Hacker Cinema
The Man in the High Castle
2015 · TV series · 4 seasons
Created by Frank Spotnitz
Explore what it would be like if the Allied Powers had lost WWII, and Japan and Germany ruled the United States. Based on Philip K. Dick's award-winning novel.
26 positive2 negative5 mixed22 neutralfrom 55 commenters
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59 comments on Hacker News
It was very fun to attend UBC then immediately start recognizing bits of the campus in many TV shows - Man in High Castle, Stargate, Battlestar, and many others.
They have long since fixed it but there used to be an absolutely awful/hilarious set of street view captures for UBC that were taken by accident during filming for Man in the High Castle…the entire main mall had Nazi flags up. https://ubyssey.ca/humour/ubc-nazi-territory-street-view/
He would frequently pop up in 1990s and 2000s movies. But I really enjoyed his work in Man in the High Castle, in his alternate universe portrayal.
> (this is one of the premises of The Man in the High Castle, which is likely to age better than most sci fi TV series)
The Hugo award winning book it's based on is much better.
> FDR’s New Deal saved the entire planet from a descent into Nazism and Japanese imperial rule
The 'New Deal' saved the US from internal revolution; Huey Long. Nazism was doomed when Hitler invaded Russia, declaring war on America was just the nail in the coffin.
Apparently the tariffs are at least partially to blame.
According to the article, metal prices are now artificially high, so this sort of crime is more attractive.
I’m worried about what happens if we don’t get another FDR (this is one of the premises of The Man in the High Castle, which is likely to age better than most sci fi TV series).
FDR’s New Deal saved the entire planet from a descent into Nazism and Japanese imperial rule, and also set the stage for the scientific and economic advances in the post war period (including the moon landing, internet, etc, etc).
Dick is one of the writers that accompanied me in my youth, along with the Golden Agers (IA, RAH, AC etc.). His books are the base for many SF tv/movies. Total Recall, The Man in the High Castle, and others. This story, written in the fifties, is eerily evocative of todays drone warfare.
people don't talk about set designers, but they bring a film to live.
whether real sets like on andor on fake ones like the man in the high castle.
USA-style Republican today? The thing is… if they were upholding the Constitution, right now, I could name one.
Frankly, all that emerges from the brouhaha coming from the USA sounds like The Onion headlines on steroids. Looks like the alternate reality movies from the Man in the High Castle. Unreal.
McCain could have saved something in the party back then, but the party chose otherwise…
And seeing how a conversation is not even possible anymore…
How does one rationalize electing these people? How does one get radicalized to that point? The very same playbook is run, again, and again. And it never resulted in peace and harmony through history. Never.
In "The Man in the High Castle" (Amazon TV series at least) the Nazis in the U.S. launch a "Jahr Null" initiative where they start the calendar at zero and purge a bunch of symbols of the old America (like the Statue of Liberty) and replace them. I feel like this is a kind of corn-pone Jahr Null.
I thought today would be as good a day as any to discuss the technical aspects of the Nazi Concorde shown in tv series, The Man in the High Castle.
Quite fascinating, actually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash , or much of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick , especially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle_(TV_series)
Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver_(film)
Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)
Or Nineteeneightyfour and so much more...(yawn)...
Or
It's not only the coming ads and all the non-free movies (which is indeed annoying) but it also seems like Amazon just isn't making much good content. I enjoyed their Man in the High Castle series, but that's been years ago now. Rings of Power was... disappointing - I'd probably like to season 2 hoping that maybe learned from some of their mistakes and improved it, but it's not like I'm waiting on the edge of my seat. They're just not making content that's at the same level as Netflix, Max (HBO) or even AppleTV.
Any advice on how to appreciate the Expanse tv show?
I love backstory and worldbuilding sci-fi the Foundation Trilogy, The Man in the High Castle, For All Mankind, The Silo, The Tick, and Battlestar Galactica, but I can't seem to get immersed with The Expanse despite how much I try.
Is it a work that is better appreciated in the literary form instead of on television? Or did Syfy just jumble the first season?
