Has any science fiction writer enjoyed the love of Hollywood more than Phillip K. Dick Blade Runner, The Man In The High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, Paycheck, Screamers…OK, maybe there’s a bit of a drop in quality as you go down the list. Still, especially lately, and compared to his contemporaries, Hollywood’s been loving his work, and a new series led by Bryan Cranston hopes to dig into his short stories.
Phillip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams is a series that’s been in the works for a while, obviously inspired by the return of anthology SF series like Black Mirror. The idea is that prominent screenwriters, like Battlestar Galactica‘s Ron Moore, Justified‘s Michael Dinner, and The Night Manager‘s David Farr each tackle a short story from Dick’s canon and see where it goes. Of interest will be just which stories they choose; Dick published 120 short stories in his lifetime, ranging from I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, a story about a man who wakes up in cryosleep unable to move and the AI that tries to comfort him, to The Hanging Stranger, a creepy musing on the ability of people to accept horrific events as the cost of everyday life.
It’s not clear when the series will debut, but it’ll be worth keeping an eye out for. Besides, if it debuts the same day as Amazon’s other series, I Love Dick, there will be some delightful confusion.