Future Imperfect: Philip K. Dick at the Movies

by Jason P. Vest, Phillip Lopate (Foreword)

Philip K. Dick was one of the most incisive, subversive, and entertaining American authors of the last half of the twentieth century. The cinematic adaptations of Dick’s fiction have generated so much interest since Blade Runner ’s 1982 release that a comprehensive assessment of these films is necessary. Future Imperfect is the only book to examine the first eight cinematic adaptations of Dick’s fiction in light of their literary sources.

 

In this book, Jason P. Vest explores how filmmakers as diverse as Ridley Scott, Paul Verhoeven, Steven Spielberg, and Richard Linklater have each, in their turn, expanded, extrapolated, and diverged from Dick’s fiction when translating its powerful and challenging insights to the silver screen. Future Imperfect gauges how well the film adaptations of Dick’s work have captured his unique vision of the human future and how deeply his storytelling abilities have influenced the development of science fiction movies from Blade Runner to the present day.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2007

Reviews

[Mladen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book could be interesting to fans of Dick's fiction. I love his works, however, there is just too much praise for the film adaptations, even when the films themselves, or the scenes analysed, just do not deserve it.

Ljubiteljima Dikove proze može biti zanimljivo da čitaju o odnosu između filmova i priča. Volim i ja Dika, ali ovde ima previše afektiranja i vazdizanja u nebesa filmova rađenih po njegovim delima, ili inspirisanim njima.

[Ystyn Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of few 'text' books I've ever read that I've really enjoyed. The visionary relevance today of Philip K. Dick's works, many of which were written nearly 50 years ago, is uncanny AND unnerving. While it is hard to get into the segments about films I haven't seen yet, the analysis of "Blade Runner", "Total Recall", "Minority Report", "Paycheck" and "A Scanner Darkly" was superb.