Blade Runner and the Films of Philip K. Dick

by Jeremy Mark Robinson

FROM THE INTRODUCTION Philip Kindred Dick (1928-1982) was a key figure in 20th century science fiction, famous for embracing drugs and the counter-culture in his work. Dick's fiction includes The Man In the High Castle, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, A Scanner Darkly, The Game Players of Titan, Clan of the Alphane Moon, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Valis, The Divine Invasion, Martian Time-Slip, The Minority Report, and We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. Dick's themes included perception and reality, drugs, state control, global capitalism, surveillance, and paranoia.

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Warren Tutwiler · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the worst-written books I have ever read. There seemed to be very little original thought within - it reads as a summary of others' research - and the few original ideas I did come across were erroneous. The style is very immature and unprofessional, more like what you would read in a blog or poorly-produced fanzine than in an ostensibly scholarly book. The author goes off on long tangents that have nothing to do with the content, the footnotes are often irrelevant to the text (as if the author just thought of something and wanted to insert it somewhere), and there are innumerable lists of items without explanation or justification, often poorly formatted, making them a chore to read. Also, it seems like the author cannot discern between "influence" and "coincidence"; for example, he attributes EVERY film that shows a modern, dirty cityscape as being influenced by Blade Runner, ignoring the fact that many of those films (and Blade Runner itself) were merely replicating modern cityscapes such as New York and Tokyo. Finally, despite the title, the author barely addresses the connection to Philip K. Dick, or how his works have had an impact on cinema (but there IS a list, in a footnote!).