Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams

I saw the first one "Impossible Planet", I read the story years ago, fairly good with a twist at the end.
I'm sorry to say the TV version was pretty rubbish, nothing like the story!!!
Saw one of two others, all pretty c**p.
Didn't bother with the rest.
The trouble with doing SF stories on TV, it's usually done by people who know nothing about it.
So they usually make a muck up like this lot!
 
I thought some of the Electric Dreams were great and it was really nice to see some serial style standalone SF.

I liked the one with the lesbian future cop, the one with Bryan Cranston and the milk is pizzled. There were a few episodes I didn't like - Impossible Planet was probably my least favourite.
 
I enjoyed most of the first half of the series, but it took a break for a few months and I didn't resume watching.
 
AlexH said:
I enjoyed most of the first half of the series, but it took a break for a few months and I didn't resume watching.
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I was all a bit bizarre , I am familiar with Dick and these are not the best short stories that Dick wrote, but they are good. They sure diddled with them …. especially the best one Autofac…. reworked to make it more like someone's idea of what a Dick story was to be like, it sure is not the one on the page.
I kind of think this series will be a one-off.
 
IIRC the directors of each episode chose the PKD story they wanted to do themselves and then were free to interpret it anyway they wanted. I think that explains the weird choice and the messing about with the stories. Like it or not, that was the whole idea behind the series.
 
None of the episodes of Electric Dreams were 100% accurate to Dick's stories, but a most were at least in the spirit of his writing. Some did better jobs than others. The best was probably Autofac, but the worst for me was The Father Thing. I knew by the third episode, though, that there wouldn't be a second series.
 
I watched the second one, about the man who kept getting off a train at a strange town.
I found it so thrilling, that it was some hours later I regained consciouness!
Some time ago I got a couple of boxsets called I think "Masters Of Horror".
Pretty good alround!
Then I got "Masters Of Science Fiction".
Same as the P K Dick lot, episodes based on stories by vary authors.
The whole lot can be summed up in one word, rubbish!!!
 
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I just started watching this series and think it's amazing. Writing aside, the intro is wonderfully surreal and the cinematography in each episode is breathtaking. So far I've seen "The Commuter," "The Father Thing," and "Kill All Others." Reverse the order: this is my ranking of them from best to least pleasing. Having not read "The Commuter," I had no expectations and wasn't disappointed. It reminded me slightly of something Rod Serling might write. "The Father Thing" was a welcome expansion on the source material and I found myself silently cheering all along. "Kill All Others," while bearing little resemblance to "The Hanging Stranger," gave me such discomfort and angst that I really think the master of paranoid fiction would approve. I intend to complete viewing of the other episodes soon.

I'm genuinely surprised at all the criticism but I understand die-hard fans can be hard to please.
 
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My critisms were generally with how closely the adaptations were to the source material. The acting is quite solid throughout the series but the biggest problem is it doesn't appeal to the casual viewer. It is very much a niche series which is why we didn't get a second outing.
 
OK, I'm a couple of years late to the party. Be that as it may, allow me to contribute my own two cents:

A 2017 TV series entitled Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams recently came to my attention. It's a collection, an adaptation of ten, less than novel length, stories.

An intriguing aspect of the TV series is the age of the stories selected for adaptation. PKD wrote all of the stories during the 1950s, close to the start of his career as an author. As such, all ten stories are apparently now in the public domain.

Readers can utilize archive.org links, found near the bottom of this webpage, to read the pertinent source stories. Three stories are found in archive.org's online copy of The Philip K Dick Reader.

Caveat: sometimes archive.org's Reader link works "as is," while at other times (when someone else simultaneously accesses it first?) it insists upon either a one hour or a fourteen day reservation. Presumably archive.org aspires to become an online digital library.

Although most links (except an audio adaptation of "Sales Pitch") present stories in "2-up," two page format, there's two types of 2-up links. The first type's known as a "2-up with details," and it shows a story along with other formats available for download. The second type's called a "full 2-up" and it shows only the story.

Happy reading to all PKD fans!

(excerpt, more available at the link)

"Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams: Story Links by Don Kuenz
 
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Don said:
As such, all ten stories are apparently now in the public domain.
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That may be true where you live, but that isn't necessarily true elsewhere: some jurisdictions apply a 70 period after the death of the author, and PKD didn't die until 1982.
 
One of my eccentricities is a passion to read stories in their original context. Additional context enigmatically promotes vicarious, literary pseudo-time travel, which somehow adds an extra dimension to the story. When a story's originally published in an old magazine, I want to read it in the old magazine. For instance, the original short stories of Asimov's Foundation feel more authentic when read from old 1940s Astounding magazines.

The original pulp copy is procured whenever possible because nothing beats it in regards to pseudo-time travel. It contains far more historicity, so to speak.

There's also a place for ebooks in my world. They're invaluable when looking up the correct spelling of historicity, for example. Searching through an ebook for the spelling feels more authentic than just googling it.
 
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So many of his stories have been filmed. PKD was the best short story writer in my opinion. I have read his five volume collection and while there are some duds, the quality of the stories is very high.

I haven't yet seen Electric Dreams, but I am on Amazon Prime now, so I need to try and watch this.
 
Bumping this as I started watching last night with "Real Life".

An impressive cast and a somewhat bleak (very PKD ending). I have to confess to being a bit non-plussed by this episode.
 
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Just finished the series and i have to confess that i am a little underwhelmed by Electric Dreams and actually found it quite boring. A very sub-par series considering the talent involved.
 
It felt like an attempt to do an alternative to Black Mirror, but the drama us far too 'gentle' and lacks the biting satire to compare with that series. It just isn't compelling viewing in a way that it ought or intended to be.

'Underwhelmed' is probably the most accurate description. It's not bad tv, it's just not particularly interesting viewing.
 
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