Edit: Movies, unsorted, from the top of my mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_of_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter%27s_Bone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) , seen before Covid, deemed to be realistic, and therefore better than stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning_Sign_(film) somewhere in between. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_IV_(1974_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_(film) The remakes of the Planet of the Apes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Weeks_Later a little less so, though it had some great scenes of flying into London City Airport and the modern parts around that. Bladerunner in the original versions, the remake not so much. 2001: A Space Odyssey, the intro and first parts, spaceflight to the moon and such, the rest not. Too boring. I liked the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two better, actually. Avatar. Part one only. All of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(franchise) with the exception of the crossover stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) for the almost cyberpunkish fuckedupness of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_Untold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropia_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southland_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppet_Masters_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Survivalist_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_(2000_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_(2007_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_(1987_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Zero_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timecop Ron Silverman Badass! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Blonde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_Night_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowing_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_(1998_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adjustment_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeforce_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Protocol_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(2009_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypher_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_Conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_Tapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Seduction
TV-Series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series) and the remake linked from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Train_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(2006_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Pines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_(American_TV_series) and its prequel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_(TV_series)
WESTWORLD!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_(TV_series) Praimfaya! Yeehaa! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpart_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon_(TV_series) All of Black Mirror! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Skies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devs_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peripheral_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raised_by_Wolves_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83 and sequels. ÄXZÄLLÄNNT! JAWOLLJA! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Night_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2019_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gods_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Dome_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(2009_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprica
This all began about 2006 with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(2004_TV_series) after having abstained from possessing a TV, or watching that by other means (with some exceptions for news and documentaries) since 1996, and mostly no cinema either.
That stuff rehooked me in a binge-watching session. Shit happens :-)
Do yoo vanna häff fries wiff thät?
/nerdsnipe off
It was a one time thing but I was a background extra in one of the episodes of The Man in the High Castle.
"the policy would have worked" - in what sense? Are you genuinely arguing that eugenicists would have objectively and accurately determined which genes led to strongest/most intelligent/most productive humans and only allowed people with those genes to reproduce, and successfully ensured "defective" genes were eliminated from the homo sapiens gene pool? Even if somehow they had achieved that, the thought of living in a society where a human life is only considered valuable if it fits some predefined criteria is frankly far too high a cost to pay. (Interestingly I was watching Man in the High Castle last night, the episode that "celebrates" the choice of one of the characters to have himself be euthanised because of an incurable medical condition. It was an odd experience because superficially it came across as a very powerful and moving scene, despite the horrid underlying creepiness of it. But it didn't seem hard to believe that people could genuinely be swayed into thinking that it was a "noble" thing to have your life terminated just because of a particular genetic condition. I suppose at least it's a more justifiable stance than believing that anyone not of a particular race was undeserving of a fulfilling life, though clearly many eugenicists believed exactly that too).
Spot on. Not a movie to watch for the plot. True to the source in this. With Philip K. Dick's novels, reading for the "story" alone is totally missing the point.
Same for the Prime TV series, The Man in the High Castle. Again, true to the source in that the plot is moth-eaten lacework, but who cares? The world-building is great.
> I just find the spirit of his work so depressing
I don't. I think he paints up depressing worlds often, but there's also a spirit of perseverance, of ingenuity, of "life goes on". His characters are occasionally soldiers, but more often workers and everyday people doing their things. In a Nazi alt-history dystopia, he takes the time to explain how an antiquarian earns his living. [1]
In some dystopia were mankind loses a war against aliens, he makes the aliens sympathetic enough to give the remaining humans a fiction to believe in that will make them want to keep on living. The aliens are also quite forgiving and want to rebuild Earth after the war. [2]
When robots take over humanity, hidden in underground caves after a terrible war between the East and the West Blocs, they are actually hiding the fact they rebuilt the world and it's green and healthy, ready for us to re-enter it. [3]
When an alien invader supplants the horrible husband of the woman protagonist, she finds the alien is actually loving and caring, and prefers it to her husband. [4]
When a (possibly deranged) dog sees threats to the family it loves in everyday things, like the milkman or the garbage truck "stealing their garbage", it does this out of love and fierce loyalty -- however misplaced. [5] (or is it..?)
When an authoritarian interstellar military force wants to punish Earth for having ruined it all, those cheeky earthers invent an elusive rebel leader, Benny Cemoli, and pin all the blame on him; keeping the military force occupied chasing ghosts seemingly forever. [6]
When an underhanded authoritarian government is shaping up covertly in Callisto, Earth agents find the way to dismantle it -- and in the process, PKD shows his vision that there's no concept as absurd and easy to subvert as the concept of "a just war". The good guys win though. [7]
I agree PKD often imagined visions of dystopian hell, but he just as often offered nuggets of hope and everyday life. A bit like Bradbury, only more surreal.
