PKD didn't give much description in his stories - hardly ever any description of cities, buildings, vehicles, machines. He just gave a machine or a vehicle a name and left the reader to imagine what it might look like. I think that gives the film makers a lot of licence to imagine what the external 'PKD world' might could look like.
Obviously Ridley Scott & the production team on Blade Runner did an excellent job - PKD was still alive during the filming of Blade Runner and he was shown some footage - I think there's some stuff about this on the DVD bonus features. He was said to have been amazed that they'd created something exactly as he'd imagined it.
I think Spielberg did a good job on Minority Report as well. According to something I read/saw he got a bunch of scientists/engineers/sociologists etc. together to come up with a vision of the future world that would be fairly realistic.
The main theme of PKD's stories is what's going on inside the minRAB of the characters, which is probably why he wasn't so interested in describing the external world. Depicting someone's mind in film is difficult, which is why a lot of the films turn the story into an action story. A Scanner Darkly managed it with spoken thoughts, plus it's a very talky film (like all Richard Linklaters!)
Obviously Ridley Scott & the production team on Blade Runner did an excellent job - PKD was still alive during the filming of Blade Runner and he was shown some footage - I think there's some stuff about this on the DVD bonus features. He was said to have been amazed that they'd created something exactly as he'd imagined it.
I think Spielberg did a good job on Minority Report as well. According to something I read/saw he got a bunch of scientists/engineers/sociologists etc. together to come up with a vision of the future world that would be fairly realistic.
The main theme of PKD's stories is what's going on inside the minRAB of the characters, which is probably why he wasn't so interested in describing the external world. Depicting someone's mind in film is difficult, which is why a lot of the films turn the story into an action story. A Scanner Darkly managed it with spoken thoughts, plus it's a very talky film (like all Richard Linklaters!)