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If you find this world bad, you should see some of the others (1977) [pdf]
- CmdrLoskene 4y agoThe article has been disappeared from archive.org, due to "content." Whatever that means.
- moloch-hai 4y agoA great mystery of the world is how we came to have so many movies based on PKD stories. It is all out of any proportion to anything objectively identifiable about the stories themselves. Why them, and not Heinlein, or Pohl, or Anderson? They are good, but not exactly easy to translate to the screen. Not easier than other good stories. It suggests some sort of cabal wanting them produced, and moving in the shadows to make it happen. Of course this is very much in line with the stories themselves, but that doesn't help at all.
- mjklin 4y agoVALIS is real, that’s all.
- is0tope 4y agoIndeed, I've always thought there is a veritable bounty of great SciFi stories to put into film. The recent popularity of SciFi shows suggests to me that we will start to see more works transferred to the big (or small) screen, though as always this seems to be a very hit or miss process. Personally, I'd love to see e.g. The Culture novels be made into a show, or series of films. There was talk of making a Consider Phlebas TV show some time back, though I don't think it went anywhere. Heinlein's "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" could also do well as a stand alone movie, though possibly with Heinlein you would need to tone down the polygamy themes. As to why PKD became such a cinematic mainstay I can't quite tell. I would think part of it would be to do with the fact that many of his stories were less about the "lasers and spaceships" part of SciFi, and more about the moral and human aspect, meaning costs could be saved on big budget set pieces ala Star Wars.
- lazide 4y agoI’m guessing because: Heinlein embeds too many weird sexual themes in non-trivial ways in his stories. Culture is too difficult to convey in a movie. The relationship of the AIs to the humans in particular is too subtle to come across well, and it’s too easy to make it into a giant party with occasional inexplicable violence.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> Heinlein embeds too many weird sexual themes in non-trivial ways in his stories. Didn't seem to be a problem for A Song of Ice and Fire.
- kadoban 4y agoIt's only quite recent that something like GOT has been possible. And GOT is pretty tame, sexually, compared to what Heinlein stories got up to. Incest is a little spicy, but those are the villans so it's a bit more accepted, and the rest of GOT is mostly just a flash of tit or dick now and then, right? More titilating than conceptually boundary pushing. Heinlein had, off the top of my head: a main character forgiving and falling in love with her rapist, mother/son incest including protagonist, big ol' family incest (more complicated and varied than I can remember the details of) including "the good guys", a transexual protagonist (including many, many sexual descriptions), many varieties of open relationships, more forms of group marriage than I've ever heard anywhere else, and a sex cult (started by the protagonist). Most of those you could probably leave out of whatever story without too much trouble, but they're not exactly small parts of their respective stories either. Still, I'd think someone could make a really good movie/show out of at least: Friday, Double Star, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, probably a few others.
- rsynnott 4y agoThere's nothing _that_ weird in Moon is a Harsh Mistress, is there? Long time since I've read it, but I think some sort of polyamory was about as out-there as it got. If they can make a docudrama about FTX (and they will) they can make that :) Even some of the others... I mean, they made the Handmaid's Tale, and that's way more distressing than most of Heinlein's Weird Sex Stuff.
- drewcoo 4y agoWell . . . Stanislaw Lem had constant harping claims that Dick was a capitalist committee invention. https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is-a-communist-committee https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is...
- Kbelicius 4y agoIt was the other way around. Dick had constant harping claims that Lem was a communist committee invention as it says in the article that you linked.
- smnc 4y agoFurthermore, from the same article: > Lem, however, considered one science fiction author as exempt from his scathing criticisms – his denouncer, Philip K. Dick. The title of an essay Lem published about Dick is evidence enough of this high regard: A Visionary Among the Charlatans. The essay itself waxes lyrical on Dick’s many excellent qualities as a writer, and expounds upon the dire state of US sci-fi. Lem considered Dick to be the only writer exempt from his cynical view of American SF.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoAccusing someone of really being a secret committe that puts out work under the name of one person, as the way to explain their high quality and quantity is more of of a compliment than an attack.
