score people. And so he grew up at their elbow as, you know, as they were retiring, he was gaining all their knowledge. And now he is, you know, old. Yeah. And the grandmaster of the medium. Yeah. And not only is the grandmaster the medium, but he contains within him the sum total of musical score knowledge for all of cinema. Yeah, that's real. Right. You know, and that's, you know, to keep my quota going, Rick Flair did the same thing by working with Buddy Rodgers. So, you know, we had to get it in there somewhere, right?

Yes. But like, he just had to get it in there somewhere, right? Yes. Yes. But like he just had his last match about a month or two ago. Like it was billed as Ric Flair's last match. And so the guy who worked with him, I forget his name, but that guy will have worked with the guy who worked with. Yeah, I think the first or second WWF champion of all time. Yeah. And, you know, and so on and on.

So, yeah, so I'm wondering, and of course, Buddy Rogers absolutely influenced Rick Flair. Like, he got the name Nature Boy from him. He took the figure four from him. He did the Bleach Blonde hair of that whole approach and just put the Rick Flair spin on it, you know, dialed it up to 11. And as much as, you know, John Williams worked with all the old masters, you know, he took all their knowledge and then he took it in a new direction. So the people who are making sci-fi movies now, the people who are in charge of the studios now, yes, grew up watching this movie.

And movies like it. Kevin Feige. Yeah. You know, so it just, I'm really curious as to how much this has shaped all the things that we're seeing now. Yeah, that's. Yeah, I mean, I can say right now at this point in the conversation, I can say that Blake Runner has been a major influence on the genre and is a seminal part of the cyberpunk movement within science fiction.

So yeah, I mean, this is a foundational work. Right. Both a novel and the movie. Right. So yeah, so I'm no it's a meaningful point. Intensely curious as to what threads will be able to pull all the way through and it is likely to be the next or the following episode. So. All right. Cool. Cool. Yeah. So what you, I got one guess as to what you're going to recommend to people. Yeah, I very highly recommend Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It is, I am not having having said everything I've said about how important dick is to the to the genre and especially to the new wave and an understanding of all of that. I am not always a fan of his pros, which from my my rants about other authors, anybody who listens to the podcast knows that's a thing for me. Right. But his ideas are amazing and he has an incredible ability to set a mood. Very, very strongly and leave you carrying things with you for a long time after you finish reading. Okay.

So that's that is that is my recommendation. What about you? Well, I'm going to recommend something that's a little off the beaten path, but it actually it ties to this. So if you've got the Disney Plus app watch WandaVision, but also go check out the 12 issue limited series called Vision and the Scarlet Witch. And that's it's it gets into a lot of the things that we've been talking about. And it's kind of the source material, the reading source material for WandaVision.

There are a number of differences, but this is where Wanda constructs a reality where she and Vision get to be together. They do it again, well, she doesn't, she does that mostly in house of them to be probably honest. But you do have their relationship in vision and scarlet witch. And it's, it's fascinating. Like it really is. Because you get into the psyche of vision. And at this point, he

actually has a lot of emotions. Oh, wow. There are various iterations, similar to data. I think he cries in this one, even. So yeah, it's, and I mean, he is literally an Android. So. Yeah. But yeah, check that one out. It is its own mini series. I want to say it was it ran from like October

85 until the following October. That makes sense. Yeah, it's about right. Yeah, 12th issue. So yeah, and it's literally just one through 12th, I think. So, okay, fine, there's a lot of different apps you can find that on. So you can even find a trade paper back on it. So cool. Oh yeah, that's that's what I'm recommending. Those two things. So all right. Cool. Where can folks find you on the socials? I can be found on the socials on TikTok at Mr. Underscore or Laylock on Tikitok on Twitter. I am e Blalock. We collectively can be found on the internet at www.geekhistorytime.com. And there you can go back and look at every episode that we have recorded so far, going all the way back to the beginning and the comics code authority. And if you are listening to us,

since you are listening to us right now, you have found us somewhere, probably either on Stitcher or on the Apple podcast app. Wherever that was, please take a moment to subscribe and to give us the five star review that we know that you know we deserve. And then of course, we can be found collectively on Twitter at Bikistry time. Where can you be found, sir?

You can find me on Twitter and Insta at the Harmony. And let's see, this point, I'm going to say December 2nd, as well as January 6th, you can find me at Luna's with capital punishment, sling and puns, with the capital punishment crew. There's going to be a lot of really good people booked. I'm very excited about these two shows. And then pretty soon, I'll be able to announce a different another another wrinkle to it. So looking forward to that. But yeah, that's where you can find me. 10 bucks plus a Vax card gets you in to see a really wonderful show. So it's every second

in January 6. So well for geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s. and I'm Ed Blaylock and until next time, keep rolling 20s.