A movie version of Philip K. Dick’s Vulcan’s Hammer may eventually make its way to a theater near you. According to The Hollywood Reporter, New Republic Pictures and director Francis Lawrence (Hunger Games, I am Legend) will be leading the team adapting Dick’s 1960 sci-fi novel.
This, of course, is not the first time one of Dick’s works has been adapted into a movie. Arguably the most well-known adaptation is 1982’s Blade Runner, which is loosely (very loosely) based on Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Other previous adaptations of Dick’s work include the movies Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. The TV series The Man in the High Castle, is also originally based on Dick’s novel of the same name.
Vulcan’s Hammer is based in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has placed an AI system, Vulcan 3, in control, giving the AI the power to set policies that people on Earth must follow. One day, however, something attacks Vulcan 3 and someone else is murdered. A man named William Barris is tasked to figure out who or what’s behind it all, and we follow his journey as he seeks to unearth the truth.
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Vulcan’s Hammer
Here’s a blurb of the 165-page book:
After the twentieth century’s devastating series of wars, the world’s governments banded together into one globe-spanning entity, committed to peace at all costs. Ensuring that peace is the Vulcan supercomputer, responsible for all major decisions. But some people don’t like being taken out of the equation. And others resent the idea that the Vulcan is taking the place of God. As the world grows ever closer to all-out war, one functionary frantically tries to prevent it. But the Vulcan computer has its own plans, plans that might not include humanity at all.
Given the credits of Lawrence and the rest of the production team (New Republic Pictures is just wrapping up working on Michael Bay’s Ambulance), my guess is this adaptation will be big on the explosions and massive in scope. It’s still early days, however, so we’ll likely have to wait awhile to see it on screen.
