working under Disney's direction. As others have pointed out this is an example of where a system like this can be carried by getting a few things really right and faking the other ones well enough.
I think because it was close enough that Disney probably was already working on it before the book came out and the book came out without (presumably) knowing about what Disney was working on.
Then you have two pop culture references to an animatronic Lincoln being released within two years of each other.
That is odd.
I would agree with you if the book had been out longer before Disney immitated it.
Now that I think of it, it was close to the 100th anniversary of the civil war and not long after Lincoln’s death so Lincoln must have been on people’s minds. The civil rights movement would be another reason people would be thinking about Lincoln’s legacy too.
The book had not even been published at the time. Dick wrote it in 1962, it was serialized in 1969 and published in book form in 1972 so it could not have influenced Disney at all.
I would though think that this Star Trek episode must have been informed by Disney's Lincoln
even if there is no explict connection drawn (everybody knew about Disney's Lincoln then, it was talked about a lot) It is mentioned specifically in the 1967 film
where the protagonists are being lectured to by an animatronic figure and once character says "He's like Abe Lincoln" so there is some expectation at that time that people would know about him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moments_with_Mr._Lincoln
(Oddly, Phillip K. Dick's We can build you featuring a Lincoln simulacrum was written in 1962, a few year before Disney's Lincoln)
The emotional impact of that Lincoln was carried by the voice actor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dano
working under Disney's direction. As others have pointed out this is an example of where a system like this can be carried by getting a few things really right and faking the other ones well enough.
Disney