The intelligent primates and cetaceans in the Probability Broach books have cybernetically enhanced brains. If I recall correctly, pure AI was impossible, but you could enhance animal brains to human level intelligence. One of the characters I remember was an enhanced dog who was the adopted parent of a human child.
And if I recall correctly again, the source of the divergence was the insertion of one extra word into the Declaration of Independence, which changed “the consent of the governed” to “the unanimous consent of the governed”. And therefore the Constitutional Convention that replaced the Articles of Confederation never happened, and so without the tyrannical Federal Government we have an American Libertopia, which inspires the rest of the world, until we have starships and trans-universe travel and cybernetically enhanced gorillas in the 1990s.
How about Robert Heinlein’s “Starshp Troopers”? Fighting the bugs with infantry? Didn’t make sense to me…why not go after them with more WWII technology (like tanks)?
A creature so stupid that it thinks if you can’t see it, it can’t see you, most effective defense against a RBBOT is to put a towel over your head (once again proving the towel the most useful thing in the universe), once you do this, the RBBOT will cease looking for you
No, I like sci-fi. When it’s internally consistent and works.
Not being snarky, but can you answer how do the pre-cogs (or their handlers) tell the difference between murder and self-defence homicide just by watching edited video images? How do they tell the difference between illegal (but publicly sanctioned) killing in war and legal killing in war. In fact, what happens in wartime or natural disasters - they must have to shut the whole system down while it goes into overload. What about illegal euthenasia - do they go after those people? Is their vision limited to the city limits? If so, how is that possible? If not, why don’t the murderers move out to the suburbs so they are out of range?
Why do the police spend so much money on manpower and equipment to prevent simple murders - many people in society today think that the cheating spouse in the movie actually deserved a pair of scissors in her back. Instead they send a rapid deployment taskforce out there to rescue her, and put the guy who hadn’t done anything under arrest (yes- I realise that that is the whole point of the movie, but do you realise how much of basic society would have to be changed to accomodate that new rule - trust the word of three semi-autistic visionaries that you were definately going to kill her - hmm).
Nothing in the movie about the pre-cog conceit made any sense to me. Maybe it was just me though.
How do you know they don’t ? Assuming it occurs to them, and assuming they can convince their victim to move with them; it’s a bit difficult to murder someone miles away.
The law disagrees with those barbarians fortunately. Do you really need an explanation as to why the cops care about murder ?
It’s also impressive that he was sure that the total eclipse would be visible in Camelot (a place that, as Morgan himself mentioned, never existed). As I recall, there is a very small space on the Earth from which solar eclipses appear total.
Further straining the reader’s credulity about Morgan’s luck, he made his threat for the wrong day because he was told the incorrect date, then had his execution moved forward to the correct date of the eclipse in an attempt by Arthur to avoid the disaster.
But I was willing to suspend my disbelief. It was mostly a MacGuffin to get Morgan into a position of political power.
They aren’t just watching edited video images - you’re talking about a system where multiple police are going to be eye-witnesses. If someone tries to kill someone in self-defence, having a squad of cops on the scene, perfectly capable of seeing what the person they are defending themselves from is doing, is going to make it easy to determine if the homicide was in self-defence or not.
If the precogs pick it up, they have video evidence of whether it’s legal or not.
Even assuming that accidental deaths trigger the precogs’ abilities, what’s your point? Because it might not function 100% of the time, it’s better to go without?
Why are you asking me? Either they pick it up and they do or they don’t pick it up and they don’t. It’s not a plothole, it’s simply something that has nothing to do with the plot of the movie.
If murderers are forced to move out of range, while everyone else is free to shelter within range in perfect safety, that means the pre-crime division is working! What are they going to do out there, murder rabbits?
The idea behind Minority Report works better in the short story. There all crime is predicted by the precogs. And the precogs are not unique merely rare.
The story also follows Dick’s typical pattern for his short stories:
wierd sci-fi idea or conceit
implications of that idea
horrible depressing twist
realisation that life sucks and there is nothing we can do about it.
No, I’m pretty much on board with Isamu with the precogs. It might have been a neat concept but it was stupidly portrayed in the movie. The short story is much better.
The only differences between an MI powered armor suit and a tank are that the MI suit has a heck of a lot more firepower, and a tank can’t dance a jig.
I’m assuming he knew it was visible in England, not merely that it happened on that day – almanacs, as in Columbus’ case and in King Solomon’s Mines, give this information.
Starts out as a typical and somewhat promising Tarantino noir about two badass psycho criminals on the run with ordinary-folks hostages, which, midway through, for no particular reason, turns into a vampire-action movie.
The vampire-action half is based on the premise that there’s this roadhouse in Mexico where the staff are actually vampires and feed on their customers and, apparently, somehow word of this never gets outs and customers keep coming. :rolleyes: