Research Movies to World Build - Blade Runner

How to better world build your SFF novel? Watch some great SFF movies! I’ve started writing #sentient, my new #SFF novel set in the year 2120, a world filled with replicants (I’ve called them biots). So given Blade Runner 1&2 are classics on that genre, they were my first go to’s. All writers should go to great books, films, tv series to ignite that illusive creative spark to keep them motivated during the daunting task of writing a novel. Read more at #offworld

Blade Runner (1982 Director’s Cut) is universally accepted as a classic, future-noir fantasy. Blade Runner (2049) had a lot to live up to, but it proved to be every bit as good, winning new generations with its spectacular cinematography and deep world building. 

It is set thirty years after the first movie where its blade runner, Decker, has retired from retiring replicants, having fallen in love with one instead. The new blade runners are upgraded replicants responsible for hunting older models lost to all digital files as a result of a ten day worldwide blackout. K is the protagonist, tracking down the wayward androids. He’s a veteran blade runner who begins to experience doubts about his role and place in his dystopian world, filled with decaying industrial sites, leftovers from a radioactive wasteland. K is every bit as enigmatic as Deckard, leaving the audience to wonder how it must feel to be an Android. Do they have a soul? Do they dream of electric sheep? 

These movies really helped me ‘world build’ my novel - Sentient Set in 2120, Earth is now ravaged by climate change and world government has willingly been handed to AI. Earth’s population is ten billion, consisting of five billion humans, four billion castes (humans with technological implants) and one billion biots (replicants). In this world, the biots are the peacekeepers, designed to serve their assigned human or caste leaders. Most of the friction occurs between humans and castes as they both see different evolutionary futures. Human’s seek continued natural selection, whereas castes argue for rapid technological advances and unnatural evolution. These evolutionary choices are ignited as both groups fight to gain control of a plentiful supply of Illithium on Mars, a substance rare on Earth. Human’s wish to use the resource to terraform Mars whereas castes seek to develop it for their growing inter solar and inter galactic exploration programs.