- vba616 4y agoIt could hardly be considered unprecedented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki
- rcme 4y agoObviously just a personal opinion, but Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a much more compelling story than Solaris (the only Lem I've read). I loved Solaris. It's a beautiful piece of writing. But Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep had me on the edge of my seat in anticipation. I'm not surprised that Blade Runner makes a more compelling movie than Solaris's film adaptation.
- irishloop 4y agoI think some of it is simply that PKD was prolific, and created a lot of ideas pretty quickly. There are other huge authors in sci fi but I feel like a great many of them stuck to a single universe or at least thematically kind of stuck around in similar areas, whereas PKD created just a truly insane amount of ideas. Even Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep is almost like 3 sci fi novels in one and its not even that long.
- lmm 4y agoA possibly salient fact is that Dick and LeGuin are essentially the two sci-fi authors who attracted academic study. Whatever the initial impetus, those doing literary analysis like to be able to cite and build on previous papers, and so it's easier for everyone else to stick to those two.
- jessaustin 4y agoA decent Le Guin movie would be nice. There was some sort of Earthsea Syfy series but it was execrably unwatchable.
- vincent-manis 4y agoThe 1980 PBS “Lathe of Heaven” was excellent. Apparently Le Guin herself was involved to some extent in the production.
- reeckoh 4y agoThey did make a movie out of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. But the director, Paul Verhoeven, lived through WWII and found the militaristic ethos so abhorrent that he threw out most of the story and made a comical parody of the book.
- Hoasi 4y agoStarship Troopers is a great movie. It starts as every silly archetypal superhero movie but ends up being much more profound.
- lelanthran 4y ago> Why them, and not Heinlein, or Pohl, or Anderson? I've always thought that Pohl's "The Tunnel Under the World" would make a great movie (sort of like a twist on Groundhog Day, but more relevant for the intrusive ad-filled times we live in).
- bruce511 4y agoI'm thinking a combination of reasons; A) filmability - Gateway would be fantastic, but expensive to film. Counter-point would be "the Space Merchants", which would be "cheap" to film (but perhaps not please the sponsors.) B) risk. PKD stories have a proven track record. A E van Vogt not so much (as far as I know). (although Weapon Shops would be great, albeit political bait.) On the other hand its now becoming possible to film some of these stories in a non-cheesy way (think Dune) so I expect we'll see more of them.
- BerislavLopac 4y agoI think that at least one of the reasons is that the topic of many of his stories/novels is blurring the boundaries between the reality and non-reality (however that is defined in each novel). This is a recurring theme, with neither the reader nor the protagonist(s) being sure about things: * DADoES / Blade Runner: Who is an android/replicant and who is a human? * WCRIfYW / Total Recall: Which memories are real and which are implanted? * Ubik: Who is dead and who is alive? The filmmakers love this concept as it has many parallels with making films - see Inception and Matrix as examples.
- sogen 4y agoYes, great point. Was watching Blade Runner again recently, and realized this time I sided with the robots, as they mostly just wanted to live. Same with A Scanner Darkly, the theme being “who am I?”
- mattclarkdotnet 4y agoMaybe because PKD could actually write? Heinlein, Pohl, and Anderson have interesting ideas but none of them can do character development, emotion, depth, etc. PKD instantly draws you in with fully formed characters in a world you can connect with emotionally.
- n4r9 4y agoI agree Heinlein wrote one-dimensional characters; the male heroes were idealised versions of himself and the women were objects of wish-fulfillment. Pohl wrote pretty well in my opinion. The psycho-therapeutic aspect of Gateway is brilliant for the sci fi of that era. Plenty of sci fi authors wrote characters comparably with PKD, such as Zelazny, Le Guin, and Bester.
- mattclarkdotnet 4y agoLe Guin is a great author but I struggle to engage with her characters. Brian Aldiss I think does better? And Vinge? This is sticking to the classic era. The genre has changed and there are too many more recent excellent SF writers of character to do justice to in a post
- n4r9 4y agoMaybe a subjective thing then, as I remember enjoying the joint character development of e.g. Ai and Estraven in Left Hand of Darkness.
