Computers and science fiction – an essay - The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution - page 345

Fig. 17.14. The movie Blade Runner was
directed by Ridley Scott. The plot was
inspired by the Philip K. Dick novel Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Scott's
dystopian vision of a future Los Angeles
influenced many other science fiction
writers.

as a vehicle for humor. A nuclear accident on the starship Red Dwarf has killed
all the crew except Dave Lister, a drifter from Liverpool who was in stasis at
the time of the accident, and the pregnant cat he smuggled on board. Three
million years later, Lister, the last human being in the universe, is woken
from stasis by Holly, the ship's supercomputer. To keep him company, Holly
has activated a hologram of Lister's vending machine repair team manager,
Arnold Rimmer. In the meantime, the cats evolved to a vain, feline species of
which only one member remains, known as “the Cat.” Instead of a superintel-
ligent computer like HAL, Red Dwarf has Holly, slightly brain-damaged by the
accident, and who now acts very idiosyncratically.

HOLLY: (Appearing on the screen) Purple alert, purple alert!
LISTER: What's a purple alert?
HOLLY: Well, it's sort of like, not as bad as a red alert, but a bit worse
than a blue alert. Kind of like a mauve alert, don't want to say
“mauve alert”
…
There's some sort of disruption to the time-fabric continuum. At
least, I presume that's what it is, it's certainly got all the signs. There's
this big wibbly-wobbly swirly thing that's headed straight towards us. 20

Fig. 17.15. The movie Total Recall starred
Arnold Schwarzenegger in a version
of Philip K. Dick's story “We Can
Remember It for You Wholesale.”

The last member of the crew is a not very humanoid robot called Kryten, who
was rescued from a wrecked spaceship and found still tending astronauts who
had long since died. In one episode, Lister spends time teaching Kryten how to lie.
Kryten's “lie mode” saves them when a replacement robot arrives who is about
to kill them all. When Kryten tells the robot there is “no such thing as silicon
heaven,” the new robot becomes unable to function. Kryten explains that he was
able to do this without malfunctioning because he was using his new lie mode.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ( Fig. 17.18 ) was a comedy BBC radio series
in 1979 written by Douglas Adams ( B.17.13 ). In the first episode, a Vogon space-
ship destroys the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Only Arthur
Dent, an Earthman, and his friend, Ford Prefect, from Betelgeuse, manage to
escape by hitching a ride with the Vogons. Later in the series, it turns out that