@pjsmeall ·
Minor spoilers — reveal post
Techno Messiah Review
4/5 Wild, Original, but a little too messy/mushy with the Plot-DEETS.
[6/5 if you love blood and gore]
The Devil [of this Messiah] is as always, in the detail[s].
1- Background Vibe: Full throttle Cyber Punk. For me this appeared to be a recipe
from the following chefs- William Gibson, Phillip K. Dick and “Blade Runner’s” Ridley Scott, based on Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
– The Empathy Box
While this is the book that became the movie Blade Runner, it contains a massive sub-plot completely cut from the film: a legally mandated virtual reality machine called the Empathy Box. [[DO I SEE THIS IN “TECHNO MESSIAH”?]]
• How it works: Users grab the handles of a mechanical box to engage in a technological religion called Mercerism.
• The Experience: It directly pumps a shared virtual hallucination into the user's brain, linking billions of citizens across the globe to feel each other's collective emotional suffering in real-time. It acts exactly like an addictive, electronic emotional narcotic.
2- In this Denver Sandwich [perhaps more Manhattan style?] Is one part Blade Runner,
a half pound of Neuromancer butter, a full can of “CAN-D”, some NANO-GooGoo-Gunk, and piles of various forms of E-Computer-Servers and Flashings Screens.
3- ALL ABOUT THE DRUGS MAN? Philip K. Dick who wrote multiple masterpiece novels explicitly centered around digital, reality-shifting, or virtual reality drugs.
While Neuromancer features physical chemical drugs (like the synthetic stimulant betaphenethylamine that the protagonist Case is addicted to), the concept of a "digital type drug" that simulates or traps users in an alternate virtual reality belongs firmly to Philip K. Dick ... HERE ENTERS THE ~ T E C H N O M E S S I A H ~
