Philip K. Dick

Now Playing Podcast
Now Playing Podcast
  • 4.1 (26)
  • Film Reviews

Now Playing Podcast dives into the cinematic legacy of Philip K. Dick, the sci-fi author whose stories about identity, memory, authority, and fragile realities have fueled decades of films. From gritty dystopias and pre-crime thrillers to android hunters and amnesiac action heroes, Dick’s work keeps asking the same question: how do you know what’s real? Dick has brought in some of Hollywood's greatest artists. What makes his work so fertile for film? Our hosts break down every major Philip K. Dick film to see which ones capture his slippery, unsettling worldview and which just borrow the premise and run.

  1. 10/10/2017

    Blade Runner 2049

    Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to...

  2. 08/29/2017

    Radio Free Albemuth

    Record store clerk Nick Brady begins to experience strange visions from an entity he calls VALIS that cause him to uproot his family and move to Los Angeles where he becomes a successful music company executive. Nick finds himself drawn...

  3. 08/22/2017

    Total Recall

    Welcome to Rekall, the company that can turn your dreams into real memories. For a factory worker named Douglas Quaid, even though he's got a beautiful wife who he loves, the mind-trip sounds like the perfect vacation from his frustrating...

  4. 03/05/2011

    The Adjustment Bureau

    A man glimpses the future Fate has planned for him – and chooses to fight for his own destiny. Battling the powerful Adjustment Bureau across, under and through the streets of New York, he risks his destined greatness to be...

  5. 03/04/2011

    Adjustment Team by Philip K. Dick

    This week, Stuart examines “Adjustment Team,” the 1954 short story by Philip K. Dick that later inspired the film The Adjustment Bureau starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. Dick’s original tale is a tighter, more overtly metaphysical story about a man who glimpses the machinery behind reality and discovers that unseen bureaucrats quietly "adjust" events to keep the universe on schedule. With less romance and more existential dread than the film version, this original story explores fate, free will, and whether humanity is simply following a script written by forces it can’t perceive. Stuart breaks down how Dick’s concept differs from its cinematic reworking and whether the lean short story delivers a sharper philosophical punch than the big-screen love story.

  6. 02/25/2011

    The Golden Man by Philip K. Dick

    This week, Stuart turns to The Golden Man, Philip K. Dick's 1953 short story that later inspired the Nicolas Cage thriller Next. Dick’s original tale is lean, strange, and far more unsettling than its Hollywood counterpart. Set in a post-nuclear future, it follows a mutant who can glimpse the immediate future and survives by instinct alone, hunted by a society that fears what it cannot control. Stuart explores how Dick uses this simple premise to examine evolution, fate, and humanity’s urge to destroy what’s different, and considers whether the short story’s stark vision delivers a sharper punch than the big-budget adaptation.

  7. 02/25/2011

    Next

    Las Vegas showroom magician Cris Johnson has a secret which torments him: he can see a few minutes into the future. Sick of the examinations he underwent as a child and the interest of the government and medical establishment in...

  8. 02/18/2011

    A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

    This week, Stuart examines A Scanner Darkly, the 1977 novel by Philip K. Dick that later inspired the rotoscope film adaptation directed by Richard Linklater and starring Keanu Reeves. Set in a near-future California ravaged by Substance D, Dick’s novel follows an undercover narcotics agent whose dual identities begin to collapse under addiction and surveillance. Written from personal experience, the book blends dark humor, paranoia, and tragedy into one of Dick’s most intimate and emotionally raw works. Stuart explores how the novel handles identity, betrayal, and the human cost of the drug war, and whether the source material hits harder than its psychedelic big-screen counterpart.

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4.1
out of 5
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Now Playing Podcast dives into the cinematic legacy of Philip K. Dick, the sci-fi author whose stories about identity, memory, authority, and fragile realities have fueled decades of films. From gritty dystopias and pre-crime thrillers to android hunters and amnesiac action heroes, Dick’s work keeps asking the same question: how do you know what’s real? Dick has brought in some of Hollywood's greatest artists. What makes his work so fertile for film? Our hosts break down every major Philip K. Dick film to see which ones capture his slippery, unsettling worldview and which just borrow the premise and run.

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