Philip K. Dick
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Philip K. Dick (Philip Kindred Dick) (December 16, 1928 — March 2, 1982), American writer.
During his life, PKD (as he is often identified) had a cult readership and the appreciation of his peers, but received no mainstream critical attention and little popular approbation. He is now considered one of SF’s most influential writers and a figure of importance in literature as a whole. His themes of memory, paranoia, the meaning of humanity, and the nature of reality have dominated cinematic science fiction for over a quarter of a century and his work is still in demand as the basis for films. According to Dick, “My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?' Many of my stories and novels deal with psychotic states or drug-induced states by which I can present the *concept of a multiverse rather than a universe. Music and sociology are themes in my novels, also radical political trends; in particular I've written about fascism and my fear of it.” [1]
His writing career began with short stories that found publication in SF magazines. During 1952-1954 he wrote and sold 67 stories. He was ambivalent about the genre, however, and his first novels were mainstream fiction that found no takers. He turned to novel-length science fiction, and Solar Lottery was published by Ace in 1955. With science fiction novels such as The World Jones Made (1956) and Eye In The Sky (1957) published, Dick returned to mainstream fiction, writing a number of novels that failed to find immediate publication. Only one of these, Confessions of a Crap Artist (1975), was published during his lifetime. (Others, including Mary and the Giant (1987), The Broken Bubble of Thisbe Holt (1988), and Puttering About in a Small Land (1985) were published posthumously.) After again failing to establish himself as a mainstream novelist, Dick returned SF bringing the style he has found outside of genre into his work beginning with Time Out of Joint (1959). In 1962 he published what many critics consider to be his most important work, the Hugo award-winning The Man in the High Castle. The novel presented an alternative history in which the United States lost World War II and had been occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan for two decades. His next three novels, Martian Time-Slip (1964), Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along after the Bomb (1965), and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), are often considered, in toto, as his best. His novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), on which the film Blade Runner (1982) was based, considered the meaning of human life and humanity's responsibility for the environment. In February and March of 1974 Dick experienced a series of visions and auditory experiences he later referred to as “2-3-74” (for “February/March 1974”). His attempt to understand these events pervaded his life and writing thereafter resulting in a lengthy “Exegesis.”
His novel VALIS (1981), the most notable work of his last years, features Dick alter-ego Horselover Fat attempting to reconcile the human condition with the existence of meaning/god/the universe/superior intelligence (the Vast Active Living Intelligence System). Dick published 121 short stories and, during his lifetime, 36 novels. Nine novels have been published posthumously. In addition to Blade Runner, adaptations of Dick's novels and stories include Total Recall (1992), Screamers (1995), Impostor (2001), Minority Report (2002), Paycheck (2003), A Scanner Darkly (2006) and the non-sf French film Barjo.
[1] Statement of 1975 quoted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) Vol. 8, Part 1.
Selected Bibliography
Popular Culture
External Links
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