- n4r9 4y agoA few possible explanations: - PKD wrote tonnes of short stories. Four big volumes worth, I believe. Short stories are great for movies because they present a central idea but give the director lots of freedom. - His stories frequently involved several tropes that work well in movies: drugs, massive corporate entities, multiple realities, and the everyman hero. - Other sci fi authors had a tendency to be preachy (Heinlein), or too progressive for the time (le Guin). PKD wrote in an unassuming and non-judgemental way. His characters might have had regressive opinions, but he never seemed to push what he thought was best for society.
- thorin 4y agoYes, I agree with the short story part, these are attractive to film makers and for instance I think all of the good Stephen King films are based on his short stories. I always though Man who fell to earth (Bowie) was an (unofficial?) version of Stranger in a strange land, I can't think of any other Heinlein films apart from Starship Troopers (which is a pretty short story and nothing like the book).
- n4r9 4y agoGoogle suggests there's been a few, just not as famous as the ones you mentioned: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_Eaters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_Eaters * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppet_Masters_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppet_Masters_(film) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Moonbase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Moonbase * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13757540/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13757540/
- thorin 4y agoI remember seeing an advert for door into summer, never heard of the others, thanks.
- jonjacky 4y agoThere is a recent (2021) Japanese movie of The Door Into Summer. Other than being set in Japan, it was pretty faithful to the book, as I remember it: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13757540/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13757540/
- bena 4y agoPeople have a lot of ideas, but I think there's one that trumps all. PKD was fucking cheap. I don't mean he was a spendthrift, I mean, that his rights were on sale to anyone with a nickel. His net worth when he died was roughly half a million in today's money. He lived pretty broke for most of his life. He always needed cash. Read Valis, it's semi-autobiographical. Or at the very least, it's self-reflective. The main character is a version of himself. It's a very interesting read because you do get a sense of not only the man himself, but what he thought of himself. And after he died, his children essentially turned his intellectual property into a business.
- sogen 4y agoDang! Can’t unthink this now.
- bmitc 4y agoI will read the article, but for the title, it isn't the world that is bad. It is humanity. We directly cause nearly the totality of our problems.
- stephc_int13 4y agoNot sure if we are essentially bad a a species or infants repeating the same mistakes every few generational cycles. I think we could be collectively better if we had time to build both vast knowledge and wisdom and use it before dying of old age.
- bmitc 4y agoWe live 50-80 years and have writing. I'm not sure there's an argument for us not having enough time or knowledge bases to grow out of infancy.
- stephc_int13 4y agoAnd still we collectively make the same mistakes over and over again. This is not what I'd call learning. We don't remember much from the past because we were not alive, we don't read much about it, the available knowledge is extremely sparse and biased. I only recently understood the scale of the generational knowledge loss. We tend to intuitively associate longevity with old age and all of its quirkiness and frailty, but if we solved ageing, being old would not be a thing anymore.
- bmitc 4y agoRight, my point is that we have the tools and capability, but we don't take advantage of them.
- ghusto 4y agoWe're the only species to systematically (and of course casually) care for other species. Similarly, the only ones who travel great distances (across the world!) to care for others we've never met our even know. Only species to care for our environment. Living in equilibrium with your environment isn't the same as caring about it. You can bet that if burning down the forest got you chicks as a leapord, we'd have run out of forests a long time ago. Meanwhile, we reflect on what we've done, and make our future decisions based on that reflection. These things are "as a species", and not about individuals or political allegances in America. I'm really tired of this hip-to-be-cynical attitude that dumps all over our species, and overlooks how amazing we are. Ironically though that's one of our redeeming character traits too.
