I managed to read a short story over breakfast, using the Stanza app on my iPhone. I don’t manage to do anything quite so significant during breakfast any day of the week, but on Sunday… well, it impressed even me.
I read ‘The Defenders‘ by Philip K. Dick. If it hasn’t been mentioned somewhere in a PARANOIA bibliography before, it needs to be appended. I’m sure it has.
Our world has descended into nuclear war. The Cold War went hot, and the Soviet and Allied forces struck fast and hard with weapons that rendered the surface uninhabitable. Mankind found a place to live deep beneath the ground, protected in great bunkers. Civilisation exists within layers of habitation beneath the earth. People live desperate lives, eating synthetic food, existing for their work bathed in artificial light. Stooped, tired and angry, they do what they can for the war effort, manufacturing weapons for transportation to the surface – where the Leady armies of both sides continue to battle. The artificial life-form known as the Leady can exist in the radioactive wasteland of the surface and continue to fight for the just cause of those struggling below. In time, the Leady will triumph and then their task will be to rebuild and cleanse the surface. Until then, the people strive to live from day-to-day, working hard, absorbing daily news reports from the war above like sponges, and hoping one day to see the Sun again.
I can see a touch of PARANOIA, a smattering of Terminator. Dick plays with themes he has used before, but the short tale makes for an enjoyable read – and when you reach the end, you know the conclusion could go no other way. You could have PARANOIA use the Leady concept to mean no one see the Outdoors. The Computer simply can’t risk lives sending anything up there but robots. It isn’t safe, it wouldn’t be right – to risk anyone out there would be to waste precious resource and serve only to create more casualties that benefit the cause of the enemy.
I have been trying to track down loopholes in my site of late, because over the years the content has changed and sometimes links from the past lead to a dead end. WordPress has some handy tools for helping with this – so, I added one a while back and have been keeping track of people hitting the error pages on the site, what they were looking for, and seeing whether I can fix it.
Well, one very frequent error relates to an old PARANOIA XP wallpaper:
My confusion led to some investigation. First, I had to actually work out that this was the image they wanted. I had a reference to their target, but not the target itself. So, I went over to the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive. I didn’t expect to find a single specific image this way, but the archive had it. I typed in the exact address and image name – en voila! (or something like that). Anyway, I present it above for your viewing and downloading pleasure if you should feel inclined.
However, I couldn’t figure why anyone would be trying to access this image so vigorously (indeed, the vigour means I may well reduce the file size of this wallpaper image to minimise the impact on my bandwidth). I went to the site and having restored my own image, found it half way down the page. Scrolling up a couple of posts, on this French forum, I found the likely reason for all the hits on my image (which got loaded more as a matter of coincidence than interest!) – a World Cup-related image of two ladies with a football (probably NSFW), wearing little more than some artistically applied body paint representing a few patriotic flags.
Vive le foot féminin, indeed!
The Prisoner
never was an easy thing to understand. I guess, in principle, this recent re-imagining aimed to make the concept more accessible and easier to digest. The series presented a conclusion with some measure of coherence; but, then again, the original Prisoner nestled in the bosom of the 60s and flirted with the drugs, morales and psychedelia of that period. For the 21st century, we needed something a little more grounded in the methods and science of the now.
I have to say, Ian McKellen positively excelled in the role of Number Two. Often when you see an actor, a specific role comes to mind and it can be quite off-putting out of contest. The role you see often represents the one you most keenly associate with them – and in this case Ian’s performance means I can no longer watch ‘Lord of the Rings’ or the ‘X-Men’ movies in quite the same way. The cold menace of a man so committed and invested in his cause and beliefs, Ian gave Number Two considerable presence and gravitas. I seriously would love to meet this great actor of our time, but right now I probably wouldn’t want to be trapped in a lift with him.
The series had faults, but then so did the original, especially after McGoohan buckled under the pressure of Lew Grade to make more episodes than he’d originally intended. The latter half of the series suffered as a result with the sort of bottle episodes we loathe so much these days. Stories that didn’t push the narrative forward but simply told a tale span the series out to 17 episodes, when it could so easily have concluded in half that. The new version ran for six episodes and just about had the story for them all, though a couple ran a little thin on plot.
I’d like to think Number Two represents an interesting role model for the playing of a High Programmer
. A man with a purpose that almost certainly seems at odds with his intent. An individual who delivers each word with calculated precision, each sentence representing a possible lie within a deceit wrapped in a falsehood. Number Two espouses a distilled dose of Machiavellian principles driven by a profound need to survive bordering on… well… acute paranoia.
Anyway… I liked it. A diehard fan of the original, I nevertheless have a place for the re-imagining. Be seeing you!
Just a quick note that the All Current PARANOIA Books link (right) has now been updated to include (almost) all books – in and out of print.
It references the Limited Editions from the 25th Anniversary, purely because you’re unlikely to shop Amazon for those copies! Also, there’s the ‘Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Alpha Complex
‘, which might be better sought out through an online auction site (it was free when released… so some clever people have a few on offer for profit… Capitalism rears it’s ugly head, Comrades).
In addition, I have finally got round to updating the RSS link to the PARANOIA Development Blog.
The recent Doctor Who episode set on a Britain-turned-spaceship in the 33rd century featured a creepy police state overseen by the Smilers – fairground fortune-telling machines turned nasty. I’ve commented on – and reviewed the episode – with a Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space-slant over on my Who blog – Renegade Time Lord