----
[1] "The Man in the High Castle"
[2] "Precious Artifact"
[3] Can't remember the title of this one, sorry
[4] Also cannot remember the title. It was included as an episode of PKD's Electric Dreams.
[5] "Roog"
[6] "If there were no Benny Cemoli"
[7] "The mold of Yancy"
We actually stopped watching Man in the High Castle due to audio issues with the dialog. The volume difference was so great, we were constantly increasing/decreasing the volume depending on whether there was dialog or not. This was using a Mac mini, plugged into a Bose Wave Radio, which normally works great for TV/movies.
I don’t think that is quite accurate - the majority of the German people identified as Christian, and while Himmler did want to replace the church he was forbidden by Hitler because Hitler did not want to risk alienating the Christian populace during the war.
Alternate ideas that were popular at the time were Nazism as a state religion (which is what they depicted in Man In The High Castle), and “Positive Christianity” which basically removed the Old Testament, gave Jesus an Aryan lineage, and might have included Hitler as a sort of saint or contemporary savior.
But that said - the occult stuff has made for some of my favorite movies and video games. If not for the Nazis, Indiana Jones would have ended up battling gangsters and mad scientists with army of zombie Africans and its not the same movie at all.
(If anyone knows the name of that 50s adventure series with the mad scientist that used a machine to turn Africans into his zombie army, I can’t remember to save my life.)
> I didn't really like A Scanner Darkly, nor Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep and would consider them of minor import had not movies been made of them.
Yeah, a different opinion: these are his best novels, along with Ubik and The Man in the High Castle.
I had to look up the guy that actually designed it, and I realized they have pretty much made all the intro cinematics I adore from TV shows.
Westworld, American Gods, Man in the High Castle and Halt and Catch Fire.
https://www.artofthetitle.com/designer/raoul-marks/
https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/halt-and-catch-fire/
From Wikipedia: "The song appears in episode 2 of The Man in the High Castle..."
Aha, so that's where I had heard it before!
I just watched all of Man in The High Castle; they show this in some later episodes. Neat concept--I wonder if there are specific formulas to make repairs to mugs &c food-safe?
I am really hoping they film it with similar production values to The Man in the High Castle. I think the pacing, and the mix of reality and fantasy, in that would suit LOTR really well.
I watched this with my kid just the other day, I had no idea it was done with Blender.
It has also been used for many of the VFX shots in the TV show "Man in the High Castle".
https://www.blender.org/user-stories/visual-effects-for-the-man-in-the-high-castle/
Off the top of my head: Succession, VEEP, Barry, Big Little Lies, Sharp Objects, True Detective (seasons 1 & 3), Chernobyl.
Big Little Lies was probably the worst of that bunch, and is still lightyears ahead of any recent Netflix drama.
On Prime, The Man in the High Castle is a guilty pleasure despite its flaws. The bizarre spy drama Patriot is absolutely excellent.
I like that with Prime, I can subscribe to HBO within the app, and also buy seasons of some cable shows, like FX’s Legion, Fargo, What We Do in the Shadows.
I prefer that experience much more than Netflix. With Netflix, the original content has to be so good that it offsets the lack of being able to purchase non-Netflix content, and frankly Netflix originals have just not been good enough to cut it for a while.
As a fellow UK customer I very much agree with you. So much so that I just cancelled my Prime membership. These days I buy most of my books second hand (very few marketplace sellers do Prime) so I'm having to pay for postage anyway. Amazon have also introduced "Channels" (MGM, Starz etc) so there's a bunch of content that's now silo'd off in these channels that you need to pony up for on top of the Prime subscription.
I'll use Amazon to rent movies now and again. When there's a new season of something like "The Man in the High Castle" or complete seasons of other stuff I like become available then I'll pay for just a month to watch these then cancel the sub again.
I also find it slightly annoying when Prime deliveries go from "Next day" to "Two days" randomly, especially around holiday seasons. I queried this with them giving examples of SKU's that two days before were available Next Day and then suddenly change to Two Day delivery despite being in stock, but it's like talking to a brick wall.
Perhaps in the US it's a different story where due to licensing there's a much larger selection of content available, but the UK Prime is a bit meagre.
> You are forgetting 1 aspect. Advertisement. I gladly pay extra to not watch commercials.
Yes, it's good to point that out. I think people _are_ willing to pay more to have no ads, and have on-demand access to content.
I would throw in another thing I could have thrown in originally as well, which I didn't really think of - the TV equivalent of "killer apps." The reason I stick with Amazon is because they picked up a couple of shows I really, really love - The Man in the High Castle and The Expanse. I don't want to lose access to those.
