Minority Report: Philip K. Dick

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Precrime is a predictive policing system dedicated to apprehending and detaining people before they have the opportunity to commit a given crime. At the time of the story, it has been operating for thirty years. This method has replaced the traditional system of discovering a crime and its perpetrator after the crime has already been committed, then issuing punishment after the fact. As Witwer says early on in the story, "punishment was never much of a deterrent and could scarcely have afforded comfort to a victim already dead". Unlike the film adaptation, the story version of Precrime does not deal solely with cases of murder, but all crimes. As Commissioner John A. Anderton (the founder of Precrime) states, "Precrime has cut down felonies by 99.8%." While the premise is very interesting, the execution for me was horrible. I honestly only liked the first story, and the others were boring and flat. I needed to force myself to read and read hoping to be able to enjoy myself, but after every short story the level of my boredom drastically increased. Commissioner John Anderton is the creator and head of the Precog unit that is responsible for nearly eradicating serious crime. He's nearing retirement (think "bald and fat and old," not sexy guy) and is showing his new assistant, Ed Witwer, around the office. They visit the area where the three precogs - described as gibbering idiots, deformed and retarded monkeys (yes, you can certainly tell this was written in the 50s) - are kept who visualize every future crime. The dreams are captured by machines and printed on punchcards. :D If your name shows up on a card as a future murderer, you're arrested and held in a detention camp indefinitely. I think the story really works because no one, who already hasn't committed or is planning to commit a murder, believes him/herself capable of one. Anderton, like most such people, just can't see himself as a murderer. Anyway, Anderton automatically latches on to the idea that Witwer (who is newly appointed to be Anderton's assistant) is gunning for his job as head honcho... and look, his wife is there too. She's in on it! They been bangin' for weeks, that whore and her young boyfriend Witwer! They want him out of the way! Oh, no? Just in his imagination? Well, can't put nothing past a woman. Anderton don't trust nothin' that can bleed for a week and not die. Just sayin'.

The chief commissioner of the Precrime division, John Anderton, boasts that since he implemented this new procedure, he has practically eradicated violent crime, murder in particular. What mr. Anderton doesn’t realize yet is that his celebrated trio of mutants have released a new report which accuses him of killing a person he doesn’t even know.There's also a rather large plothole in who is helping Anderton and who isn't. There are several factions hunting and helping Anderton. Deformed and retarded," Anderton instantly agreed. "Especially the girl, there. Donna is forty-five years old. But she looks about ten. The talent absorbs everything; the esp-lobe shrivels the balance of the frontal area. But what do we care? We get their prophecies. They pass on what we need. They don't understand any of it, but we do." But HE knows himself and he knows that HE would never kill anyone, so he must be being framed! (Because HE'S not a criminal like those... those... CRIMINALS. Or well, like they would be if they weren't in jail for thinking about being criminals!) And your "boss" was totally cool with your plan to take out some of his own employees for no reason, other than making a chapter end with a cliffhanger?

All the Troubles of the World" (1958), an Asimov short story in which society accepts the automatic prediction of crime For some reason, every time Anderton's wife, Lisa, shows up, her slimness always has to be brought up. It was weird and annoying. sigh* You're probably right. I'm often a terrible person who dislikes books. But you see, I feel like good SF should have more than a sci-fi-y setting or situation. I feel like it should be a little more than that, and have meaning.This is definitely a anti-uptopian book (from Wikipedia: As in George Orwell's 1984, a dystopia does not pretend to be utopian, while an anti-utopia appears to be utopian or was intended to be so, but a fatal flaw or other factor has destroyed or twisted the intended utopian world or concept). No one comes right out and says the government and the Army is controlling the minds of the citizens, but at the end we see how everyone readily accepts whatever Kaplan says. I think Anderton's wife is the only one that brings up the subject of free will although she doesn't actually say free will. But is such a system foolproof? What if, for example, there is a “minority report,” that is, what if one of the three mutants predicts a result that differs from the other two? What happens then? This question becomes personal for Police Commissioner John A. Anderton—a firm believer in the value of the Precrime system—when it predicts that he himself is destined to commit a murder. His attempt to save himself—and solve the dilemma and save the Pre-Crime system too—makes up the rest of the story. Wow, this was surprisingly bad. The movie was pretty terrible, so I assumed that the short story had to at least be somewhat better... I was horribly wrong. When Anderton pulls the latest cards from the Precogs and finds his name among them, stipulating that he is going to kill someone next week he doesn’t even know, he knows that he is being framed. He has no choice but to go on the run and hide until the week has passed and, in the process, prove the error of the forecasting, but if he does that, he also proves the system is flawed. There are people who most definitely don’t want that to happen. He soon finds he can’t trust anyone, and maybe the very person he trusts the least is his only hope at discovering and exposing the truth. Without going to go into any detail about what happens next (for the benefit of readers who have not read/watched this yet), I'm now going to explain what makes this a very special story for me.

One of the most important roles of science-fiction is to notice trends in our current society and extrapolate them into what is often termed as a dystopian future; to trigger a warning signal that we [as individuals, as social organizations, as the human race] are heading in the wrong direction. There was no examination of the morality or ethics of imprisoning (PKD's word, remember) mentally disabled people as slaves to a morally questionable practice of imprisoning people prior to their having committed any crime.So, he goes, investigates, some shit goes down, and the long story short version is that, yes, there was a majority report about him killing his victim, but technically not really because they were all minority reports.

Namely, that in any story with a character knowing the future (specifically his own) there needs to be the feeling of inevitability. That all events are unavoidable, even when actively avoided. If the outcome foretold is to come true in the story, then the protagonist needs to do everything in his power to make sure it doesn't happen. A video game, Minority Report: Everybody Runs, published in 2002 by Activision, was based on the film. So Anderton totally does just that, by calling his office and arranging to come scope the machinery, and telling his former employee all about his new disguise... you know, so he'll know who to expect when he gets there. Because, you see, he got a tip that there's something wonky with a minority report. What's that, you ask? Well lemme tell you! You see, the precogs are all hooked up to their own computers, and all three of them view the future individually, not together. Since there are three of them, if two agree on a potential future, that's called a majority report, and the third's differing view would be a minority report. For other uses, see Minority Report (disambiguation). "The Minority Report" was originally published in Fantastic Universe in 1956. All the characters feel like pawns used to move the plot forward, but none more so than Anderton's wife. (Probably why her part was entirely changed for the movie version).The precogs were originally named Mike, Donna, and Jerry, and were deformed and intellectually disabled. In the adaptation, they are called Agatha, Dashiell, and Arthur—after crime writers Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and Arthur Conan Doyle—children of drug addicts whose mutations led them to dream of future murders, which are captured by machines. They are "deified" by the Precrime officers, and are implied to be intelligent (Agatha guides Anderton successfully through a crowded mall while being pursued by Precrime, and the trio are seen reading large piles of books at the end of the film). In the end of the movie they retire to a rural cottage where they continue their lives in freedom and peace. Landrith, James (April 12, 2004). "The Minority Report: In Print and On Screen" . Retrieved 2007-03-25.