Philip K. Dick

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 - March 2, 1982), often known by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer who had a profound effect on the genre. He was hailed by and was friends with a number of prominent science fiction authors such as Robert Heinlein, yet he received little recognition from the general public during his lifetime. By the 1990s his works had become some of the most popular of all of science fiction, with Dick gaining both general acclaim and critical acceptance.

Discarding the optimistic and simple worldview of Golden Age science fiction, Dick consistently explored the themes of the nature of reality and humanity in his novels. An influential precursor of the cyberpunk subgenre, Dick brought the anomic world of Southern California to many of his works. He is also one of the first great exponents of the subgenre known as alternate history in his novel The Man in the High Castle. He also produced a tremendous number of short stories and minor works which were published in pulp magazines.

His works are characterized by a constantly eroding sense of reality, with protagonists often discovering that those close to them (or even they themselves) are secretly robots, aliens, supernatural beings, brainwashed spies a la The Manchurian Candidate, hallucinating, or some combination of the above.

Dick experimented with mind-altering drugs, though he often denied that they were any great influence in his work.

In the mid-1970s, he began to experience psychotic symptoms such as hearing voices, visual hallucinations, and an extended experience of dual personality (with dual temporal existence!), as both his "normal" self and Thomas, a member of the persecuted early Christians of the Roman Empire.

His later works, especially the Valis trilogy, were heavily autobiographical. Dick was also a voracious reader of works on religion, philosophy, metaphysics, and Gnosticism, and these ideas found their way into many of his stories. His final novel was The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

Dick's works may be compared with those of William S. Burroughs. (Dick is arguably less obviously twisted and more obviously philosophical.)

Like other more famous science fiction authors, several of Dick's stories have been made into movies. Most of these are only loosely based on Dick's original story, using them as a starting-point for a Hollywood action-adventure story. The most famous, and arguably the best, is Ridley Scott's classic movie Blade Runner.

Fans of Philip K. Dick are sometimes referred to as "Dickheads".

Table of contents 1 Bibliography 1.1 Notable short stories 1.2 Novels 2 External links

Bibliography

Notable short stories

• Autofac[?]
• Faith of our Fathers
• Second Variety
• We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
• Minority Report
• The Electric Ant[?]
• Imposter

Novels

• 1959 - Time out of Joint
• 1962 - The Man in the High Castle (1963 Hugo award for best novel.)
• 1963 - The Game Players of Titan[?]
• 1964 - Martian Time Slip
• 1965 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
• 1966 - Now Wait for Last Year
• 1968 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (made into the film Blade Runner)
• 1969 - Ubik
• 1969 - Galactic Pot Healer[?]
• 1970 - A Maze of Death[?]
• 1974 - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
• 1977 - A Scanner Darkly
• 1981 - Valis
• 1982 - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
• 1985 - Radio Free Albemuth

Movie adaptations of Philip K. Dick's works:

• His novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was made into the movie Blade Runner (1982).
• The movie Total Recall (1990) was based on one of his short stories (We Can Remember It For You Wholesale)
• The movie Screamers (1995) was based on the short story Second Variety.
• Some scenes in The Terminator, of the future war landscape with killer androids trying to sneak into the shelters disguised as humans, are very reminiscent of Second Variety, though no mention was made in that movie's credits. The other main inspiration for The Terminator seems to have been Harlan Ellison's short story Soldier.
• The 2002 film Imposter is based on his story by the same name as was a 1960s TV series.
• The Steven Spielberg film Minority Report (2002) is based on Dick's short story of the same name.
• The French film Confessions d'un Barjo[?] (1992 - by Jérôme Boivin[?]) is based on Confessions of a Crap Artist.

External links

• http://www.philipkdick.com
• Open Directory entry for Philip K. Dick (http://dmoz.org/Arts/Literature/Authors/D/Dick,_Philip_K./)
• Robert Crumb comic strip about Philip K. Dick's theophany (http://www.philipkdick.com/weirdo.htm)
• http://www.geocities.com/pkdlw/index - for an extensive bibliography of Dick's works and many photos