Models? Replicants? …Donors?

In the BladeRunner franchise, replicants are clones which have been modified to have heightened strength, ability, speed, stamina, depending on the job to which they’ve been assigned. In my series Reality Gradient,  the models stem from a similar concept, in that they are genetically-altered clones. There are a few other significant differences between replicants and models, although I was not thinking about BladeRunner as I wrote my series.

Replicants are often stronger and larger than other humans and are well-disposed to do the jobs that other humans simply won’t do. Replicant women are strikingly beautiful, something that’s pretty consistent through all BladeRunner movies. Models can be, though this is far from a prerequisite. Certain models engineered for sex work — like Monica Caldwell and her “sister” Kiera Caldwell in Bodhi Rising — are both impossibly beautiful because they’re engineered that way. Others, like Amanda Briggs in my written-but-not-edited WIP Better than Dying isn’t attractive in the breathtaking way that they are. Briggs are engineered for fighting or entertainment and not the sex trades.

Another commonality stems from the universes and not just the models. There are mechanisms of control that exist for both replicants and models. Institutions spend significant resources controlling both groups. In BladeRunner, the Tyrell Corporation goes as far as implanting false memories, which is a significant premise in the movies. In Reality Gradient, the controls are not as subtle. I “modeled” the model slave class and their relationship with society on the slave class and treatment that we’ve had in the United States in the past. For my models, similar to slave treatment in the United States pre-civil war, behavior modification is used more than deception. Models go into “reprogramming” if they misbehave — a round of torture used for behavioral conditioning, similar to the United States in the past. Models are beaten, cut, put in boxes with barely enough room to move, and undergo many other abuses under the guise of “fixing” them.

Unlike Emergent Biotechnology in the Reality Gradient series, The Tyrell Corporation implements a draconian 4-year lifespan after which replicants are retired. In Reality Gradient, models are reclaimed instead of retired. There exist massive factories set up across the United States where models can be quickly dissolved in vats of chemicals to re-use their constituent proteins and save companies like Emergent Biotechnology money on production costs.

The similarities don’t stop there. Just like BladeRunner replicants, models are predominantly ignored by most humans in the Reality Gradient universe. Most non-replicants, who in my universe would be called polli, go through life completely comfortable and even ignorant of how many models operate in their midst.

There are many differences too. In BladeRunner, the Tyrell Corporation spends a lot of time cleaning up their own mess — being almost a supra-governmental entity. No such corresponding entity exists in the Reality Gradient universe. For example, in Models and Citizens, there is an “evil” corporation, but they don’t have the reach and power that the Tyrell Corporation do. They aren’t even the only corporation making clones. So when it comes to retrieving models who have gone missing, multiple bounty hunters and police forces are involved in the chase since Emergent, like most corporations today, don’t have their own security branch.

In Reality Gradient, the social interaction of models and society are based on history, as I’ve mentioned before. When slaves went missing, the entire community worked to retrieve them, from police forces to bounty hunters to local, state, and federal governments. There really was nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. The cost of models (and slaves) made the loss of one big news. This differs a bit from BladeRunner, in which the Tyrell Corporation has so much power that they can keep things like escapes secret from much of society and work on their own to bring in their captor quietly and without (too much) fuss — at least without so much fuss that it stands out from the rest of the chaos in this very noir universe.

In that, we see entirely different futures between the two universes. The Reality Gradient future is one of startling normalcy for most of the United States population. The slave class is kept the slave class through laws, and for the most part models conform. There’s some hint of a rebellion there, and movements to help models, but just like in the United States in the 1840s, there’s no recourse for people in the slave class to petition for their freedom — though it doesn’t stop Ordell from trying in Models and Citizens. The world in Reality Gradient hasn’t degraded into a series of graphic sex ads and overwhelming consumer culture. It’s a world that focuses on normal people and real life. Even the models don’t try that hard to change things, because they’ve been socially engineered and conditioned to accept their place. In Models and Citizens, for example, Ordell doesn’t flee captivity for the vague concept of freedom. He runs to save his own life and the life of his lover. Only very slowly does he come to the realization that freedom is even a possibility.

There is one more way that the two worlds collide. K is a new breed and can never fight against the will of authority. In fact, he doesn’t even want to for most of the movie BladeRunner 2049. It’s only through a series of accidents that he even discovers how important a role he might be able to play in the brewing rebellion of replicants versus those who would control them. Toward the end of the movie, however, the viewers believe that there’s a way replicants might one day be free. This vein of hope rings true in Reality Gradient also, as by the time the series ends, we do see real progress being made in polli-model interactions.

My Reality Gradient series differs significantly from the BladeRunner franchise on one final key way that may grate some people: replicants are the central focus throughout the latter, but the former is about humanity in many forms. Models are only one type of non-traditional humanity. The series also ventures into artificial intelligence and simply human relationships. The series is an exploration of what it means to be human, and the various forms that humanity can express itself.

My next series (I’m about 2 books in) is called Virtual Wars, and is due to release starting in 2023. This one is 6 books (planned) that cover the struggle for model rights in more detail. The series dovetails nicely with Reality Gradient, and models will find some intriguing allies as they try to assert their independence against a social backlash that threatens to undo all of the achievements of models seen throughout the Reality Gradient series. Look for it in 2023!

It’s important to understand that I didn’t seek to make anything like BladeRunner when I started Reality Gradient. When I wrote the first book, Models and Citizens, the story was originally not even about clones. That concept came from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (great novel, you should read if you haven’t yet). The ideas about slavery and how society functioned all came from our very real history with it here int he United States, right down to the Fugitive Slave Act. That the series came out similar to BladeRunner in many ways is more of a testament to the fact that the struggle for freedom and to be recognized as equal is universal. Those who choose to engage with this subject have some common elements to consider: what social structures are necessary to perpetuate oppression, why haven’t the oppressed raised up (i.e. what controls are in place to prevent it), and how do the controlling class rationalize the oppression. These questions must be answered — even in Ishiguro’s compelling more literary novel. Most class-based dystopian novels must answer these questions to some extent.