Philip K. Dick is the reigning champion of Hollywood . This Friday ’s The Adjustment is just the late ina long string of Dickian movie adaptations . But some of Dick ’s neat stories have yet to be filmed .
Here are our picks for 10 untaped Philip K. Dick classic that deserve to be movies .
Note : This list does n’t include any Dick works that are currently being made into movies , like Ubik .
1 ) The Crack in Space , aka Cantata-140
This one might need a second of reworking for a twenty-first - 100 audience , what with its 1960s - era dissection of racial discrimination . But the introductory themes continue just as pertinent as ever . It ’s the year 2080 , and America ’s just about to elect its first black President ( yeah , I have intercourse ) , representing the Liberal - Republican Party , which opposes the rule States Rights Conservative Democrats . Overpopulation has become such a pressing issue that millions of hapless people are in suspend vivification , and the new President needs to find a solution — so it ’s lucky that a household gadget has accidentally rip open a gateway to an alternating Earth where all those pitiful mass can emigrate . Except that this alternate Earth is already inhabited . Oh , and there are orbital brothels and lashings of other outlandishness . Could be the next Total Recall , with the orbital brothels and political outlandishness .
2 ) “ The Turning Wheel ”
You ’d probably have to tone down the jabs against Scientology in the cult leader named Elron Hu , Bard . But the introductory idea of this account is devilishly clever — it ’s a world run by quasi - Buddhists , who have grow a applied science that actually permit you to see your next rebirth . This render you a chance to ameliorate your karma before you die , so you may fend off being reincarnated as something foul . But the main character , Sung - wu , realizes he ’s doomed to be reborn as a fly because of a youthful indiscretion . He ’s designate to die of a plague before he has a chance to cleanse his karma — unless he allows some outlaws to smuggle in some illegal drug that could write his living . Should he accept his fate , or break the rules of his beau monde ( thus worsening his karma even more ) to get the drug that could give him decades more to improve his next incarnation ? It ’s the sort of dilemma most science fiction never even considers — and it might make for a weird , compelling picture , along the lines of Scanner Darkly .
3 ) Dr. Bloodmoney , Or How We get Along After the turkey
It ’s really hard to summarize this novel — it ’s post - apocalyptic , and decidedly uncanny . There ’s a nuclear warfare , after which the astronaut who was think to go to Mars stay in electron orbit and becomes a democratic disc jockey . A German roquette scientist named Dr. Bluthgeld ( Dr. Bloodmoney ) who may have induce the atomic war veil out as a sheep Fannie Merritt Farmer — only to fall afoul of mutant top executive struggles among the survivors . And there are mutate super - intelligent dogs and cats , along with the mutant man . This could be the pic that in the end establish post - apocalyptic film the shot of weirdness they require .
4 ) The Eye In The Sky
Of all Dick ’s “ realness is a frakked - up illusion ” storey , this is probably my favourite . A speck accelerator malfunction traps eight people in a serial of solipstistic fake realities created by each person ’s perceptions of the world . And some of these alternate realities are terrorise as well as thought - agitative — there ’s the Old Testament world of instant plagues and divine punishments , as well as the world created by a paranoid Communist . It ’s perhaps the stark distillment of the “ creating your own realism ” trope , and a tarradiddle that would be easy to update for today ’s consultation .
5 ) “ The Father - Thing ”
There ’s been a scrap of a vogue for turning Twilight Zone - esque narrative into movies lately , including The Box . But it does n’t get much more Twilight Zone - y than this story about a boy who surmise his dad has been replaced with an alien facsimile . What give it bang-up is the confederacy among the son and his friends to deal out with the fake , without involve any adults . It ’s like Stand By Me meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers .
6 ) The Game - Players of Titan
We ’ve already had the quintessential PKD drug picture in Scanner Darkly — now how about a interchangeable story about how multitude are kept cark and doped up with game ? The human subspecies believes it won the war against the exotic Vugs from the planet Titan , and the survivors of the war drop all their meter playing the habit-forming board game Bluff , in which move can be bogus or actual . But this compulsive game - performing just cark everyone from the truth about the warfare with the Vugs .
7 ) course My tear , The Policeman Said
This novel was optioned at one item , by the same producers who made Terminator Salvation , but I ’m reasonably certain that ’s no longer happening . And this is a great groundwork for a paranoid thriller , along the lines of the late - successful Unknown . A famous musician and television personality wakes up one day to come up out that he no longer exists , and nobody retrieve him . It ’s especially difficult to be a former person in the totalitarian future United States , where everything is tightly controlled .
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Another fairly topical story — globose mood alteration has made Earth almost uninhabitable , and you ca n’t go out without wearing your personal air conditioner . People take vacations in Antarctica . unspoilt affair we ’ve already colonize the rest of the Solar System — but human culture has become a nightmarish consumerist carnival of horrors . Everybody ’s stuck on the legal drug Can - D , until Palmer Eldritch comes back from space with a new drug called Chew - Z — that can aid you live forever by suspend space and clock time . The only trouble is , whenever you trip on Chew - Z , Palmer Eldritch is there with you , and sort of like the masses in Eye in the Sky , he arrive at more power over reality all the time .
9 ) VALIS
Sure , there ’s an indy movie based on Radio Free Albemuth , which is an earlier unpublished version of this novel — but we still need our VALIS motion-picture show . This account book received a lot more tending after being feature in Lost , and it ’s the pure companion to Lost ’s “ eternal creamy weirdness ” approaching to storytelling . A semi - autobiographical account statement of a weird incident in Dick ’s own life , this book need us through a tour of the eldritch 1970s , as Horselover Fat ( a sort of translation of Dick ’s own name into English ) goes in search of the true statement behind his visions . The sequences where Horselover goes to stay with a celebrated musician ( who I think is Eric Clapton ) who aid him to track down the two - yr - old christ who can conduce him to the exotic orbiter in space … allow ’s just say this would be one trippy , zeitgeisty , unsettling film .
10 ) The human race In The High Castle
This one ’s cheating a snatch , since it ’s supposedly being made into a BBC TV miniseries by Ridley Scott . ( Although given Scott ’s incredibly full ticket of projects , you might not want to set your TiVo just yet . ) In either case , this is a novel that still deserves to be a movie at some point — it ’s one of a very few outstanding classics of substitute story . What sets this book aside from the common “ Axis won World War II ” tale is how far it travel into indulgence — the GermanspurgedAfrica of its natives and also colonized Mars by the 1960s . But also , it ’s a rule book that takes a lot of time to create a picture of ordinary life among the citizen of the Japanese- and German - eclipse United States , with multitude obsessing about their animation and their line rather than focussing on big - picture stuff . Except that there ’s a super - popular novel , The Grasshopper Lies Heavy , about a world where the Germans and Japanese lose .
Thanks to Meredith for the Dr. Bloodmoney suggestion .
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