Rezension zu "The Minority Report" von Philip K. Dick
Achtung: bezieht sich NUR auf die titelgebende Short Story
StefanieFreigericht
...es gibt eine ebook-Version mit NUR der Titelgeschichte.
I was surprised I rather liked this - not like enthusiastically, but I felt very entertained. I had never seen the movie and I do normally dislike S/F stories. This one comes a bit different.
Set in a post-war future on earth, Precrime is the main method (and department) of policing (nowadays, that method would be called preventive policing, so it is not *that* far-fatched). Five years ago, the last murder occurred. Any other moment, the deed had been prevented before it could happen - thanks to the predictions uttered by the three so-called precogs. Analysis of everything those three say has become the major task of the police - as it had been established by Police Commissioner John Anderton. Now that Anderton has Ed Witwer in his office, the young man supposed to take over his job one day, Anderton. Unwilling as Anderton is to this, he soon recognizes more problems: he finds his own name on one of the cards for criminals-to-become.
Despite the S/F setting, and concept of the precogs, the rest of the story is based on the one hand on the general moral discussion (suffering victims vs. suffering of technically innocent inmates) and on the other hand on the logical discourse within the case of "minority report vs. majority report".
Great idea and plot - although it makes me wonder to read that Dick basically seems to have done everything under the influence. I needed a cyberpunk story for the 2018 Popsugar Reading Challenge and will rather get the whole book. I do not like Tom Cruise, but this was no "Mission Impossible" to broaden my reading horizon.