Amazon Prime: Electric Dreams

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

Anyone watch?

These are short stories from Phillip K Dick converted to one hour shows.

Lots of A list actors spread throughout. Some of the shows were very interesting.

I particularly liked

"Safe and Sound" and "Kill All Others", which are quite political.

Amazon seems to have a lot of PKD direct to video.

911_Dude · 03-16-2018, 05:51 AM

I think its a great series. Especially if you like Black Mirror. Its kind of like a little bit more into the future Black Mirror.

masraum · 03-16-2018, 06:12 AM

I haven't watched any yet, but I'm curious. I sci-fi nut at work said "it's like 'Black Mirror' but not as good".

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

I haven't watched black mirror, so I can't comment. Is Black Mirror a series, or built as totally separate stories?

BlueSkyJaunte · 03-16-2018, 10:08 AM

I love Philip K. Dick's writing. The quality of the film and TV adaptations of his work has been spotty at best. It really bothers me that Hollywood is making buckets of money off of his work, but he suffered from mental illness and was never saw much financial success. If I recall at one point Heinlein lent him money so PKD could pay his taxes!

LakeCleElum · 03-16-2018, 10:18 AM

I watched them film "The Man in the High Castle" here a few years ago. Same place as "Northern Exposure" was filmed. Book was good.

https://pemco.com/blog/tv-pilot-now-filming-in-roslyn-seattle

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

I'd love to see some of Alan Dean Foster's stuff done this way.

He had two early collections of short stories, "Why Friends like these..." and "Who needs enemies?"

Why Johnny Can't Speed - Would be fantastic in a 1/2 or 1 hour show

gtc · gtc's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by red-beard

I haven't watched black mirror, so I can't comment. Is Black Mirror a series, or built as totally separate stories?

Black Mirror episodes are independent, but they do have some elements that appear repeatedly.
I thought the Electric Dreams episodes were decent. Perhaps not as good as some Black Mirror episodes, but they seemed more faithful to PKD than most of the movies that have been made over the years.

Pazuzu · 03-17-2018, 07:54 AM

I suffered through 2 episodes of Electric Dreams, and won't bother with the rest. How can you take a bottle storyline, which was 15 pages originally, and turn it into an hour long political social commentary? I'm actually a bit surprised that you liked them red-beard.

Autofac? How can they do such injustice to a simple story?
Also, looking at the episode list, 90% of them were stories that were not good to begin with, or very obscure. Considering the list of PKD stories that are (a) excellent, (b) not already movies, and (c) frighteningly contemporary, and they ignored almost all of them? "Pay for the Printer" would be a scathing examination of current technology. "The Mold of Yancy" ? Perfect today. "The Days of Perky Pat"? You can see that same "delusional life is more important than real life" every day around us.

The power of PKD is that his short stories in 1956 are COMING TRUE. Why add to them, they are horrifying just as they are!

Now, I will say, it appears that most of the stories in Electric Dreams are from the first half of his short story career, while I seem to prefer the second half. Maybe they'll do a second season with some more "contemporary" stories.

AS a final comment, I still want to see a 3-4 hour miniseries version of "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath". I think that we are at a point when something like Netflix could throw enough money and effort into that...the story is just DYING for a long form, fully fleshed out movie.

RSBob · RSBob's Garage

Electric dreams were ok, but really enjoyed the twisted characters in Tin Star. Very humanly flawed characters, strange plot twists, an alcoholic washed up lead, and a psycho corporate guy right out of Fargo. What’s not to like?

BlueSkyJaunte · 03-19-2018, 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

The power of PKD is that his short stories in 1956 are COMING TRUE. Why add to them, they are horrifying just as they are!

On the nose.

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

AS a final comment, I still want to see a 3-4 hour miniseries version of "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath". I think that we are at a point when something like Netflix could throw enough money and effort into that...the story is just DYING for a long form, fully fleshed out movie.

I would love to see most of Lovecraft done as 1 hour episodes on Netflix. Only, if they are done, they need to be updated, as best as they can, to modern days. That was the whole point of Lovecraft. It wasn't Dracula in some far off castle in Transylvania. It was just done the street, in Boston!

At lot of it had to do with the split between the just barely modern (electric lights) and towns still without electricity, which was where all of the funky stuff occured.

OTOH, At the Mountains of Madness could be easily done modern.