It appears the movie industry will not stop until every novel and short story by Philip K. Dick has been made into a movie. And now Terry Gilliam has his eyes on adapting one of Dick's post-apocalyptic novels.
During an interview with HitFix, Gilliam mentioned his admiration for Dick's work, and when asked about the possibility of adapting The Man in the High Castle, Gilliam revealed that he would be meeting with Dick's daughter to discuss bringing a different Dick novel to the screen:
One of the things that is... there's another one that people don't know called "The World According to Jones." Do you know that one? That really fascinates me... where we're in a world where basically everything is relative. It can't be black and white because there's a more religious fundamentalism that we're talking about. So now everything is relative. And then the idea that a guy comes along that can see the future, and it is not relative... that intrigues me, and I don't know exactly how to do it.
The book is actually The World Jones Made, a 1956 novel set on a post-apocalyptic Earth. After clashes between political and moral ideologies led to a devastating nuclear conflict, a world government, called Fedgov, instituted a strict orthodoxy of moral relativism. Anyone may believe what they want, but any person who tries to impose their beliefs upon others — or asserts a belief as fact — will end up in a labor camp. But one man, Floyd Jones, has an unusual precognitive ability, and quickly goes from telling fortunes at a carnival to instigating a war against an apparently unintelligent alien species.
It's easy enough to see how, despite it being one of Dick's less acclaimed novels, Gilliam would be attracted to Jones. It's chalk full of moral ambiguity, high concepts, and oddball bits ripe for Gilliam's visually powerful imagination — atomic mutants who perform in live sex shows, humans who genetically engineer themselves for life on Venus, and spore-based aliens. But I can't help but wonder if Gilliam's dreaminess is too good a match for Dick's, and if the combination of the two would yield too abstract a film. Still, if Gilliam does move forward with a Dick adaptation, the product should be, at the very least, a fascinating watch.
