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Future Imperfect Philip K. Dick at the Movies
Jason P. Vest
Book Code: C9171
ISBN: 0-275-99171-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-99171-5
240 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 6/30/2007
List Price: $49.95 (UK Sterling Price: £27.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • Among the films adapted from novels and stories Philip K. Dick are Blade Runner, Confessions d'un Barjo, Minority Report, and most recently Richard Linklatter's A Scanner Darkly. Vest discusses these interpretations of Dick's sci-fi ruminations on the paths of human nature in an increasingly technological world; more often then not, he points out, those paths lead to paranoia and other dark states of mind. Eight substantial criticisms illustrate how and how well each film expands, extrapolates and departs from Dick's singular vision.
    —Reference & Research Book News     November 2007
Description: Philip K. Dick was one of the most incisive, subversive, and entertaining authors of the last half of the twentieth century, and the increasing levels of respect and interest that his fiction and films have generated since the 1982 release of Blade Runner have made a comprehensive assessment of these films a virtual necessity. Future Imperfect is the only work to examine the cinematic adaptations of Dick's work in their entirety. Not all cinematic adaptations of Dick's work have been equally successful, but they have all at least made a similar effort to capture his evocative, paranoid, and compassionate view of humanity's precarious place in a fallen world--a world where rapidly proliferating technology, stultifying bureaucracy, and widespread political chicanery threaten both our bodies and our minds. Author Jason Vest seeks here to answer the question of 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 in order to translate Dick's powerful and challenging insights on to the screen in a visual and yet still literary form. Dick's is a singular voice in American literature, and Future Imperfect aims to gauge exactly how well the cinematic adaptations of Dick's work have captured his unique vision of the human future, and how deeply Dick's storytelling abilities have influenced the development of science-fiction films from Blade Runner on. Students and general readers interested in science-fiction literature and film should find this an incredibly valuable work, as should film enthusiasts concerned with the issue of adaptation itself.
  • Author Jason Vest is an expert in both American literature and the science-fiction genre
  • This marks the first book-length investigation of Dick's influence on the science-fiction genre, and also includes some of the more extended criticism on several seminal science fiction films
    • LC Card Number: 2007016355
    LCC Class: PS3554
    Dewey Class: 791
    PDF Catalogs:
    Pop Culture Spring 2008.pdf
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