Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams: Crazy Diamond
October 9, 2017 10:15 AM - Season 1, Episode 4 - Subscribe

Ed's life is turned upside down, and his wife Sally's worst fears come true when he meets femme fatale Jill, a synthetic being who is as beautiful as she is deadly.
posted by lmfsilva (7 comments total)
 
This is like JF Sebastian's future-story.
posted by rhizome at 6:27 PM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Not a lot of the original short story it's supposedly based on in this afaik
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:49 AM on October 15, 2017


Flicking Myth agrees on the vague connection to the short story Sales Pitch (PKD Fans page, with a summary that makes this sound like a very vague connection at best, with more connection via Easter eggs than plot structure).

On the whole, it was a fun romp, in a dystopian sort of way. I rather enjoyed the fact that Ed didn't get the ending he wanted, and there's more potential for Sally and Jane. At least he still has his record (of Hitchcock and Graham Coxon performing Octopus, which was written by Syd Barrett, apparently).
posted by filthy light thief at 12:40 PM on October 17, 2017


Is there usually much of this kind of natural overlap among PKD's stories, that he has a (at least) few themes that repeat? Not that that's the sum total, he simply writing permutations of a few animating concepts, but that plots and characters rhyme with others?
posted by rhizome at 3:28 PM on October 17, 2017


i couldn't get into this one... like either it felt too slow or i just couldn't bring myself to care about the characters.

the ending twist was nice. i'm all about women sticking together despite one of them really sabotaged the others' relationship.
posted by numaner at 1:25 PM on January 18, 2018


Is there usually much of this kind of natural overlap among PKD's stories, that he has a (at least) few themes that repeat?

Oh, so much. I had a three volume collection of his short stories, and reading them was like hearing the same drum get beaten over and over. (Though not in a bad way.) I don’t know if the original story contains the scene where they want to bury the sprouting potato but are foiled because the whole landscape is fake, but that was as quintessentially PKD as exploring whether artificial people are “real” or not. And it’s not coincidence that we now have three episodes in a row (out of only four) in which a woman character manipulates the hapless male main character.
posted by ejs at 8:04 PM on January 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


This episode was just a mess. The themes and the plot did not work together in any coherent way. The setting was nicely developed, I'll give it that, but the story was a jumble. The caper was needlessly complicated. The boss must have known that Ed's hand print was used to access the facility when the spirit eggs were stolen, but presumably he didn't reveal that in order to uncover the real baddies, except, wait a minute, it turns out he is a baddie in an unexplained and unnecessary twist! Or a vigilante? Or a dupe of the femme fatale? Whatever!

The end in particular makes a mash out of the underlying themes of the over-development of technology, the failure of technology to meet our more human needs, the intrusion of corporations into every aspect of our lives, and, most pointedly, the ridiculousness of the typically male fantasy of escape from society. It turns out women (or, in this case, a presumably natural woman and a technologically created woman, invoking the "who is really human?" theme to no particular end) can escape from society, as long as they betray men, because... "Girls Rule Boys Drool" maybe? Worse, it seems like Sally and Jill are headed toward a Thelma and Louise ending that is robbed of any meaning by the incoherence of the story and the superficial development of the "women gotta stick together" theme. Despite the trappings of girl power feminism, I think if this episode has a point of view it is "Women and technology, they'll screw you every time! And look hot doing it! Right guys? At least we still have our vinyl for real companionship."
posted by nequalsone at 9:54 AM on May 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


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