Similarly, I briefly subscribed to CBS All Access while the new Star Trek: Discovery season aired last year - and when Season 2 comes out, I'll likely do so again. I love Star Trek so much that I'm willing to pay the $7 per (call it $3 per episode) month just for that... but as soon as it stops coming out, I cancel.
I'd like to hear more about this, too. I would probably start looking for non-fiction about the Soviet Union and East Germany. My intuition is that the human factor is more important than the spycraft. In other words, how do you know who agrees with you politically? How do you know if you can trust them? They could be an informant for the police.
There's a scene from The Man In The High Castle season 1 where some of the Japanese are trying to figure out if the antique salesman shares their political beliefs. To give an opening, they ask questions sort of in the subject area, but plausibly deniable. He fails the test, but even if he passes, he can't just come straight out. It would be based on subtleties of words, facial expressions, attitude, maybe a joke in response. Even then, he's better off if there's not a Nest or an Alexa recording the whole thing.
Related, I heard about a man who was handing out political brochures on a street in the Soviet Union. Before too long, the police came and took him into custody. To their surprise, the brochures were blank inside. When they asked the man what was going on, he said, "everyone already knows!". But they can't talk about it.
It is nice to see that it is finally getting some traction and recognition in the professional space. For example, the VFX artists on the Amazon TV series "Man in the High Castle" use it for many shots.
https://www.blender.org/user-stories/visual-effects-for-the-man-in-the-high-castle/
The Python integration is truly fantastic. I bought a Perception Neuron motion capture suit a year or two back for use with Unreal Engine, and in just a couple of days I was able to write a Python addon for Blender to take the output generated by the capture suit software and retarget it to the default UE4 skeleton. And I'm no Python guru.
https://github.com/dmo9000/blender-addons/blob/master/ue4-neuron-mapper.py
Other examples of Amazon self-censoring despite the govt saying they are not considering censoring online content.
* Pixelated nudity in shows like Californication and The Man In The High Castle and films like Watchmen and The Godfather
* The Grand Tour had an episode which involved animal carcasses. All of it was removed.
My $0.02 on this difference between Amazon and Netflix. This is Netflix's primary business, while Video is an afterthought for Amazon compared to the retail business. A boycott of their retail business would be catastrophic, whereas a few people canceling their subscription over self-censorship is a non-issue.
Amazon can also potentially be shaken down for protection money. It would work like this. "Hi, we're from this political party and we're considering making these videos a major issue. Meanwhile, would you consider making a donation to our election campaign?"
It's interesting that everyone is talking about the newly produced original series on HBO and competitors. I wasn't thinking of those; Netflix and Amazon between them have many of the great films ever made in any country, plus many 3rd party series that are great (nobody has mentioned Broad City, the best comedy TV in history, and there are shows like (EDIT: Man in the High Castle,) The Americans and Transparent, which many people love though I haven't watched them). It takes some digging to find them, but that's ok; my Netflix and Amazon queues are filled with films better than any HBO series IMHO, except The Wire, and are so large that I won't live long enough to watch them all.
IIRC in the TV show there's a scene where the Americana shopkeeper (Mr. Childan) shows someone two identical cigarette lighters, one of which was in the pocket of FDR when FDR was assassinated (Man in the High Castle takes place in an alternate timeline). In the novel, this is actually done by the owner of the fake-gun-factory, and it gets a longer treatment.
Possibly. But there's also a dynamic on Netflix (and HBO, etc.) of must-see-TV shows (to steal a term from an earlier era) that pull someone over the hump of signing up and then staying. You need the "filler" (which isn't really intended to be disparaging) too. But a large number of shows which are OK/fine doesn't get people to pull the trigger. Game of Thrones, House of Cards (originally), Man in the High Castle, Orange is the New Black, etc. do.
I'm a bit surprised by that comment. I actually find Prime to have pretty good content and typically better movies than Netflix (who's movie library has been shrinking pretty drastically over the years).
If you haven't already watched it, I'd highly recommend Season 1 and 2 of "The Expanse" on Prime. There are a lot of pretty great shows on there as long as you don't rely on DC/Marvel shows for all your entertainment. Other shows that are reasonably acclaimed are:
- The Man in the High Castle
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- The Nightmanager
- Mr. Robot
- Boardwalk Empire
- Downton Abbey
- Sneaky Pete
- Orphan Black
- Dr. Who
- Veep
- The Good Wife
- Transparent
- Hannibal
- Deadwood
- Curb your Enthusiasm
- The Wire
- Six Feet Under
- The Sopranos
If you've just read that collection, you have a lot of the most mind-bending PKD stories left. Try one of his novels. I'd recommend A Scanner Darkly and Man in the High Castle as two of the more accessible ones (the latter is much less sci fi - it's more alternative history).
