In a story that sounds similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Charles Walton realizes his father has been replaced by an alien imposter. Charles enlists two friends for help, and together they find and burn the bug-like creature that controls the father-thing, which in turn destroys the father-thing and the Charles-thing which had just matured.

“The Father-Thing” was adapted for Electric Dreams as one of the better episodes of the first season.

Cast of characters

• Charles Walton – eight-year-old boy whose father has been replaced by an alien
• June Walton – Charles’s mother
• Ted Walton – Charles’s father / the father-thing
• Tony Peretti, Bobby Daniels – Charles’s friends who help him defeat the father-thing

Ed Loyce is the only one who seems to find the dead stranger strung up from a lamp post in Pikeville’s town park out of the ordinary. He reports it to the police who want to take him in for questioning, but he escapes from them and discovers the town of Pikeville has been invaded by insect-like aliens from another dimension who have taken on the appearance of everyone in the town, including his family.

He flees to the neighboring town of Oak Grove and attempts to warn the police commissioner there. But the commissioner explains to Loyce that the stranger was hanged in Pikeville as bait to draw out anyone from the town who wasn’t yet under the control of the aliens. Loyce realizes too late he is fated to become the hanging stranger in the similarly-overrun Oak Grove.

“The Hanging Stranger” was adapted as the more politically-minded and muddled tv episode “Kill All Others” in the first season of Electric Dreams.

Cast of characters

• Ed Loyce – owner of Loyce TV Sales and Service
• Don Fergusson – salesman at Loyce TV Sales and Service
• Jack Potter – works at the shoe shop by the town park
• Jenkins – a stationary clerk
• Margaret Henderson – works at the jewelry store by the town park
• Janet Loyce – Ed’s wife
• Tommy and Jimmy – Ed’s sons
• The police commissioner of Oak Grove

With the help of three precog mutants, a precrime police agency eliminates major crimes in society by arresting people before they actually break any laws.

When precrime commissioner John Anderton is tagged by the precogs for killing a man he doesn’t know, he assumes he is being framed by the newcomer Ed Witwer who wants his job. What he doesn’t know is that the Army, rendered toothless by the precrime division, wants to return to power.

The precogs saw a future where Anderton kills the Army General Kaplan after their power grab. We find out that the precrime system relies on a majority report from two precogs who agree on an outcome in the future, which means the remaining precog generates a minority report where no crime is committed. When Anderton doesn’t kill Kaplan, Kaplan uses this to try to shut precrime down under the assumption that Anderton was about to be arrested based on a minority report that won’t come true. Anderton then chooses to kill Kaplan after all to renew public trust in precrime by proving that it does work after all.

It’s a great twisting story, and Spielberg’s 2002 movie is probably Dick’s most well-known adaptation. It alters the plot somewhat with a result that is a bit too convoluted and contrived, although it is second only to Blade Runner in its groundbreaking vision of a future based on Dick’s work.

A sequel to the movie aired as a TV adaptation on Fox for one season in 2015. I can’t say much about it other than it had poor reviews and I barely even remembered it existed.

Cast of characters

• John Anderton – precrime commissioner
• Ed Witwer – Anderton’s new associate
• Lisa Anderton – Andertons wife and an official executive of precrime
• Leopold Kaplan – an Army general and the man Anderton is supposed to kill
• Fleming – an Army major working for Kaplan
• Jerry, Donna, Mike – the three precogs
• Wally Page – Anderton’s assistant

After a war leaves humans scattered in settlements around the U.S., unmanned automatic factories continue to churn out consumer goods while expanding and using up more and more natural resources.

Humans, lacking any other way to stop these autofacs, pit the factories in adjacent cities against each other as the autofacs scavenge for the same raw materials. The Kansas City factory ends up destroyed by a factory from another city, or at least it appears that way until the humans discover that deep underground the factory has started to manufacture miniature replicas of the factory itself that will presumably take over the entire earth.

This story was adapted for season one of Electric Dreams which takes the premise in a different direction with a not-too-satisfying twist ending.

Cast of characters

Earl Perine, Morrison, O’Neill, Judith O’Neill – members of a settlement in Kansas City

Schoolboy Mike Foster desperately wants a bomb shelter, partly to fit in (his is the only family not to own one) and partly for a sense of security (this is 1971 and the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union). Mike eventually convinces his father to buy the newest model shelter on an installment plan. His family though can’t afford it after the Russians develop a new weapon rendering all shelters obsolete unless owners pay for a costly upgrade. The shelter then gets repossessed sending Mike into a fit of despair.

‘Foster, You’re Dead’ was adapted as ‘Safe and Sound’ for the first season of Amazon Prime’s Electric Dreams. It’s not a terrible episode of television, but it shares very little in common with the short story.

Cast of characters

• Mike Foster
• Bob Foster – Mike’s dad and the last of the town’s anti-preppers
• Ruth Foster – Mike’s mom
• Bill O’Neill – shelter salesman for General Electronics

The Man in the High Castle is a book I admire more than enjoy reading. I reread it thinking I missed something when I read it years ago, but I felt almost the same about it the second time through.

The premise, where Dick imagines a world where the Axis powers won World War II, is certainly interesting. And the novel within the novel, where an author (the titular man in the high castle) has written a book about the Allies winning the war, is a great reversal of this idea. The characters though didn’t click with me, and the conflicts between the quarreling factions of the Reich felt more studious than exciting. I’m in the minority here. Most consider The Man in the High Castle to be one of Dick’s masterworks.

We find out at the end that the author Abendsen plotted the entirety of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by consulting the I Ching. Evidently, Dick made heavy use of the I Ching while writing The Man in the High Castle, although not to the extent of his stand-in. Dick won the Hugo Award for this in 1963 after which he finally gave up on his mainstream aspirations and threw himself headfirst into his sci-fi career.

Cast of characters

• Robert Childan – owner of American Artistic Handcrafts
• Mr. Tagomi – a Japanese trade official in San Francisco
• Frank Frink – Jewish metalworker who loses his job at W-M Corporation and starts a jewelry business
• Wyndam-Matson – owns a metalworking factory
• Juliana Frink – Frank’s ex-wife. Lives in Colorado
• Joe Cinnedella– a Nazi out to assassinate Abendsen. Undercover as an Italian truck driver
• Mr. Baynes – the alias of Rudolph Wegener, a member of the Abwehr, posing as a Swede who works for the Reich in plastics.
• Ed McCarthy – Frink’s jewelry business partner
• Hawthorne Abendsen – author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy
• Shinjiro Yatabe – the alias of the Japanese General Tedeki
• Hugo Reiss – the Reichs Consul in San Francisco
• Kreuz vom Meere – chief of the SD in the PSA
• Martin Bormann – in TMITHC he becomes the Reich Chancellor until his death. The following are jockeying to take his place:
  • Goring – founded the Gestapo and built up the Luftwaffe. He also shows up in the time travel plot of The Simulacra
  • Goebbels – Nazi Minister of Propaganda
  • Heydrich – career man with the SS. Deputy to Himmler. Drafted the “Final Solution”
  • Baldur von Schirach – former head of Hitler Youth
  • Dr. Seyss-Inquart – former Austrian Nazi. Possibly the most hated man in Reich territory

Other things to know

• Sicherheitsdienst – SD. The intelligence agency of the SS
• Abwehr – German military intelligence organization