Inspirations behind the novel Animus Proxy by Kehl Bayern – Blade Runner
Blade Runner 30th Anniversary Trailer from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
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Editor’s Note: Animus Proxy, the cyber-punk, science-fiction adventure from Kehl Bayern, will be available soon on AMAZON.COM. Donate to our GoFundMe to help startup our indie publishing house HERE.
The world of Animus Proxy is filled with different types of sentient life, all created by humanity in one way or the other, and it is this creative act that sets up the primary tensions moving the characters invisibly forward towards their, and the city of Shintoh’s, ultimate fates. Living on the verge of extinction following a devastating plague, humanity is clustered in large metropolises scattered throughout the world and relies upon the assistance of robots and drones to make life possible. SEERS Synthetics has emerged as a world leader in synthetic life: Androids, and advanced robotics.
SEERS seeks to rebuild Earth through the mass implementation of solutions that rely upon the utilization of android life on a civilization-wide scale. Its rival, Thalesian Corporation, uses advanced bio-engineering technologies to solve the world’s problems, producing clones of varying quality using DNA databases from the past. Thalesian has perfected the engineering of the individual and has scaled the process on an industrial level, producing millions of clones a year in “Gardens” scattered throughout the world.
In a world governed by corporate interests and blind greed, market-based solutions to problems that imperil existence could imperil existence themselves. This is the case with the world of Animus Proxy, where two powerful companies are competing for dominance over a failing society desperate for solutions to their problems.
In the film Blade Runner, we have a world of replicants and humans dwelling side-by-side in an overgrown industrial wasteland, much like the world of Animus Proxy. Replicants struggle for “more life” and want a kind of existential equality with humanity. This drive compels them to integrate and hide out in society and run away from the law, shirking their pre-programmed duties.
In Animus Proxy, synthetics are, for all practical purposes, immortal, their anima capable of transfer into a new body. This transfer preserves the synthetic’s learning and memories thus, in some way, preserving its identity, as manufactured as that may be. Thalesian clones do not retain their memories during anima transfer, leading to a perpetual existence for a person of a certain DNA strain but no recollection of these past existences.
Humanity in the world of Animus Proxy is not completely comfortable with artificial life on par with humans so they relegate them to off-world tasks and try to preserve the various metropoles throughout the world as bastions of humanity. Outside of the metropoles, SEERS synthetics are employed in the reclaiming of land, mining, farming, and production. While tensions exist between the humans and replicants of Blade Runner, these selfsame tensions are nonexistent in the world of Animus Proxy – the two coexist in relative peace, one being programmed to do so, the other being forced to do so out of necessity. Again, conflict in the world of Animus Proxy is an expression of corporate will and the need for power. In many ways the characters of Animus Proxy are powerless to make independent choices yet the desire to do so, the drive to exist independently, does influence the course of events throughout the book.
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Blade Runner (1/10) Movie CLIP – She’s a Replicant (1982) HD from MovieClips
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Religion, or a syncretic understanding of religion, also factors into the story of Animus Proxy in a way unseen in the film Blade Runner. Animus Proxy explores, in depth, the theme of religious fanaticism and the destructive impact certainty can have on a world of personal uncertainty. The tension between a scientific and a mythic understanding of life still exists in the world of 2076. Some characters are impacted by this mystical worldview while others, Elian Argent, in particular, are uninfluenced by religion or considerations of existence. In some ways these views are influenced or driven by their natures or the character’s background, but in other ways these views are used as a veneer for a much-larger conspiracy involving existence and, possibly, the mega corporations that attempt to rule the world.
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