Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams: Autofac

January 11, 2018 8:31 PM - Season 1, Episode 8

Society and the world as we know it has collapsed. A small band of humans must now contend with a massive, automatic factory that continuously produces products while using up what little resources are left.

Apparently Philip K Dick foresaw what Amazon would one day turn into. I had chills.

The twist with Emily was wonderful, when Juno Temple totally pulled off that "thanks for the help, Alexa Alice."

I do wonder if their reproductive system works.

I also enjoyed this episode because I love everything Janelle Monae does

posted by numaner (7 comments total)

note: I'm watching through Amazon Prime and episode orders are different than what's already on the purple. This was episode 2. However since we already have the others up and IMDB actually list them in the same order, I'm following that protocol so this is 8.
posted by numaner at 8:32 PM on January 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Definitely confused about the order of the episodes.
posted by octothorpe at 7:33 PM on January 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

Amusing that we're watching this on Amazon Prime when it's probably Jeff Bezos's dream world.
posted by octothorpe at 7:44 PM on January 12, 2018 [8 favorites]

This was pretty good.

Definitely confused about the order of the episodes.
The first six episodes were originally broadcast in UK by Channel Four, and I've posted them as they were aired (there was even a swap between the listings and the episode aired). Since it's an anthology series, Amazon can order them in any way they fancy. Like Fox does with sci-fi shows /s
posted by lmfsilva at 3:13 AM on January 17, 2018

I watched this for Janelle Monáe and I'm glad she got to play a sly robot! And I thought I saw some interesting visual echoes of Encounters of the Third Kind and Arrival.

I now see I was confused; the English Wikipedia episode guide reminds me that there was indeed a Dick story called "Autofac" that this episode adapts, whereas I came into it thinking it was going to be an adaptation of "Pay for the Printer".
posted by brainwane at 11:45 AM on January 24, 2018

Loved this episode! I caught some of the hints (I predicted that Emily was hoarding the issue of Wired because it revealed she built the autofac) but missed others (I chalked up Emily not having aged the 20 years since the war to the show not wanting to bother with old age makeup). Janelle Monae’s performance was wonderful. I wish I could watch the approach to the drone-swarmed autofac again in IMAX.
posted by ejs at 5:53 PM on January 29, 2018

So by the end of the episode, we had an android on crutches (Avishai, Emily's boyfriend) simulating a human. That must be a reference to the injured Russian soldier in Second Variety, right?
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 7:02 PM on July 14, 2018