His short stories are very variable in quality - a lot of his early stories makes you feel trapped in a 50's idea of a post-nuclear holocaust world because he repeats that setting endlessly as he churned out stories to pay the bills (but there are great gems there too), so the more curated antologies are good starting points. Pick up some more and you'll probably also recognize the plot of any number of movies you may have seen (direct adaptions from his short stories includes Paycheck - in your antology I think - Total Recall, Screamers, Adjustment Bureau, Minority Report and more), where a single idea from his stories was dense enough for a movie.
This is great news indeed.
I've never directed or produced a movie, and I'm impressed at the number of my fellow HN'ers who have great insight into why this isn't the best book to turn into a film.
For my own part I'm just thrilled that it may finally happen. If it's not up to scratch, it won't diminish the novel(s) for me. But if it's great, I'm going to be way pleased.
Fair to say that anyone who's read and enjoyed a book (or series of books), and subsequently seen a TV or film interpretation of the work, will almost always commend others to read, then watch. (There may be exceptions - never heard of one myself.)
Last year there was news of Amazon looking to develop series around Ringworld (maybe re-use some of the sets :) and Snowcrash. I really liked what they did with Man in the High Castle, so I'm feeling optimistic.
Keanu Reeves in the former, Willem Dafoe in the latter. I'll give both a whirl, thank you.
From what I can tell nobody brought up David Cronenberg either. I liked his works [1] when I was younger (not sure if I still would now). I especially liked eXistenZ, but also Videodrome, The Fly, and Scanners.
I just started binge watching The Man In The High Castle and it exactly underlines my statement in my previous post: great storyline (IMO), but not depending much on CGI. I think if the story lacks, all you got going for it is CGI (or not if there is none). CGI may impress you when you're still young, but as you grow older you see through the façade. Especially when its overdone. Because older movies lack it, and therefore are rather limited (take for example old Star Wars which heavily used costumes, models, and camera tricks). It might feel a bit dated, if not just from the hair models. Yet sometimes the nostalgia hits the nail (such as in Black Mirror's San Junipero episode). Not exactly sure why. While I'm thoroughly enjoying The Man In The High Castle series my partner hates anything related to WWII so thats yet another series we cannot watch together.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cronenberg#As_director
I've only seen about 20 minutes of the first episode and couldn't enjoy it. I'd like to at least finish the first episode before I make judge for myself whether this one's worth my time (though I'm gonna first watch The Man in the High Castle). Generally though as a rule of thumb: Nice CGI doesn't make up for a terrible story, but a good story can make up for the lack of good CGI. E.g. I did not find the story good in the follow-ups of The Matrix.
I fully underline your statement regarding PKD's Electric Dreams as well as all the Black Mirror seasons. Furthermore, let us not forget that several other of PKD's works have seen a movie adaptations. I can recommend Total Recall (both; watch older first), Blade Runner (both; watch older first), A Scanner Darkly (if you can stand the art style; personally, I loved it), Minority Report, and The Adjustment Bureau (Screamers was OKish). There are series adaptations as well. Check Wikipedia for all the adaptations [1]
I'm not aware of any motion picture adaptations of Stephenson's or Gibson's works. Although I just found out via Wikipedia that the game Netrunner [2] is a derivative work of the Sprawl trilogy, and also The Matrix heavily "drawn" from the Sprawl trilogy as well [3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adaptations_of_works_by_Philip_K._Dick
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android:_Netrunner
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer#Literary_and_cultural_significance
Good point here. There have been several episodic television series I've watched that I've experienced as unusually gripping (the usual suspects, Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black, Man in the High castle).
One area where the long form exceeds the 90 min format is the depth of characterization it allows, and accompanying narrative attachment.
Soap operas have relied on this effect for years, allowing them to succeed despite low production values.
Coupled with the superior craftsmanship of modern episodic TV, is a pretty "gripping" experience.
The extended narrative structure also allows more justification for the characters actions to emerge naturally. In a shorter film, a lot of the characters' dialog has to serve as exposition, resulting in dialogue that sounds contrived.
