"You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad..."

Cherno · 08/18/13 3:41pm

Hello fellow Hackers, Punks, and My Little Pony fans,

I'd like to share my thoughts on this line of dialogue, delivered by Police Commissioner Bob Hauk in 1981's Escape from New York. It is just a blink-and-you'll-miss-it line and the event is not given any more exposition or explaination. However, for William Gibson, this particular line was to have a profound impact.

"I was intrigued by the exchange in one of the opening scenes where the Warden says to Snake 'You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad, didn't you?' It turns out to be just a throwaway line, but for a moment it worked like the best SF where a casual reference can imply a lot." - William Gibson

But first, let's stay in the dystopian future of Escape. The novelization of the movie describes how Snake lost his eye in World War III's Battle of Leningrad, and while I haven't read the novel, I speculate that Snake was a member of some Black Ops outfit whose mission it was to fly over Leningrad to bomb an installation or maybe drop paratroops. The "Gullfire" was probably either a stealth plane or a glider, which would help to explain why Snake was chosen for the Escape mission; Since he would be a crack glider pilot, he could take the glider to the top of the World Trade Center, not an easy task as evidenced by the fact that in the movie, he just barely manages to land the vehicle.

Either way, Gibson finished writing Neuromancer a few years later and what do we find in this "Cyberpunk Bible"? The character of Armitage alias Colonel Willis Corto, the former member of a Special Forces team who were to fly ultralight aircraft deep into Russian territory during World War III to disable important enemy computer systems. However, they were shot down but a surviving Cort managed to escape over the heavily fortified Finnish border, which could imply a mission theatre far in the northwestern part of Russia, next to Finland, and the general region where Leningrad (St. Petersburg) is located.

Sound familiar? Wait, there's more...

In 1989's Pen & Paper roleplaying game Shadowrun, the timeline that leads to the game universe's future 2053 includes a decade-long conflict in middle and eastern Europe called the "Euro-Wars", involving most nations of that region including Russia, Germany and Poland. The conflict was ended rather apruptly when one night Swedish airspace monitors picked up what they believed were British "Nightwraith" bombers flying across the conflict zone and successfully destroying vital command centers of the warring factions, while at the same time unknown assassins killed key generals from both sides, forcing the belligerents to sign an armistice.

I found no sources that directly state if these occurences in literature were directly influenced by the Gulfire line from Escape, but I would think that it's not a coincidence, especially since it's all in the Cyberpunk subgenre (if you want to call Shadowrun Cyberpunk, that is!).

Anyone else got something like that, where story elements, plots, or just throwaway lines like the one discussed here, had obvious influences on later works?

One more that comes to mind are the Tychon Colony Massdrivers from Cyberpunk's backstory, which the Eurospace agency installed in space to enforce their will on earth by letting asteroids fall on or near U.S. cities (Colorado Springs and Washington, D.C. in this case). This concept was found earlier in Walter Jon Williams' 1986s Hardwired, where the earth's wealthy elites live in luxurious space stations that can drop rocks onto the planet's surface without any viable defence possible. Of course, Williams was one of the playtesters of the original Cyberpunk RPG and R. Talsorian Games also later published a sourcebook for Cyberpunk detailing the world of Hardwired.

Calem · 08/18/13 4:38pm

It's a little weird because I never before made the connection between "Escape..." and "Neuromancer" but I knew almost instinctively where you were going when I read the first couple of lines. I don't know if there's an actual connection there intended by Gibson but I feel comfortable tying the two together
Cool perpective.

Screwhead · 08/18/13 5:37pm

I can't find the wall of text I'd written up ages ago, but I once went and linked all three of John Carpenter's "Apocalypse" trilogy together.

From what I remember, in a nutshell: They explain god and the devil as aliens coming to earth in Prince of Darkness; an example of which was The Thing, one of the "devil" aliens. In The Thing, they do the calculation of how long it would take to have the entire population of earth "converted" into Things, which (I had done the math at the time) lined up with how long the author Sutter Cane from In The Mouth of Madness had been writing/selling books.

So my theory was something along the lines that Sutter Cane got "infected" by a Thing that escaped at the end of Prince of Darkness (it's the same kind as The Thing, because the scene with the dogs you see the Thing spray the dogs in the mouth with something, just like in Prince of Darkness the liquid sprays out at people's faces/mouths to "infect" them) and somehow infected Sutter Cane, who went on to write about the ancient creatures taking people's shape and killing everyone, eventually taking over the world..

Dzoshu · 08/19/13 3:20pm

Nice read. Same thing was used in Soldier (with Kurt Russel) as a link with Blade Runner by mentioning the Tanhauser gate.

Cherno · 08/19/13 4:06pm

Yo. I think Kurt Russel's character's dossier in Soldier also lists some weapon from Aliens, I think Ridley Scott meant the Blade Runner and Alien universes to be the same at different times, respectively.

Screwhead · 08/19/13 6:24pm

Cherno wrote:

Yo. I think Kurt Russel's character's dossier in Soldier also lists some weapon from Aliens, I think Ridley Scott meant the Blade Runner and Alien universes to be the same at different times, respectively.

Yeah, I think it was in the special features of the UK version of Prometheus that there's a letter written by Weyland that mentions Tyrell Corp. in some way..

http://io9.com/5949685/blu+ray-extra-ti ... ade-runner

Kovacs · 08/20/13 9:06am

I'd love to do an Operation Screming Fist movie.

Calem · 08/20/13 12:06pm

Kovacs wrote:

I'd love to do an Operation Screming Fist movie.

This being the internet I'd imagine that the title has already been used

Screwhead · 08/20/13 1:01pm

Calem wrote:

Kovacs wrote:
I'd love to do an Operation Screming Fist movie.
This being the internet I'd imagine that the title has already been used

Yeah, just not for sci-fi

Kovacs · 08/21/13 7:48am

I was playing the X-Com remake yesterday and one of the missions was code-named Operation Bleeding Fist... and I just had to laugh. Then cry. Then laugh again.

Cyberpunk Forums

#1 08/18/13 3:41pm

Re: "You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad..."

#2 08/18/13 4:38pm

Re: "You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad..."

#3 08/18/13 5:37pm

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#4 08/19/13 3:20pm

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#5 08/19/13 4:06pm

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#6 08/19/13 6:24pm

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#7 08/20/13 9:06am

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#10 08/21/13 7:48am

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