Who Stands Against Them?
Ben Reich’s antagonist is Lincoln Powell, first class Esper and police prefect. He uncovers Reich’s guilt after a ten-minute interview, but cannot enter that telepathic evidence in court. So he relies on old-fashioned police investigation to uncover motive, opportunity and means. As Reich does, Powell conceals his own mental derangements – the alternate personality of “Dishonest Abe,” a compulsive liar. They both tread that narrow line between genius and insanity.
John Spartan was thawed out of cryo-prison to apprehend Simon Phoenix, the murderous gang warlord who brought him down forty years ago. Phoenix injects a streak of psychotic glee into everything he does. He murders casually, takes what he wants and breaks what he doesn’t. While in hibernation, he was subjected to neural reprogramming (for reasons not immediately obvious), making him an expert in explosives, computers and all variety of modern weapons. Once unleashed on 2032 San Angeles, he recruits like-minded thugs out of cryo-prison to begin a new reign of terror.
Sent to cryo-prison for tax evasion.
Who’d Win A Fight?
Set aside for the moment that The Demolished Man and Demolition Man take place in very different futures, written by very different authors in very different time periods. Presume that Ben Reich, genius industrialist of Monarch Enterprises, and John Spartan, reckless LAPD cop, had to butt heads. Who’d come out on top?
Ben Reich has the capability to commit a murder against overwhelming odds and get away with it. He has the resources of an interplanetary megacorporation at his disposal, which he uses to obtain exotic weapons and temporarily mislead the telepaths after him. And there’s nothing he won’t do to get what he wants. A man with limitless ambition, infinite resources and psychotic willpower can’t be stopped.
And yet John Spartan’s dealt with such before. Edgar Cocteau, though not as power-mad as Reich, is certainly quite nefarious. And his rule over San Angeles goes unquestioned by everyone except Edgar Friendly (a social outcast with limited power) and John Spartan. Only Spartan, an outsider with a cop’s nose for crime and a bad attitude, can ferret out the extent of Cocteau’s corruption. It’s not as if the San Angeles Police Department were investigating Cocteau before Spartan arrived.
So it seems reasonable to presume that Spartan could take Reich. At the very least, he’d make a fight out of it.
Hmmm….
Alfred Bester also a character name in Babylon 5 who happens to be a Telepath. I see a small hommage going on.
The Espers Guild = Psi Corps.
!m!
Here’s the speech from Denis Leary…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JizGkM6gbvQ
Another thing of note is that this was Leary’s heyday. When perich says, “The audience nods their heads at his crude libertarianism, even though the politically correct society of San Angeles is largely harmless. Spartan, the movie’s hero, empathizes with him – and since he, a man of the 90s, is the lens through which a 90s audience interacts with the film’s future, we are meant to empathize as well.”
He’s spot on. Leary was the type of man that could sing “I’m an asshole” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPnv8UvKFzc .
The reason I bring this up is the comparison between the 50s and 90s. In the 50s, things looked really good – Babyboomers, low unemployment, American pride from winning the WWII, nationalism vs. the Ruskies. In the 90s, things looked really good, Gen X, low unemployment, American pride from winning the Cold War, and lots of coke up the nose. (OK, so the coke part didn’t happen as much in the 50’s).
There’s an ebb and flow to the watered down good and the libertarian good moving together.
If only I could find out who was the 50’s Denis Leary was and what did he say?
@Marc: The homage is deliberate in Babylon 5’s case. I meant to find a photo of Walter Koenig in Psi Corps mufti to sprinkle in the piece, but it slipped my mind. Cred goes to you!
@Darin: Lenny Bruce was the 50s Denis Leary.
More to your point, there’s an interesting undercurrent of “yes, but do we have it too good?” in both of those pieces. Political correctness – the defining feature of San Angeles – is the kind of thing you can only worry about if you have lots of well-fed, employed, contented people. Ditto marketing jingles in the 50s.
So the nominal utopias in which Bester and, um, Peter Lenkov set their respective stories wouldn’t look so bad if viewed through, say, the late 40s or late 60s.
Hrm, methinks I’m gonna have to go get myself a copy of The Demolished Man – sounds like a fascinating book.
@Darin:
Lenny Bruce would be the ’50s Dennis Leary.