I've also noticed shorter movies reliance on tropes to condense the timeframe of the narrative action so extremely. Things like voice-overs, montages, heavy make up to show aging, conventional narrative structures, the aforementioned expositionary dialog, (sub) titles.
The fact a narrative that spans years can be communicated effectively, in a 90 min film, is powerful evidence that the art of filmmaking does not use a visual medium to simply create an experience that relies on the verisimilitude to lived reality.
This highlights what I see as a...quirk of human inclination to try and recreate, or rather present as alternative perspectives, imagined realities.
Personally, probably related to my middle age, the prospect of technology to create virtual reality has minimal appeal.
In the other hand, technology that allows enhanced perceptions into actual reality is highly enticing, and seems to be an underserved area of human experience. I'm thinking of things, for example, like cognitive enhancing drugs. Or tools that can help control out of balance behavior.
Slightly off tangent, but how is Man in the High Castle both in terms of quality and trueness to the source material? I feel like the book would have made a great miniseries, but it didn't seem long enough to turn into a multi-series show.
Or "Martian timeslip". In fact "blade runner" is a pretty poor adaptation of the book (but a great film, imo). I'm not sure most of pkd would benefit too much from a "direct" film adaptation...
I loved the man in the high castle for many of the changes and the overall style - but it seems the writers got a bit lost trying to round off the open ended story and fill in some blanks. Small wonder, considering the book.
Agreed. The Man in the High Castle keeps the main characters going, unlike Game of Thrones, yet each episode leaves me feeling more uncomfortable than GoT's red wedding - which arguably set the modern high water mark for audience distress. Hard to watch.
Man in the High Castle was a bit of a let down. It didn't have the ambiguities of the book that made the alternate history complex and interesting. The TV show was too much of a comic book with nice sharp moral edges.
In which case, don't pay for prime, and just pay for the pay-per-view. In any case, you're complaining about them bundling something which they are not bundling.
Since you haven't found anything interesting on prime to watch, I'll give you a couple suggestions for prime original series which I found good (or have on good authority are worthy):
Goliath - This was excellent from start to finish. It's only 8 episodes, so easy to consume.
The Man in the High Castle - Interesting to me in how the geopolitics of two superpowers in the 60's play out when those superpowers are Nazi Germany and Militaristic Japan, and the parallels to the U.S. and U.S.S.R. during the same period. A little bit of mostly unexplained and low-key science fiction in-story to drive it keeps it interesting as well.
Red Oaks - Only caught one episode, but my wife has seen it all and thought it was fairly funny and it seemed interesting in an 80's John Hughes sort of way.
A bit corny but worth watching.
Also, (spoiler alert) -- Man in the High Castle.
Oh there's some overlap as in all things very little is binary.
None the less PKD doesn't really tell "human vs technology" stories. Take for example "A scanner darkly" which is an interesting psychological thriller and story about chemical addiction. To quote the wikipedia: "A Scanner Darkly is a fictionalized account of real events, based on Dick's experiences in the 1970s drug culture. Dick said in an interview, "Everything in A Scanner Darkly I actually saw.""
"Man in the High Castle" is alt history action. Its not really a story about technology.
"Blade Runner" is film noir action flick with a dose of moralizing about racism and dystopia.
I'd say the thing that defines PKD is technology as escapism. Yeah OK "a scanner darkly" is about speed freaks but he wanted to tell a psychological thriller about addiction without people casually tossing it away as "the speed freaks movie" so he invented a whole substance D mythology to prevent people from taking the easy way out in their analysis. Ditto Blade Runner where the technology was a cloak to hide aspects of modernity he didn't want to talk about, not a central part of the story.
Sort of like how some fantasy pencil whips away aspects of the modern world the author doesn't like in order to pare down to just what the author wants us to focus on.
Technology as a zoom lens, not in the zoom lens. PKD is a cool author but in many ways he doesn't even write sci fi.
How about another definition, soft sci fi can be turned into any other scenery with mere cut and paste, and tada "a scanner darkly" is about elves smoking too much pipe-weed in Tolkien world. But hard sci fi requires a major and substantial rewrite to change the scenery, not just cut and paste. KSR's Mars trilogy isn't going to Venus or ancient South America any time soon.
The problem with the carpenter you mention is out of millions of pro and maybe a billion amateur/ancient carpenters only that one had much insight. Its a bad odds game.
Ha--exact the same three. Plus one more, I think, though I can't remember which one right now.
On the other hand, I've been hooked to The Man in the High Castle, Black Mirror, strings of documentaries and cartoons bought through iTunes, et cetera.
