Paranoid, mind-bending, unpredictable and surreal, the writings of Philip K Dick may have been keyed in to the counterculture, trippy era of the 60s and 70s, but decades after his untimely death in 1982, his best stories seem more relevant now than ever before. This perhaps explains why the author’s books and novels are so often a source of inspiration to filmmakers and other writers, in spite of their frequently bewildering nature.

Movies based on Philip K Dick’s work have regularly appeared on the big screen since Ridley Scott brought Blade Runner to the screen in 1982, and more adaptations have been announced for the future. Dick passed away before Blade Runner‘s premiere, and never had the opportunity to enjoy the huge following his work has gradually acquired, or the far-reaching effect his writing has had on the writers and directors that followed him.

While the style of last year’s Inception is very much director Christopher Nolan’s own, its dream-within-a-dream premise is straight out of a Philip K Dick novel, most obviously the comic nightmare that was 1969’s Ubik, in which reality turns out to be the product of a dead psychopath’s mind.

The constant poking at the seams of reality also appears to have rubbed off on maverick director, David Cronenberg, who makes similarly troubling enquiries in his lengthy precession of weird films. His 1999 movie, eXistenZ, nests simulated realities within simulated realities in a manner that Dick would, I think, have loved.