How did you become involved in this series?

Simon Maxwell from Channel 4 contacted me early on to say that the series was going to happen. I knew Isa Dick Hackett and also Anonymous Content from previous projects and they also championed my involvement.

Why did you want to do it?

Some years ago I was involved in a project for Isa Dick Hackett and Anonymous Content. I devised this controlled collision of aspects of Philip K. Dick’s life and a story he outlined but never wrote. To research for this screenplay I went to the States, and guided by Isa and her sister, his friends and family, I visited the places he lived and worked, and – generally - completely immersed myself. Unfortunately, this project didn’t come to fruition. But my intense exploration of Philip K. Dick’s life, along with revisiting his writing, sat there in my head like an alien intelligence and waited its time. This anthology was the trigger.

What’s your story about?

I was attracted by the idea of a couple who have got a little too used to one another, they don’t hate one another, they have just fallen into bad habits. The daily grind helps make them tired and lazy. Then an interloper arrives and catalyses the situation, fantasies become possible realities and chaos ensues! The screenplay is not a vision of a potential future, but a riff on contemporary life and love fused with science fiction conventions. That said, while writing I researched a little into the state of the cliffs along the north Norfolk coast as I knew there had been severe subsidence. Although my knowledge is limited and I know little of the very complex connection between local and mean global sea level. Playing with the idea of creatures being composed of both human and animal DNA, I tracked recent advances in human–animal hybrids. I am fascinated by the heated moral debates around such chimeras - the concerns for human dignity, integrity, animal rights and potential compromise of the human species. We become very moral all of a sudden.

Have you strayed far from the original source material?

I was granted a great deal of freedom and that kind of trust and risk always makes for creative sparks! The screenplay is entirely different from the short story except for the couple, a brief reference to an android salesman and the dreams of escape. The world of the crumbling clifftop, the recycling, infertile land, and the chimeras and are all my inventions - albeit in the spirit of Philip K. Dick. Because of my previous investigations into Dick's world, I always felt he was there throughout. He may not have written this particular story, but everything in it is guided and informed by him.

What are the pitfalls of adapting an existing story? Is it easier or harder than writing an original script?

I am attracted to an adaptation, usually, because the source speaks to something I have been thinking about, wrestled with, or given up on. Very often the material I am adapting allows me to side-step myself and take myself out of the equation, so my overall concern becomes one of serving existing material and buying into somebody else’s truth or world. This liberates me and enables me to dodge my own internal censor. The story or novel or press cutting or whatever provides a kind of framework or new way of thinking. Plus the writer has always done a ton of spade work which I can thieve. If you’re lucky there’s good dialogue, characters and events, if you’re really lucky there’s a strong narrative.

What do you think are the themes of your story, and are those themes typical of Philip K. Dick’s work?

The story and the characters come first. The themes emerge through them. I don’t make the decisions, they do. The bleak landscapes of the north Kent coast, and Norfolk too, are dear to my heart. I love the strange osmotic relationship between land and sea. I suspect this slippery interrelation to be a fair metaphor for what it is to be human. Control is the correct word in the world of Crazy Diamond - everything is measured and controlled, nothing can be planted outside strict directives from an unseen and unaccountable authority. At the same time sea levels are rising and the land is slipping away. Both humans and chimeras mask the high anxiety levels this causes with false brightness and obedience.

Ed is a dreamer. His only muddled answer to what he senses to be a soulless existence on borrowed time is to escape. To where? He’s not sure but for a vague notion of utopia. His wife, Sally, is initially more tentative in her search for a way of transcending their conditioned lives. These two aren’t out of love with one another so much as out of step. Jill’s sole motivation is to live - now - this minute! Her ferocious need to survive acts as a catalyst.

Why do you think so many of Dick’s stories have been adapted to the screen?

Philip K. Dick had more ideas per page than most do per novel. He wrote more about our interior life than about the exterior world. His stories are funny-grotesque creatures that emerge from a swamp of paranoia and fear, and right now that tide is coming in fast.