That's pretty much what I came here to say. I do like their original content, BUT...
I want that "last year's movies" that I used to be able to get from them, and now seems to be going to crap.
The quality of their original stuff is very good. And they've got good coverage of non-original TV, too (e.g., reruns of "Friends"). But when you get to movies-from-theatres, they're just not there at all anymore.
I think this is intentional on their part, but they need to be careful, because Amazon also seems to be doing well with a similar strategy (e.g., "Man in the High Castle"). Netflix's original mission of movies could be what sets them apart but it seems to be all but abandoned.
I really like Netflix originals (the ones I've watched), but it also makes me fear for the future of consolidated streaming. I want to be able to keep up with, and watch good recommended shows.
If I want to watch shows like The Man in the High Castle (Amazon), Game of Thrones (HBO, duh), Difficult People (Hulu), HarmonQuest (Seeso), etc. Is it reasonable to have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services?
Don't get me wrong, $9,99 is likely too cheap to get mostly everything like you do with Spotify, but I'm willing to pay double or triple that, as long as I can keep it in one service, and that it's not five or six times as much, which is a bit steep.
Can we expect anything other than a fractured market, where each service has a lot of content, but not even half of what we want to see?
I like how the contextual ads were all for the TV show "Man in the High Castle"...Likely because of the oft repeated word "Nazi" in the article.
Being a child of the 80s, I was first introduced to PKD through Total Recall - the original, good one with Schwarzenegger in it. The mix of sci-fi, paranoia, and reality bending was mesmerising. Verhoeven is the only director who really got to the essence of what Philip K Dick was about.
With the exception of the occasional episode of Star Trek TNG, I didn't have much access to much mindfuck sci-fi, so whatever I could get would leave pretty deep impression on me. I didn't immediately read through his stuff, though. I wouldn't really be reminded of it until I got into Sonic Youth in my late teens and found out that the Sister LP was a loose biography. Sonic Youth's guitar rock/pop mixed with discordant feedback was basically the musical equivalent of PKD's paranoia.
After that I spent years going through a big chunk of his catalog. Obviously, a classic like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is worth your time. The Man in the High Castle is alternate history, and features what I still consider to be the best execution of a things-are-not-what-you-think-they-are ever. I've also been thinking of The Game Players of Titan recently, but that's probably because of the talking self driving car. Ubik is also really, really good, but I can't explain it to you at all.
If you want some fiction that will make you question your grip on reality, I highly recommend reading through his stuff. Just don't wait until you're too old - once your ideals are firmly set in place it gets a lot harder to get into it.
The novel _Man in the High Castle_ references this system, and was supposedly written with reference to it. [No idea about the tv series, doesn't seem possible to get it in the UK]
BSD 4.4 had a game in it that I'd guess simulated the yarrow generation. I wasn't able to get it to compile on a modern system. (https://github.com/weiss/original-bsd/tree/master/games/ching)
Right, I agree. I was referring to the parent mentioning "the Netflix you all talk about". That Netflix is changing every day.
I used to use Netflix to ship me DVDs, then I protested the Qwikster move by switching to streaming-only, which was great for movies (for awhile) but has been shifting to TV content.
To be honest, I don't use Netflix much, but the value I get is still worth the $8/mo. Some months I don't use it at all, other months I binge-watch The Man in the High Castle.
When I want to watch a movie, I first hit Netflix (hey, free streaming!) to search for it... then I check Amazon Prime on my Fire Stick, because some titles are free. If it's available for rental, I'll pay the $4. If available for purchase only (or unavailable), then I'll hop over to the iTunes store on the AppleTV and hope it's available for rental.
Or I just go to canistream.it, which was about my only original invention ever, until I found out someone had already done it.
[cont'd]
Michael Frayn, Democracy. A compulsively readable play about an episode in the politics of West Germany in the 1970s, a subject I didn't know could be made so interesting to me. Superb.
Michael Flynn, Eifelheim. Excellent and profound SF/historical novel about aliens crashing in the Germany of the Middle Ages, and how that would work out. Avoids cheap tricks, very strong on historical research and verisimilitude.
Ross Thomas, The Cold War Swap, Cast a Yellow Shadow, Chinaman's Chance. Very well-written thrillers, typically stories about spying or political corruption. I'm usually bored by this genre, couldn't put these down. Will read more by this (hitherto unknown to me) author.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wizard of Earthsea. (reread) Still as good as I remembered it to be.
