I was watching Blade Runner last night, for the first time in a number of years, and when I read the opening introduction text I felt a pang of regret when it placed the age of bellowing flames and unbreathable skies in 2019, in L.A. I regret it because it dates the film badly. It would have been so much better to never mention the date. A couple of changes in the script where 2017 could have been said “two years ago”, and the story would have been much the better. It’s a flaw in a vision of a dark future that still has things to say about genetic engineering.<\/p>\n
I can understand the problem. I’ve made the mistake myself, several times. For example, in a Parking Spaces<\/a> a short story<\/a> published in the September 1985 issue of Analog, and maybe written a year earlier, I put 1988 as the date where engine control computers in cars developed a rudimentary intelligence. It was okay for a 1985 story that was quickly forgotten, but with just a little re-writing and put in Toyotas rather than Fords, it could find a whole new life. <\/p>\n Those early mistakes must have made an impression on me, because I made efforts to avoid explicit dates in nearly everything I write now. Just like movies use 555 phone numbers, nailing down a fixed point in time has consequences. Write for an age, not for a moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was watching Blade Runner last night, for the first time in a number of years, and when I read the opening introduction text I felt a pang of regret when it placed the age of bellowing flames and unbreathable skies in 2019, in L.A. I regret it because it dates the film badly. It… Continue reading Those Deadly Dates<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[227,81],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-yl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2130,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129\/revisions\/2130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}