Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the short story....

The Minority Report • (1956) by P.K. Dick

From the anthology The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick. See The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories discussion hub for more info on the anthology and pointers to discussion of its other stories.

This is the reason on why I get the book since I am one of the very few who enjoyed the TV series.

Definitely different with both film and TV series, here the precogs were intellectually disabled and deformed individuals. The story also has differend ending (view spoiler)[with precrime being maintained, as opposed to the take down by Tom Cruise. (hide spoiler)]

And it is just scary that all the confusion and misinterpretation of the reports can happen again. Nothing's perfect.

Most of PKD's stories are changed dramatically when they are adapted for TV or movies - read "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" and compare it with the Total Recall films. This one was changed too, but somehow not as much as I expected. There was also more action than I expect in a PKD story. I liked this one a lot and gave it 4 stars.

Randy wrote: "Most of PKD's stories are changed dramatically when they are adapted for TV or movies ..."

Usually they just take the interesting concept (pre-crime, implanted memories, sentient androids running loose, viewing the future, Japan wins WW-II) and develop all new plot around it.

In the future, harnessing precognition allows police to arrest people before they commit their crimes. The head of pre-crime, Anderton, finds himself accused of pre-murder.

SPOILER

The interesting take away here is that even though Anderton is a "victim" of his own pre-crime unit, he continues to believe in prophylactic policing, and even commits the murder he's been pre-accused of just to maintain the public credibility of pre-crime. (It can be argued that all three precognitive reports are accurate, just operating on different data.) The story looks at the idea that merely knowing the future alters it. (PKD makes the interesting argument that if the pre-cogs couldn't see alternate possible timelines, pre-crime would be futile, since it would prove you couldn't change the future. Clearly, pre-crime has already altered many futures by incarcerating individuals before they commit their crime.) PKD throws out the idea that if you just confront the future criminal with your knowledge of his impending crime, that would dissuade the criminal from the crime — well, maybe sometimes.

The whole concept of pre-crime has picked up some modern urgency. When PKD wrote the story, pre-cognition was supernatural nonsense. But modern data aggregators claim to be able to predict certain things about individuals, mostly based on online habits. E.g., Technology helps Predict Suicide. Presumably the NSA thinks it can predict terrorism.

Interesting thing about modern data mining and statistical predictors is that they're not based on specific algorithms humans can understand, but on a series of correlations only a computer would notice. In that way, it's technological magic.

I'm not ready to lock someone up based on an algorithm similar to the one Amazon & Netflix used to predict what else I might like.

I however am willing to arrest someone who does Goodreads recommendation algorithm. Which, in my case, is never accurate.

I haven't seen the Minority Report TV series; saw the 2002 movie & don't remember much (now I kind of want to rewatch, even though I figured fidelity to the story wasn't a priority). I liked the story, but I wasn't wowed -- maybe because the name recognition had oversold it a bit, or because I've been exposed to the concept before (in unrelated work and in other PKD). The different levels of bureaucratic idealism/self-interest among the characters was as interesting aspect.

Just started "The Unreconstructed M," but I wonder how the two will compare in their criminal justice takes.

I don't think I even watched MR the movie properly, like, till the end. However I read that it is pretty different with the short story. The TV series was set after the movie, so we saw the precogs were released and lived among normal people. Both TV and movie gave more portion to the precogs. The girl, whose name was Agatha, lived in seclusion. Her brothers, the twins, one became a highly successful businessman using his well, skillz, and the other brother, since he has the strongest vision, had to be the one with the most suffering. It is pretty cool - loved the tech too - but the rating was low and all.

Silvana wrote: "I don't think I even watched MR the movie properly, like, till the end. However I read that it is pretty different with the short story...."

The movie takes the idea of a pre-crime agent being identified as a pre-murderer, but works the rest of the plot differently. And Tom Cruise is a field agent, not the pre-crime director. so he gets to literally helicopter into a pre-crime scene and brandish hi-tech weapons. The movie also has the precogs report visually rather than with words, because, you know, it's a movie not a radio play :)

The TV show is framed as a sequel to the movie, not the original story.

I read this years ago when the movie came out, and while I enjoyed the movie I found the short story magnificent. The ideas were great and just that bit mindbending that I love from Dick.