In the world of sci-fi literary giant Philip K. Dick, memory is a commodity and a liability. Memory is what his characters try to protect -- or sell, as the case may be. Ultimately, memory is what the bad guys are after; it's the last bastion of individuality in a corporate-controlled, ultra high-tech society. (This is, perhaps, what keeps drawing filmmakers to Dick's material -- after all, what is moviemaking if not the act of committing the memories made of light, sound and dialogue to celluloid?)
Dick's protagonists walk in fear that their memories will be stolen or destroyed, thereby depriving them of their identity and humanity. In "Blade Runner," for instance, an android is programmed with an entire lifetime of manufactured memories to fool her into thinking she's human. In the latest Dick adaptation, "Paycheck," which was published in 1953, a man agrees to surrender his memory in exchange for cash and state-of-the-art software, only to regret it from the bottom of his soul.
In 1982, when "Blade Runner" was released, it was sci-fi in all its glory and the warning signs pointed to a futuristic nightmare. Now with "Paycheck," modern living and the Dick fable synchronize neatly. It is basically about the here and now. Trading memory for hard cash, in the light of the fact that so much of our memories, our identities, are pulled off a computer screen daily, comes off as distinctly ordinary.
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