P.K.Dick, The Man in the High Castle. (reread) Very inventive and weird in a good way, but I wish the characters would be a little different (everyone is the same highly neurotic mouthpiece for the author), and the obsession with I Ching does nothing for me. Still worth reading.
Robert Ryan, Dead Man's Land. A Sherlock Holmes novel in which 90% of the action is with John Watson rejoining the Army to help in World War I at his late middle age, and Holmes appears only briefly. Works quite well. Very detailed on day-to-day trench warfare and medicine at the front.
Michael Frayn, Noises Off. A funny short play, very meta, not as good as his "Democracy".
Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Better than his two long novels of the 2000s. A self-contained fairy tale, fun to read and well-written, but not beyond that. Gaiman's unsurpassed masterpiece, to me, is still The Sandman.
Michael Swansick, Chasing the Phoenix. SF, set on a future Earth where computers and electronic communication are outlawed following problems with runaway AIs, but there's lots of high technology (e.g. genetics) otherwise. Funny and amusing, a light read.
[edit: deleted about 20 books I didn't like or hated]
I've seen the first "season" of black mirror it was OK is just don't like that type of Scifi I like my Scifi more bigger than life, and while i don't mind some "futuristic earth" shows Black Mirror has the same issue I have with most UK shows and that they produce too little episodes to even fill an afternoon, but Black Mirror just took it to a whole new level with having like what 2-3 episodes?
The new season on Netflix will hopefully be at least 10 episode long so I might actually take another spin at it, waiting 10 years for another 3 episodes of Luther or Sherlock is bad enough I'm not going through this again.
With US TV shows I usually wait until at least the mid season or the 9 episode pickup because lately US TV shows especially from the bigger networks have less job security than the offspring of JRR Martin novels and the Walking Dead characters.
So far we had quite a "decent" year, 12 Monkeys has been renewed, Childhoods End and Westworld are coming, the CW actually managed to make comic book shows (never was a huge comic fan, infact i never had a chance to read a single book i think) cool, we are bloody getting The Man in the High Castle show on Amazon and Marvel's Netflix production is in full gear.
> see: Asimov, with his hopelessly flat characters and dialogue
What? I recently re-read the entire foundation series and was amazed at how I actually remembered a staggering number of the many protagonists from my single time reading the books almost 20 years ago.
I do agree that he might not be sci-fi writer with the best technique - Bester or Le Guin might be better there. Ironically we now suffer (somewhat) from the reverse problems: writers all have a higher education in writing: and end up writing very similarly (in my experience this is a bigger problem with American writers -- but that could be overt and non-overt selection bias: who gets published and who gets marketing/press).
On a side note: after viewing the pilot episode of "Man in the High Castle" (based on the book by P K Dick) earlier this evening, I realized I hadn't read the book. Now I'm a little over halfway through -- and I find it highly enjoyable. And more interestingly highly apropos current events with it's not-so-subtle critique of the US versus the horrors of nazism and ww2-era fascism.
TV show looks great, but I very much doubt it'll manage to pull of the dualism of the novel.
Yeah, "VALIS" was alright. I'd definitely put it ahead of "Minority Report" and "A Scanner Darkly", but far behind "Ubik", "The Three Stigmata", and "Martian Time Slip"; and even behind some other lesser works like "Maze of Death" and "Eye in the Sky".
Of the "VALIS" trilogy, I enjoyed "Divine Invasion" much more.
I did enjoy "DADoES", but just found it to pale in comparison to the movie and to Dick's best works. Dick's evocation of compassion for animals in that novel was quite compelling. Compassion for the underdog (literally and figuratively) is a strong, ongoing theme in his work.
I've been meaning to read "The Man in the High Castle", but have kind of shied away from it because I've found that Dick is best when he writes straight scifi rather than books set in the "real world", as it were. Though TMitHC being set in an alternate history does make it somewhat more attractive for me.
Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle is definitely worth a read. Valis [or is it VALIS?] is also an interesting read...in the psychotropic sense of "interesting".
I found Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep worth a read for the way in which it differs from the movie...the importance as status symbols of synthetic animals in the novella and its implications in regard to synthetic human lives a more compelling theme than the straightforward human rights theme of Blade Runner [or Alien from the same period in film].
What's funny is that I consider God Emperor and beyond to be the Dune series books worth skipping, but that's probably because they came out after I had read the first three...at the time, trilogies were the thing due to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Assimov's Foundation series [later to also be extended like Herbert's epic opus].