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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.

6 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. 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'
  2. 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 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'
  3. 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...
  4. 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