- silcoon 4y agoRead “I Am Alive and You Are Dead” by Carrère just a few weeks ago. It was such an inspiring book with details about Dick visions and way of thinking
- danbmil99 4y agoOne thing PKD did that lends itself to moviemaking is just the fact that his novels are generally short and focus on quickly building a fantastic yet consistent world in the first few pages. Then he gives us a plotline that involves a conflict between the world he's built for us, and our common sense notions borne out of our experience in the "real" world. The cherry on top is the denouement, where he asks us: are you sure your world is the "real" one? I think this formula just really matches the pace and scope of a feature-length movie. Note that TV series based on his books have not been as numerous or successful. The best of the bunch may be "Man In The High Tower", but it massively diverges from the book not too far in. Also, he was a f*king genius at predicting future memes.
- danbmil99 4y agocorr: Man In The High Castle
- sogen 4y agoAgreed, even short stories like Roof touch on this theme of what is real, which btw was his first sold work!
- lesserknowndan 4y agoI believe parent is referring to Philip K Dick… but I’m not sure as the original article is now unavailable.
- SentientAtom 4y agoHow would we perceive such lateral changes? What would we experience? What clues -- if we are trying to test out this bizarre theory -- should we be on the alert for? Ah yes, Douglas swinging that Mandella Effect broadsword before it was ever forged. How appropriate!
- college_physics 4y agoI have read alot of scifi, both good and bad, but PKD stands apart not in competition but as his own category. Not in a literary sense but by practicing what one might call therapeutic philosophy that aims to sooth the lack of answers to eternal questions. Especially Man in the High Castle where he explores alternate "nearby" realities, our ability to sense them and in what sense we have agency to shape our destiny.
- sogen 4y agoYes, and to add to that, that some topics are biographical or based on some personal thing, like Bob Arctor in A Scanner Darkly. haven’t seen the movie, but on the book he mentions this.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoOne thing many do not appreciate, is that history is only linear, once its happened. Befor that, history is a tree. Branches and subbranches of what could be, traversing them gains you ability and accumulates disabilitys, leading back to branches, that are similiar to the now (roots). One can go high in the branches, accumulating very high propabilitys of catastrophic failures - like for example handing out nukes to every government on the planet. One can invest all into root hardening, such for example, recording a self explaining encyclopedia on a timeless media. (Youtubes primitve technology comes to mind). Capabilitys worth is the sume of the abilitys and the disabilitys to get to them from the now. Some are worthier then others, some just postpone problems and accumulate dangers, making the high branches of the future, dangerous traps. Luck, wishfull thinking and make-believe hope, is no solid basis for planning the future of a species. Even worser, but longterm better, shortterm suffering for longterm gains is worth alot of short term suffering. Calculated morals from traversing such a scenario tree (drasil) and the decisions based upon it can seem very strange to our eyes. PS: One also has to admire, how remarkably "exploration" has shifted from "high risk" ventures towards "stability" aka root hardening in recent history. Resource cheap entertainement and self surveilance are keys to a stability even during environment deterioration and crisis. Nextflix, cellphone selfies and chill in the refugee camp, instead of terrorism. Whoever is lately pushing those decisions, clearly is aware of that.
- sogen 4y agoI thank and welcome our overlords
- aftbit 4y ago> Probably all we would have to go on would be vestiges of memory, fleeting impressions, dreams, nebulous intuitions that somehow things had been different in some way -- and not long ago but now. We might reflexively reach for a light switch in the bathroom only to discover that it was -- always had been -- in another place entirely. One might imagine that if our past were altered such that a light switch were in a different spot, then our past experiences of flipping the switch on every morning would also have been altered, so we would not have any reflexive habit to reach for the wrong place. It seems that PKD is imagining some kind of great process of moving minds between parallel streams of the world, instead of imagining the world shifting underneath those minds. This reminds me of the "parking ramp dinosaur" in Anathem.
- fumblebee 4y agoOff topic, but the first illustration in the post is by Robert Crumb; for anyone who hasn't seen the documentary on him, titled "Crumb"[1], you're missing out! [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109508/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109508/
- b800h 4y agoWhat I find rather satisfying about this argument is that it rather neatly solves the problem of evil in a way which I don't believe the Catholic apologists managed. Clearly a complete genius, I should reread his books with an older head on.