Philip K. Dick (nonfiction)

Philip K. Dick, early 1960s.

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American writer known for his work in science fiction.

Biography

Dick's work explored philosophical, social, and political themes, with stories dominated by monopolistic corporations, alternative universes, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. His writing also reflected his interest in metaphysics and theology, and often drew upon his life experiences, addressing the nature of reality, identity, drug abuse, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences. Dick produced 44 published novels and approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dick moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with his family at a young age. He began publishing science fiction stories in 1951, at the age of 22. His stories initially found little commercial success, but his 1962 alternative history novel The Man in the High Castle earned Dick early acclaim, including a Hugo Award for Best Novel. He followed with science fiction novels such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and Ubik (1969). His 1974 novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Following a series of paranormal experiences in February 1974, Dick's work engaged more explicitly with issues of theology, philosophy, and the nature of reality, as in such novels as A Scanner Darkly (1977) and VALIS (1981). A collection of his nonfiction writing on these themes was published posthumously as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011).

He died in 1982 in Santa Ana, California, at the age of 53, due to complications from a stroke.

A variety of popular Hollywood films based on Dick's works have been produced, including Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (adapted twice: in 1990 and in 2012), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and The Adjustment Bureau (2011). Meanwhile, the novel The Man in the High Castle (1962) was made into a multi-season television series by Amazon, starting in 2015.

In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik (1969) one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923.

In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer ever to be included in The Library of America series.

Quotations from Philip Dick

From Dick's autobiographical essay in his short story collection The Golden Man:

Push philosophy and theology to their ultimate and what do you wind up with? Nothing. Nothing exists. As I said earlier, there is only one way out: seeing it all as ultimately funny. Kabir, who I quoted, saw dancing and joy and love as ways out, too; and he wrote about the sound of "the anklets on the feet of an insect as it walks." I would like to hear that sound; perhaps if I could my anger and fear, and my high blood pressure, would go away.

Quotations from others

User GurgleGurgleBangBang made this observation about Philip Dick's role in the emergence of new modes of storytelling:

In a sense, I credit him then with having fleshed out a very successful sort of metamodel for storytelling which other writers could take from and apply to their own stories to add considerable realism, by contrasting the individual in definition apart from the realities and reality conflicts they found themselves in… and so giving a model for more realistically defining both the character and the worlds in which they interact in.

• Comment by user GurgleGurgleBangBang

Writing about this comment, Karl Jones observed that "this immediately makes me think of Dungeons and Dragons. Not that Phil Dick had anything to do with Dungeons and Dragons, his work was worlds away. But the metamodel for storytelling, that's like role playing games such as D&D."

Fiction cross-reference

• AESOP - similar to VALIS
• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles
• Philip K. Dick Festival
• The Ambrosia Strain - somehow PKD related, TO_DO: negotiate with Confabulation Research Syndicate
• With Enough Redheads - "With enough redheads, we can project a beam of pink VALIS light into space, so other worlds know that we have redheads too."

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Eric Lampton (nonfiction)
• VALIS (nonfiction)

External links

• Philip K. Dick @ Wikipedia
• Philip K. Dick bibliography @ Wikipedia
• Philip K. Dick speech in Metz, France, 1977 @ YouTube
• Philip K Dick speech (interpreter edited out) in Metz, France, 1977 @ YouTube