alt Hacker NewsI think Blade Runner and Alien helped destroy mainstream science fiction.
Before Blade Runner almost anything could be science fiction. After Blade Runner science fiction meant detective noir with #tech_upgrade - clones, memory implants, dystopia. Or it was US truckers and/or the military fighting nasty aliens in spaaaaaaace. (Star Wars and its magic space knights was always more fantasy with a science fiction stage set.)
Blade Runner did it far better than the others, but then we had decades of mostly mediocre book knock-offs, especially in the UK. (Gibson gets a pass for taking the new trope even further by being a brilliant stylist, mixing in some tech orientalism, and inventing cyberspace.)
It's a stunning, iconic masterpiece of a movie with an unfortunate chilling cultural effect.
And ironically the Philip K Dick original was... very different.
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> And ironically the Philip K Dick original was... very different.
True. Ridley Scott and Philip K Dick collaborated very closely to tell it like they wanted it to. Studios liked it ... not so much.
Pretty sure Star Wars destroyed mainstream science fiction in film.
>Before Blade Runner almost anything could be science fiction. After Blade Runner science fiction meant detective noir with #tech_upgrade - clones, memory implants, dystopia.
If only.
>(Gibson gets a pass for taking the new trope even further by being a brilliant stylist, mixing in some tech orientalism, and inventing cyberspace.)
Gibson was also writing in that vein long before the release of Neuromancer, which repurposes some themes, plotlines, and even characters from his earlier short stories. And my understanding is he was working on Neuromancer before Blade Runner was released and without knowledge of it during its production.
I will say I'm reading through his short story compilation Burning Chrome and it is amazing. I don't think he ever matched Neuromancer with his other novels and over time they've just exposed his weaknesses more and more, which is a bummer. But he's absolutely at the top of his game in short stories.