The Minority Report

"The Minority Report" is a 1956 science fiction novella by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in Fantastic Universe.

Plugged into a great machine, these "precogs" allow a division of the police called Precrime to arrest suspects before they can commit any actual crimes.

The story reflects many of Philip K. Dick's personal Cold War anxieties, particularly questioning the relationship between authoritarianism and individual autonomy.

In 2002, the story was adapted into a film directed by Steven Spielberg, which starred Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, and Max von Sydow.

In a near-future version of the United States, John Allison Anderton is the aging creator and head police commissioner of the Precrime Division, in which three mutant humans called "precogs" predict all crimes before they occur.

Believing Witwer has framed him in order to steal his job, Anderton tells his much younger wife Lisa, who is a fellow police official.

He is suddenly abducted and brought before Leopold Kaplan, a retired general and Anderton's expected murder victim, although the two have never met.

Anderton contacts a friend at Precrime to inquire about a "minority report": a type of dissenting opinion in which one of the three precogs' predictions conflicts with those of the other two.

Anderton must now decide whether to remain silent and turn himself in, or speak up about the minority report and thus reveal a flaw that could discredit the entire Precrime system.

Wanting to preserve the status quo, Anderton decided to fulfill the prediction and assassinate Kaplan rather than letting his own innocence destroy the system he helped create.

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.

It is in this way that the story weaves a complicated web of crossing time paths and makes a linear journey for Anderton harder to identify.

Precrime is based on the notion that once one unpleasant future pathway is identified, an alternative, better one can be created with the arrest of the potential perpetrator.

Ultimately, Anderton decides to kill Leopold Kaplan to affirm the majority report and thereby preserve the validity of the Precrime system.