Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982), often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer and novelist.[1] He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime.[2] His fiction explored varied philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness.[3][4] He is considered one of the most important figures in 20th century science fiction.[5]
Philip K. Dick
March 2, 1982 (aged 53)
Santa Ana, California, U.S.
- Richard Phillips
- Jack Dowland
Writer: novelist, short story writer, and essayist
1951–1982
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Jeanette Marlin(m. 1948; div. 1948)
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Kleo Apostolides(m. 1950; div. 1959)
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Anne Williams Rubinstein(m. 1959; div. 1965)
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Nancy Hackett(m. 1966; div. 1972)
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Leslie "Tessa" Busby(m. 1973; div. 1977)
3; including Isa
Born in Chicago, Dick moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with his family at a young age. He began publishing science fiction stories in 1952, at age 23. He found little commercial success[6] until his alternative history novel The Man in the High Castle (1962) earned him acclaim, including a Hugo Award for Best Novel, when he was 33.[7] 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.[8]
Following years of drug abuse and a series of mystical experiences in 1974, Dick's work engaged more explicitly with issues of theology, metaphysics, and the nature of reality, as in novels A Scanner Darkly (1977), VALIS (1981), and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982).[9] A collection of his speculative 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.[10] Following his death, he became "widely regarded as a master of imaginative, paranoid fiction in the vein of Franz Kafka and Thomas Pynchon".[11]
Dick's posthumous influence has been widespread, extending beyond literary circles into Hollywood filmmaking.[12] Popular films based on his works include Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (adapted twice: in 1990 and in 2012), Screamers (1995), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), and Radio Free Albemuth (2010). Beginning in 2015, Amazon Prime Video produced the multi-season television adaptation The Man in the High Castle, based on Dick's 1962 novel; and in 2017 Channel 4 produced the anthology series Electric Dreams, based on various Dick stories.
In 2005, Time named Ubik (1969) one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923.[13] In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer included in The Library of America series.[14][15][16]
Death[edit]
On February 17, 1982, after completing an interview, Dick contacted his therapist, complaining of failing eyesight, and was advised to go to a hospital immediately, but did not. The following day, he was found unconscious on the floor of his Santa Ana, California, home, having suffered a stroke. On February 25, 1982, Dick suffered another stroke in the hospital, which led to brain death. Five days later, on March 2, 1982, he was disconnected from life support. After his death, Dick's father, Joseph, took his son's ashes to Riverside Cemetery in Fort Morgan, Colorado (section K, block 1, lot 56), where they were buried next to his twin sister Jane, who died in infancy. Her tombstone had been inscribed with both of their names at the time of her death, 53 years earlier.[60][61] Philip died four months before the release of Blade Runner, the film based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?[62]
Style and works[edit]
Themes[edit]
Dick's stories typically focus on the fragile nature of what is real and the construction of personal identity. His stories often become surreal fantasies, as the main characters slowly discover that their everyday world is actually an illusion assembled by powerful external entities, such as the suspended animation in Ubik,[63] vast political conspiracies or the vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator. "All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality", writes science fiction author Charles Platt. "Everything is a matter of perception. The ground is liable to shift under your feet. A protagonist may find himself living out another person's dream, or he may enter a drug-induced state that actually makes better sense than the real world, or he may cross into a different universe completely."[41]
Alternate universes and simulacra are common plot devices, with fictional worlds inhabited by common, working people, rather than galactic elites. "There are no heroes in Dick's books", Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, "but there are heroics. One is reminded of Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people."[63] Dick made no secret that much of his thinking and work was heavily influenced by the writings of Carl Jung.[60][64] The Jungian constructs and models that most concerned Dick seem to be the archetypes of the collective unconscious, group projection/hallucination, synchronicities, and personality theory.[60] Many of Dick's protagonists overtly analyze reality and their perceptions in Jungian terms (see Lies, Inc.).
Dick identified one major theme of his work as the question, "What constitutes the authentic human being?"[65] In works such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, beings can appear totally human in every respect while lacking soul or compassion, while completely alien beings such as Glimmung in Galactic Pot-Healer may be more humane and complex than their human peers. Understood correctly, said Dick, the term "human being" applies "not to origin or to any ontology but to a way of being in the world."[66] This authentic way of being manifests itself in compassion that recognizes the oneness of all life. "In Dick's vision, the moral imperative calls on us to care for all sentient beings, human or nonhuman, natural or artificial, regardless of their place in the order of things. And Dick makes clear that this imperative is grounded in empathy, not reason, whatever subsequent role reason may play."[67] The figure of the android depicts those who are deficient in empathy, who are alienated from others and are becoming more mechanical (emotionless) in their behaviour. "In general, then, it can be said that for Dick robots represent machines that are becoming more like humans, while androids represent humans that are becoming more like machines."[68]
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Dick in 2005.[178]
During his lifetime he received numerous annual literary awards and nominations for particular works.[179]
Primary bibliography
Secondary bibliography
