The Fiction Behind the Movie Adaptations
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- The inspiration for Blade Runner, this 1968 novel is set in San Francisco in 2021.A group of robots, originally produced to provide labor on other planets, return to Earth and wreak havoc. Rick Deckard has the job of terminating these replicants - a task both practically and ethically difficult given their remarkable similarity to humans.
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- We Can Remember it for You Wholesale
- This 1966 short story was the inspiration for the movie Total Recall. The main character, Douglas Quail, wants to experience a trip to Mars, but can't afford an actual journey. Instead, he buys recollections of a trip to Mars from a memory implant company called Rekal. Unfortunately the plan is complicated when, during the implant, Rekal employees discover some strange facts about Quail.
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- Confessions of a Crap Artist
- With this 1975 novel, Philip K Dick tried breaking into mainstream literature. The story is set in California in the 1950s and centers on Jack Isidore, a misfit with stange obsessions who moves in with his opinionated sister and her husband. It is the basis of the 1992 film Confessions d'un Barjo.
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- Second Variety
- The inspiration for Screamers, this 1953 short story is set on an Earth ruined by nuclear war between Russian and UN forces. With a Russian victory looking imminent, the UN develops robots to bolster their campaign. But the robots are capable of redesigning themselves and soon become so sophisticated that they resemble humans.
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- Impostor
- The main character in this 1953 short story is Spence Olham who has the job of identifying an android impostor on his work premises. The impostor appears indistinguishable from a human and has taken the place of an employee. The movie Impostor was made in 2002.
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- The Minority Report
- Published in 1956, this short story is set in the middle of the 21st century. Three mutants use their special ability to see into the future to help the police stop murders. The story centers on the adventures of the Chief of Police who quickly has to make sense of the mutants' prediction that he is about to murder a man he knows nothing about. The movie Minority Report was released in 2002.
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- Paycheck
- In this 1953 short story, an employee on a secret project for two years completes his contract and has his memories of the job wiped. Afterwards, he discovers that he has swapped his paycheck for an envelope containing seven assorted items. The items include a bus token, a strip of green cloth, a fragment of a poker chip, a piece of wire, a parcel receipt, a code key and a ticket stub. The story follows the adventures of this ex-employee as he tries to make sense of the contents of the envelope. The movie Paycheck was released in 2003.
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- A Scanner Darkly
- In terms of its depiction of the lives of heavy drug users, this 1977 PKD novel was semi-autobiographical. The main character in the story has two identities, one as Bob Arctor, the other as Agent Fred. As Bob Arctor, he and his housemates use the illegal drug Substance D. As Agent Fred, he is an undercover policeman conducting surveillance on the house. But Arctor/Fred gets addicted to Substance D and subsequently has problems distinguishing his role of user from that of policeman. The movie A Scanner Darkly was released in 2006.
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- The Golden Man
- This 1954 short story portrays a devastated Earth in which a set of mutants, considered dangerous to humans, are routinely killed. The government captures one of these mutants - The Golden Man. This story is the basis of the movie Next which was released in April 2007. The Golden Man can be found in The Philip K Dick Reader (Citadel Press 1997).
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