WOULD YOU MOVE TO MARS TO SAVE YOUR LIFE?

What's Up, You Beautiful Tinplate Soldier?

BLADE RUNNER 2019

It’s a science fiction trope to turn building facades into large advertising billboards; an aesthetic Blade Runner set the standard for back in 1982 and upgraded thirty, then sixty years later ...

BLADE RUNNER 2049 (above)

BLADE RUNNER 2079 (below)

Okay, not really! This one is from Shanghai, 2019 😀

It’s a testament to both Blade Runner films how accurate their future predictions of the cityscape have been. If the building above isn't proof enough, just look at these street scenes:

Shanghai, 2019
Los Angeles, 2019 (filmed 1989)

As cities become increasingly advanced, video screens, and therefore advertisements, will form building facades. However, in the Cortex books there is still an important role for bill-posters and graffiti due to the economic situation and adverse climate.

In the books New York is in the middle of a prolonged winter. This has driven many of the homeless to live in old and abandoned buildings. During the week-long storms they rarely venture outside, and so wouldn’t encounter the large, building-sized screens that often.

So you spend years writing a book, then you go to the movies and someone else has done it first! 😆I wrote most of This Automatic Eden before I saw Blade Runner 2049 and had already written the main scenes of homeless camped out inside derelict buildings. Then I saw this ... argggg. Still it IS the best sequel ever, so I'm gonna cut it some slack 🤓

2050s week long storms also reduce visibility, decreasing the effectiveness of this form of advertising. Money has concentrated itself in Manhattan, and particularly in the towers, with the remaining boroughs falling into disrepair. This limits the opportunities to use buildings as advertising billboards.

This has created the need for bill posters and graffiti. The government, and other companies, smother low-income neighborhoods with advertising in this way. 

Parts of This Automatic Eden deals with such propaganda and advertising; the first draft went into great detail about how the government promoted their agenda, however I cut most of that out in the editing process (there’s a fine line between explaining an idea, and making the book be repetitive, preachy, and boring!)

So two questions:

1. What do you think is the best sequel ever made? (for me it's BR 2049)

2. What do you think the future of advertising will be? Building sized adverts? Holographs?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these questions so drop me and email at jim@jimkeen.com and let me know! 😀

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