As the series Severance unfolded over nine weeks, viewers were treated to one of the smartest, most thoughtful sci-fi satires on TV… a satire rife with the hallmarks of a good Philip K. Dick story. While built on the same foundation of mystery box TV shows like LOST, Severance works on several levels and themes that PKD would have enjoyed—because they are ones he explored over several decades of writing.
[This article contains spoilers for the entire first season of Severance.]
This fall has been an exciting time for fans of classic science fiction, given the big-screen success of Dune and the new small-screen adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. It’s rather fitting that Foundation had to wait 80 years following its first appearance in a pulp magazine to be adapted, and while some purists have been unhappy with the modern retelling, personally, as a lifelong fan of the novels, I thought that David Goyer and Josh Friedman made several smart choices to update the story while remaining faithful to the source material and themes.
For me, the most exciting aspect of these new adaptations was the chance to see stories come to vivid life and hear the names of characters that I’ve been thinking about for decades finally spoken aloud.
