Amazon Prime has released their trailer for Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, a science fiction anthology series based on the short stories and novellas of (as you might’ve guessed from the title) Philip K. Dick. When Stan, the Australian channel that co-produced the series, released a teaser trailer back in August, I was annoyed that they didn’t include Janelle Monáe’s appearance – because, come on. Learn how to market. But now my wishes have been granted!
Monáe has been rocking science fiction from her first EP, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase), to The ArchAndroid to the amazing dystopia of her robbed-of-a-Grammy-nod album, The Electric Lady. So I fangirl pretty hard for her appearance in any piece of sci-fi media, because she’s a creative force in imagining the future.
In Electric Dreams, Monáe will appear as a representative of Autofac in the episode, “Autofac.” Below is the episode summary, as posted by Deadline:
“Despite society and the world as we know it having collapsed, a massive, automatic product-manufacturing factory continues to operate according to the principles of consumerism – humans consume products to be happy, and in order to consume continuously, they must be denied freedom of choice and free will. When a small band of rebels decide to shut down the factory, they discover they may actually be the perfect consumers after all.”
As is fitting for a Philip K. Dick adaptation, the Electric Dreams series seems concerned with questions of reality, identity, perception, corporate control, and free will. I hope some of the episodes really dive into Dick’s what-is-even-real paranoia, because getting freaked out about whether I exist or not is my favorite part of reading his work.
But however the rest of the series turns out, I’ll at least be tuning in for Monáe’s episode.
What are you all thinking after this trailer?
(Via EW; image via screengrab)
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