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Amazon has one more season of 'The Man in the High Castle'
Transparent isn't the only long-running Amazon show winding down in 2019. Amazon has confirmed that the fourth and final season of The Man in the High Castle will reach Prime Video sometime in the fall. While internet giant isn't much more specific beyond what's included in the teaser trailer (below), it makes clear that the season will see the Resistance turn into a "full-blown rebellion," with key figures in the Japanese empire and Nazi parties dealing with internal conflicts of their own.
Philip K. Dick's 'The Great C' for Oculus Rift arrives this October
The virtual reality adaptation of Philip K. Dick's The Great C is now making its way to VR headsets after debuting at the Venice Film Festival. It will be available for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive as soon as October 9th, but PlayStation VR owners will unfortunately have to wait until 2019. Fans can expect to be thrust into a 37-minute immersive sci-fi adventure when they put on their headsets and fire up the experience.
Philip K. Dick’s ‘The Great C’ is coming to VR
A VR adaptation of Philip K. Dick's short story "The Great C" is headed to the Venice Film Festival, Variety reports. First published in 1953, the story centers on a human tribe living in a post-apocalyptic world set in the future. Each year, the tribe must send a human sacrifice to a computer called the Great C that rules the world. In the VR adaptation, created by Secret Location, a woman named Clare grapples with whether to accept the tradition and let her fiancé be sacrificed or take a stand against the cruelty.
Amazon’s ‘Electric Dreams’ anthology arrives on Prime Video
If you blew through all of the latest season of Black Mirror when it came out just before the new year and need your science fiction anthology fix, your ship has come in. Amazon's new series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams is live now with ten episodes to feed your hunger for wild, imaginative stories that question reality and/or humanity.
Philip K. Dick’s ‘Electric Dreams’ hits Amazon on January 12th
Last month, we saw the trailer for Electric Dreams, an anthology series based on Philip K. Dick's sci-fi short stories, that will be available exclusively in the US on Amazon Prime. Now, we finally have a release date for the series. All ten episodes will be available for streaming starting January 12th, according to Deadline.
Pop culture's many takes on artificial intelligence
Over the years, artists, writers, filmmakers and game studios have all tackled the concept of artificial intelligence. Often their vision is of machines that are brutally hostile to humans. Philip K. Dick envisioned androids that murder their owners. The iconic HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey ... also murders his human companions. Of course, there's Skynet, which launches an all-out war on mankind. We could go on like this for a long time. But there are also those, like Spike Jonze, who envision us having a more complex relationship with computer-based personalities; one in which they could even be love interests. And in Star Trek: The Next Generation Data is not only a "good" android, but he's often the hero of the show. We've pulled together 13 of our favorite portrayals of AI over the years and put them in the gallery below. It is by no means comprehensive. So please, let us know what we missed in the comments or tweet at us (@engadget) to let us know your favorite AI character from the film, TV or books using the hashtag #EngadgetAIWeek.
The next political speech you hear may be written by an AI
Humanity has made huge advancements in chatbot technology over the past few years. Artificial Intelligence systems can now imitate Philip K Dick, write convincing thinkpiece pitches and even pass the Turing test. However, they've never quite gotten the hang of political speechwriting and, in some cases, wind up sounding downright subhuman. However, a team from University of Massachusetts, Amherst announced on Monday that they have built a robotic writer able to pen passable political sentences.
It's 'Blade Runner' android Roy Batty's birthday
Back to the Future isn't the only big sci-fi movie whose memorable dates are cropping up in real life -- January 8th, 2016 marks the "birthday" of Roy Batty, the leader of the rogue Replicants in Blade Runner. He wouldn't have much to celebrate if he were real (an artificially short life of servitude is nothing to crow about), but it's big for us humans who still want to know what it was like to see attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Moreover, it's notable that a few elements of Ridley Scott's classic (and by extension, Philip K. Dick's original story) are already surfacing in reality -- although it's very much the product of its time, it's not as outlandish a vision as you might think.
Harrison Ford will return in 'Blade Runner' sequel
Need more good news after today's net neutrality ruling? Deadline and Variety report it has been confirmed that Harrison Ford will return to the role of Rick Deckard in the Blade Runner sequel that's currently in the works. Ridley Scott is producing the film, Hampton Fancher (co-writer of the original movie) and Michael Green are writing, and Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners) is in negotiations to direct.The movie is supposed to start shooting next summer, with a script that already garnered high praise from Ford and is said to take place several decades after the original. As an added bonus, that gives him plenty of time to recover from any Star Wars-related injuries and us an opportunity to check out Amazon's upcoming (and also based on a Philip K. Dick story) The Man in the High Castle series. [Image credit: Getty Images]
Flow my tears, the newly-built robotic head of Philip K. Dick said
Yes, this is definitely a post (and video!) about a hand-built, robotic head of author Philip K. Dick, who died in 1982, leaving the world a trove of literature which could be turned into films like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly. Sadly, he did not leave a robotic head of himself. It may surprise you to find out that this is actually not even the first robotic head of Philip K. Dick, it's apparently the second. This newly-built robo-PKD is meant to replace one that was famously lost in 2006, and was built by Hanson Robotics and Dutch public broadcasters VPRO. The video after the break is creepy and amazing, but it's nothing compared to the VALIS Trilogy.
