You have to be taken in--if Precrime is to survive. You’re thinking of your own safety. But think, for a moment, about the system.’ Leaning over, Lisa stubbed out her cigarette and fumbled in her purse for another. ‘Which means more to you---your own personal safety or the existence of the system?’

So, at this point, you're probably asking yourself just what my problem is. Sounds like a good book, full of paradoxes and intriguing questions about the nature of inevitability and free will... I must be a terrible person for not loving it! All the Troubles of the World" (1958), an Asimov short story in which society accepts the automatic prediction of crime Three mutants, known as precogs, have precognitive abilities they can use to see up to two weeks into the future. The precogs are strapped into machines, nonsensically babbling as a computer listens and converts this gibberish into predictions of the future. This information is transcribed onto conventional punched cards that are ejected into various coded slots. These cards appear simultaneously at Precrime and the army headquarters to prevent systemic corruption. [1] Precogs [ edit ] The precogs were originally named Mike, Donna, and Jerry, and were deformed and intellectually disabled. In the adaptation, they are called Agatha, Dashiell, and Arthur—after crime writers Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and Arthur Conan Doyle—children of drug addicts whose mutations led them to dream of future murders, which are captured by machines. They are "deified" by the Precrime officers, and are implied to be intelligent (Agatha guides Anderton successfully through a crowded mall while being pursued by Precrime, and the trio are seen reading large piles of books at the end of the film). In the end of the movie they retire to a rural cottage where they continue their lives in freedom and peace.All the characters feel like pawns used to move the plot forward, but none more so than Anderton's wife. (Probably why her part was entirely changed for the movie version).

However, as Anderton finds out, sometimes all three reports differ quite significantly, and there may be no majority report, even though two reports may have had enough in common for the computer to link them as such. In the storyline, all of the reports about Anderton differ because they predict events occurring sequentially, and thus each is a minority report. Anderton's situation is explained as unique, because he, as Police Commissioner, received notice of the precogs' predictions, allowing him to change his mind and invalidate earlier precog predictions. The Minority Report” tells the story of John Anderton, the creator and head of Precrime, a police agency that uses three mutants called “ precogs” to foresee and stop future crimes before they are committed. Anderton’s own system predicts that he will murder a man within the coming week, but he thinks that he is being framed. Anderton seeks to evade capture while investigating what has happened. Anderton struggles to find an appropriate balance between Precrime authority and individual liberty. Ultimately, Anderton decides to kill Leopold Kaplan to affirm the majority report and thereby preserve the validity of the Precrime system. There's also a rather large plothole in who is helping Anderton and who isn't. There are several factions hunting and helping Anderton.There was no examination of the morality or ethics of imprisoning (PKD's word, remember) mentally disabled people as slaves to a morally questionable practice of imprisoning people prior to their having committed any crime. The reports of all the precogs are analyzed by a computer and, if these reports differ from one another, the computer identifies the two reports with the greatest overlap and produces a "majority report", taking this as the accurate prediction of the future. But the existence of majority reports implies the existence of a "minority report". In the story, Precrime Police Commissioner John A. Anderton believes that the prediction that he will commit a murder has been generated as a majority report. He sets out to find the minority report, which would give him an alternate future. The ONE woman in the book was portrayed alternatively as an untrustworthy whore or a loyal wife. Apparently, there was no middleground. Wow, this was surprisingly bad. The movie was pretty terrible, so I assumed that the short story had to at least be somewhat better... I was horribly wrong. The blurb/synopsis is very ambiguous, yet that's not my problem with this one. Ambiguity doesn't necessarily mean that the novel's going to turn out awful, but rather ambiguity, in most cases, leads to the enjoyment of the reader. In this case, everything didn't work out the way I wanted things to.

But not the shadows of today. The three gibbering, fumbling creatures, with their enlarged heads and wasted bodies, were contemplating the future. The analytical machinery was recording prophecies, and as the three precog idiots talked, the machinery carefully listened. Namely, that in any story with a character knowing the future (specifically his own) there needs to be the feeling of inevitability. That all events are unavoidable, even when actively avoided. If the outcome foretold is to come true in the story, then the protagonist needs to do everything in his power to make sure it doesn't happen. Happily, they don’t — because we get to them first, before they can commit an act of violence. So the commission of the crime itself is absolute metaphysics. We can claim they are culpable. They, on the other hand, can eternally claim they’re innocent. And, in a sense, they are innocent.” Shortly afterwards, Anderton receives a card from the precogs stating that he will be the perpetrator of a crime in just a few days’ time. The person he is going to kill, a Mr. Leopold Kaplan, is quite unknown to him. Anderton is aghast. Not only is his future on the line - having received notification by the precogs that a crime is going to happen the police have no option but detain him - but the reputation of the agency is also at stake. Anderton does not know Kaplan at all; why should he want to kill him? He suspects a conspiracy to get him out of the way as a police commissioner, possibly to make way for his shiny new assistant, Witwer. He tries to escape. But how to disappear in a city that is tightly controlled and all movements monitored? While the premise is very interesting, the execution for me was horrible. I honestly only liked the first story, and the others were boring and flat. I needed to force myself to read and read hoping to be able to enjoy myself, but after every short story the level of my boredom drastically increased.What if we can detect crimes before they happen? What if we can arrest criminals before they commit crimes? Anderton is the commissioner and founder of Precrime, the police force that arrests criminals before they have a chance to commit crime. Computers manipulate “gibberish” from three “precogs,” each one seeing into a possible future, and Anderton determines whether a crime will be committed. When two or more “precogs” agree on an outcome, the resulting agreement is a majority report and the police can act on it. The system has been working fine until one day a majority report indicates Anderton will murder a retired general. Akbar, Arifa (25 September 2023). "Minority Report drama to feature in Lyric Hammersmith's 'really bold' spring lineup". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 September 2023. So the commission of a crime itself is absolute metaphysics. We claim they are culpable. They, on the other hand, eternally claim they’re innocent. And, in a sense, they are innocent.’

John Allison Anderton’s day begins with the arrival of a snot nosed kid by the name of Ed Witwer. He has been assigned to Precrime to eventually replace Anderton whenever he decides to retire. The system is based on three Precogs who can foresee the future. They are able to see a crime before it is committed. When two or more agree, it is called a majority report, but if one disagrees with the other two, that is a minority report. Anderton designed the system, but even he has some qualms about the validity of what they do. The 2002 film Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg and with Tom Cruise as main actor, was based on the story. And your "boss" was totally cool with your plan to take out some of his own employees for no reason, other than making a chapter end with a cliffhanger?When Anderton pulls the latest cards from the Precogs and finds his name among them, stipulating that he is going to kill someone next week he doesn’t even know, he knows that he is being framed. He has no choice but to go on the run and hide until the week has passed and, in the process, prove the error of the forecasting, but if he does that, he also proves the system is flawed. There are people who most definitely don’t want that to happen. He soon finds he can’t trust anyone, and maybe the very person he trusts the least is his only hope at discovering and exposing the truth. Without going to go into any detail about what happens next (for the benefit of readers who have not read/watched this yet), I'm now going to explain what makes this a very special story for me.