Blade runner. Much better than “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” but it is only loosely based off it.
PS: when reading a book after watching a film, it usually feels like the book is much better, fills in details, separates scenes which a film had mixed together or altogether done away with. E.g. The Shining, LotR, Dune…but for Androids I just felt “what, that’s it?”
The truth of the matter is that a lot of PKD and Heinlien era sci-fi was very focused on exploring a single theme - that works well literary but isn’t rich enough for TV/Movie - so those works generally got richer and usually were by transitioned by genuine fans that tried to keep the theme and core message.
I feel this is mostly the case with short stories (and a lot of those works were short stories). Where there isn’t enough material for a full movie, the writers are free to add more to the story without messing much with the original. DADOES did have enough material but the movie decided to go a different direction while keeping the main theme. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other in this case as they’re pretty different.
A solid chunk of Philip K Dick’s output worked better as movies/TV than as books.
There’s definitely something there, but the books feel somewhat unfinished/unpolished. Which makes sense, his books weren’t popular in English until after the release of Blade Runner, which coincided with his death. Maybe the popularity of the movie would’ve given him more time and resources to revise future works.
A Scanner Darkly is the only one where both the book and the movie felt about the same quality.
Blade runner. Much better than “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” but it is only loosely based off it.
PS: when reading a book after watching a film, it usually feels like the book is much better, fills in details, separates scenes which a film had mixed together or altogether done away with. E.g. The Shining, LotR, Dune…but for Androids I just felt “what, that’s it?”
The truth of the matter is that a lot of PKD and Heinlien era sci-fi was very focused on exploring a single theme - that works well literary but isn’t rich enough for TV/Movie - so those works generally got richer and usually were by transitioned by genuine fans that tried to keep the theme and core message.
I feel this is mostly the case with short stories (and a lot of those works were short stories). Where there isn’t enough material for a full movie, the writers are free to add more to the story without messing much with the original. DADOES did have enough material but the movie decided to go a different direction while keeping the main theme. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other in this case as they’re pretty different.
They’re almost too different to compare imo, but both the book and the movie are top-tier.
A solid chunk of Philip K Dick’s output worked better as movies/TV than as books.
There’s definitely something there, but the books feel somewhat unfinished/unpolished. Which makes sense, his books weren’t popular in English until after the release of Blade Runner, which coincided with his death. Maybe the popularity of the movie would’ve given him more time and resources to revise future works.
A Scanner Darkly is the only one where both the book and the movie felt about the same quality.
I dunno if you can still find it, but I remember there being a Blade runner TTRPG in the FASA catalog in the '90s