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Is There a Warning in 'Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams'? (gizmodo.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the scanning-darkly dept.

An anonymous reader quotes io9: That signature feeling feeling of queasy, slow-burning tumult comes through in Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, which originally aired in the UK last September, but is making its American premiere on Amazon Prime this Friday, January 12. The breadth of interpretations across the show's 10 episodes is the real draw for Electric Dreams. One episode will be set in something meant to recognizably stand in for the real world while others are trippy explorations into realities that could never exist. Unfortunately, Electric Dreams' episodes don't just vary in aesthetics; they vary wildly in quality, too...

When Electric Dreams fires on all cylinders, it energizes these short story adaptations by drilling down into the minutiae of how science fiction concepts would alter our everyday existences in real life. The series' common theme is how scientific and technological advancement shears the soul away from our bodies...Electric Dreams' most important task is to show both new viewers and conversant fans why Dick's oeuvre matters, which is hard in a world where we're eerily close to some of his fictional realities...

We're so busy trying to ground ourselves amid constant change that it can be hard to pull out and see society's sweeping shifts. In the '50s and beyond, Dick's science fiction writing mapped out the darker corners of where hi-speed techno-fetishes could take us. For all its unevenness, Electric Dreams adapts his work to show us where we are, relative to his prognostications. If you feel weirded out while watching, that just means the show is doing its job.

14 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Someone just redlined my pretentious-meter.

  2. PKD never concentrated on technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    He concentrated on the human experience having to live with the technology. It was never 'oh, that's cool.' It was always 'Why are we having to deal with this?"

    1. Re:PKD never concentrated on technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's pretty much what everyone's thinking when having to deal with anything related to Microsoft.

  3. Same old warning. by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Note how many of PKDs stories had no ending, note same thing in series (I've only watched the first 4, #3 had no ending). Then read PKDs later works, the ones turned into a pseudo religion, get the warning.

    Warning: DON'T USE SPEED! In the long term it will make you batshit! Minds need sleep.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  4. I've got a feeling feeling... by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... that someone realized Black Mirror was popular and wanted to get on the gravy train.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:I've got a feeling feeling... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      And that "someone" was Channel 4, who launched Black Mirror before losing it to Netflix.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    2. Re:I've got a feeling feeling... by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Informative

      PKD was just ripping off 'GroundHog Day'...wait, it was the other way around.

      Phil's plots are constantly ripped off, unattributed.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  5. What's it like in the last days of Rome 2.0? by alternative_right · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, you see, there's this queasy feeling that somehow life has gone off the rails, that our civilization is not a source of goodness, and that our future is in the hands of incompetents or sadists or maybe both. We have no expectation that we are part of something that makes us feel good to be alive, and are merely corporate stooges waiting out our days so that we can briefly entertain ourselves before passing into oblivion. PKD noticed this -- along with the other writers of his generation and the few before -- but by now, our society is so deeply in denial that we cannot even articulate what he saw. Instead, we just say that it makes us feel unsettled, as if we ate one too many Big Macs during our Soviet-style mandated 52-minute lunch at our mandatory jobs doing unimportant things so that we can all claim we are good workers contributing to the future, tovarisch.

    --
    Alternative Right.
    1. Re:What's it like in the last days of Rome 2.0? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We have no expectation that we are part of something that makes us feel good to be alive

      That's been the case for most of humaity throughout the ages. Most people do not derive a sense of meaning to their lives from the grand sweeping events of the day, instead they derive pleasure from the small things in life: seeing a good movie, enjoying a nice meal with friends, that trip to the Bahamas, an enjoyable hobby or your amateur soccer team's last match where you scored a nice goal. All pretty meaningless stuff. Which is fine as long as you don't let that bother you too much. If it does, you'll have to get off your arseL society is not going to provide your life with meaning, you have to do that yourself.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    2. Re:What's it like in the last days of Rome 2.0? by sad_ · · Score: 2

      choose life.

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
  6. UK's Channel 4 only showed 6 of the 10 episodes by rklrkl · · Score: 2

    UK viewers did get to see 6 episodes last year on Channel 4, but episodes 7-10 appear to be exclusive to Amazon Prime Video in the US (Amazon Prime Video in the UK bizarrely only seems to have episodes 5 and 6 and also wants to charge money for them on top of your Prime sub despite those two episodes having aired nationally for "free" in the UK!).

    I did find "Electric Dreams" to be quite variable over the 10 episodes (yes, as a UK viewer I had no choice but to source episodes from, ahem, "elsewhere"...and there was a total balls up with the episode numbering of downloads particularly for Autofac - which I thought was one of the better episodes - and "Safe and Sound").

    I did think some episodes just ended without tying up the storyline - almost as if they were trying to be a TV pilot or something. Still, a reasonable series overall - it's rare for a UK channel to bother with sci-fi drama, so Channel 4 should be applauded for that, even if they failed to air 40% of the episodes (maybe they'll turn up later this year?).

    1. Re:UK's Channel 4 only showed 6 of the 10 episodes by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      True to PKDs short stories. About half don't have an ending.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  7. Re:Here's your warning... by Blue+Stone · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I love Black Mirror and can tolerate the varying styles and 'quality' of episodes, even the ones I think are less successful I can appreciate because something different is being tried and I value the intention behind it all. Also I love the black humour.

    I watched the first three episodes of Electric Dreams and tapped out. It did just seem like an uninspired 'me too' cash-in on what BM is doing which is a damn shame. PKD's work can serve as great inspiration, but they need inspired work to translate them into a movie/TV show and the people behind this offering don't seem to have bothered.

    --
    Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
  8. Re: Same warning again, don't do tweak! by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

    Imaginary missiles on the other hand?

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'