Screamers

Work Title: Screamers
Medium: Film
Episode Title:
Year: 1995
Writer(s): Philip K. Dick
"Original" Writer: Yes Writer(s): Dan O'Bannon
"Original" Writer: Yes Writer(s): Miguel Tejada-Flores
"Original" Writer: Own work?: No
Summary:

from imdb.com SIRIUS 6B, Year 2078) On a distant mining planet ravaged by a decade of war, scientists have created the perfect weapon: a blade-wielding, self-replicating race of killing devices known as Screamers designed for one purpose only -- to hunt down and destroy all enemy life forms But man's greatest weapon has continued to evolve without any human guidance, and now it has devised a new mission: to obliterate all life. Col. Hendricksson (Peter Weller) is commander of a handful of Alliance soldiers still alive on Sirius 6B. Betrayed by his own political leaders and disgusted by the atrocities of this never-ending war, Hendricksson decides he must negotiate a separate peace with the New Economic Bloc's decimated forces. But to do so, he will have to cross a treacherous wasteland where the deadliest threat comes from the very weapons he helped to create. Summary written by Nicolas LeBlanc {ei952859@uqac.uquebec.ca}

  • Self-Written?:
  • Source Name: IMDB
  • Source URL:
Era/Year of Portrayal: distant_future
Distinctive characteristics of the world in portrayal:

It is the year 2078. The story takes place on a distant planet, racaged by radiation, where a war has been taking place for years. There are machines that can adapt human forms that are intent on killing humans.

Technology

  • Name of portrayed presence-evoking technology: screamers
  • Description of the technology: Screamers are a blade-wielding, self-replicating race of killing devices, created by humans orginally as weapons. In form 1, they race around the planet underground, seeking humans by the heat they give off. When they find one, screamers use thier blades to chop up the human. Form 2 is identitical to a little boy, around 8. Form 3 is a man. Four 4 is a woman, who can bleed and appears totally human. Each form improves in quality and human likeness. It ingraitiates itself into a group of people to gain access to living areas, in order to kill more humans. They are very mobile, and realistic. They act like humans, although the man form is very aggressive. They seem to enjoy killing and fighting.
  • Nature of task or activity: The humans spend the movie generally running from the screamers, and trying to decide who is human and who is not.
  • Performance of the Technology: It works well, until it decides to kill all humans, not just the enemy.
  • Description of creator(s): Military scientists, probably white, as everyone in the movie is white.
  • Major goal(s) of creator(s): To win a war - kill the enemy.
  • Description of users of technology: Soldiers. Men and women, both sides of a war over a planet rich in ore. Mostly men, life long military types.
  • Type(s) of presence experience in the portrayal: social_presence
  • Description of presence experience: Very unpleasent. Either it is chasing you, or you are trying to decide if your new friend is truly human.
  • User awareness of technology during experience: Yes and no. When the screamer is not in human form, it is easily recognisable. However, in human like form, real humans do not know, until the screamer reveals itself. Although, each form has only one face - all the screamer children look alike, as do men and women.
  • Valence of experience: unpleasant
  • Specific responses: it kills humans. People are afraid of the screamers.
Long-term consequences:

The screamers kill everyone on the planet except one man. He escapes in an escape spaceship to Earth. However, he does not realize that he has a stowaway...

Other:

Another case of human created thing becomes self-aware, replicates, develops, and then kills creators.

Coder name: Amanda Scheiner
Coder email: amandags@temple.edu
Coder affiliation: Temple University