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Philip K(indred) Dick (1928-1982)

 

American science fiction writer, whose imaginative treatment of clichés of the genre – time travel, the existence of alternative worlds – has influenced deeply popular culture. For most of his career, Philip K. Dick lived in poverty, although he was prolific and wrote 112 short stories and over 30 novels. Things got even worse when he ruined his health by heavy use of psychedelics. In March 1974 the writer claimed to have been contacted by an extraterrestrial force, a "beam of pink light" theoretically originating from a satellite he came to call VALIS: Vast Active Living Intelligence System.

The proton beam deflector of the Belmont Bevatron betrayed its inventors at four o'clock in the afternoon of October 2, 1959. What happened next happened instantly. No longer adequately deflected—and therefor no longer under control—the six billion volt beam radiated upward toward the roof of the chamber, incinerating along its way, an observation platform overlooking the doughnut-shaped magnet. (from Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick, New York: Collier Books, 1993, p. 1; first published in 1957)

Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Joseph Edgar Dick, a Federal Government employee, and Dorothy Kindred. His twin sister Jane died just a few weeks after the birth, and his parents divorced when he was four. The family moved to California when he was young. He attended Berkeley High School and studied from 1945 to 1946 at the University of California at Berkeley. He operated a record store and worked as a disk jockey for the KSMO radio station. During these years Dick began to write science fiction stories and sold his first tale in 1952 to Planet Stories. One of Dick's tales from this period, 'Paycheck,' was filmed in 2003 by John Woo, starring Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman. Dick also composed over half-a-dozen mainstream novels without much success. Frustrated by this inattention he turned to science fiction, a genre which he found ideal for his philosophical speculations. 

At the age of 27, Dick finally found a publisher. Between the years 1955 and 1970 he wrote an average of two paperback novels a year and more than one hundred short stories in such magazines as Galaxy, Amazing, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Worlds of If. Among his publishers was Ace Books. However, he also had time to romantic affairs, he read books from the Bhagavad-Gita to Carl Jung, and spent time in the company of beatniks and hippies. Dick's first published novel was Solar Lottery (1955). It was set on an Earth of the twenty-third century where democracy is replaced by lottery which decides people's place in society. Eventually lottery is revealed as a front for secret rulers of the world.

With his second wife, Kleo, he moved to west Marin, where he met Anne Rubenstein, the widow of a San Francisco poet. They married in 1959 and divorced five years later. During this period Dick wrote some of his best novels. After their separation, Anne R. Dick did not follow his career and was unaware of his success.

As a writer Dick gained first recognition with The Man in the High Castle (1962), an alternate universe story and a novel within the novel, where Germany and Japan have won the World War II and jointly occupy the United States. A disillusioned writer, Hawthorne Abendsen, has produced a novel speculating what would happen if the Allies had won the war. I Ching exists in this reality, too, and reveals that it is not the real world. At the end, the reader in offered only a glimpse at the course of history, as we know it. Mr Tagomi of the Japanese Trade Mission, consults his I Ching constantly, and is transported into our reality.

Martian Time-Slip (1964) was set in forgotten Mars, where scarce water supplies are controlled by the head of the plumbers' union. The Bleekmen are hated aliens, with whom the colonists try to live alongside. An autistic Martian boy, Manfered Steiner, is able to predict the future. Jack Bohlen, a repairman who suffers from schizophrenia, says: "It almost seems to me that Manfred does more than know the future; in some way he controls it, he can make it come out the worst possible way because that's what seems natural to him, that's how he sees reality. It is as if by being around him we're sinking into his reality." (Ibid., New York: Ballantine Books, 1976, p. 137)

The characters of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) are at the mercy of a cruel demiurge. A man returns from a distant galaxy with a new drug, Chew-Z, that allows people to slip into vast virtual-reality worlds of their own devising. But there are side effects with the drug: Paul Eldritch can enter into everyone's private reality. Also another drug, Can-D, is in in wide use, it gives dreams of world where all is permitted. At the end of the novel Leo Bulero, an "evolved" human, has made his own choice: "I saw enough in the future not to ever give up, even if I'm the only one who doesn't succumb, who's still keeping the old way alive, the pre-Palmer Eldritch way. It's nothing more than faith in powers implanted in me from the start which I can – in the end – draw on and beat him with." (Ibid., London: Triad/Panther Books, 1978, p. 203)

In Ubik (1969) the dead come back to invade the realities of the living. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974) was also adapted into stage by Linda Hartinian in New York and won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. A Scanner Darkly (1977) followed the decline of a high-tech undercover agent, Bob Arctor, and drew a disillusioned picture of a future drug culture. At the centre of the story is a highly volatile drug called Substance D – or Death.

Most of Dick's fiction was set in California. He draw ideas from Buddhism, Kabbalism, Gnosticism, Taoism, used the typical science fiction elements with robots, space ships, ESP, and extraterrestrials. In his article 'Man, Android and Machine' Dick wrote about the frightening creatures among us: "I mean a thing somehow generated to deceive us in a cruel way, to cause us to think it to be one of ourselves. Made in a laboratory—that aspect is not meaningful to me; the entire universe is one vast laboratory, and out of it come sly and cruel entities which smile as the reach out to shake hands. But their handshake is the grip of death, and their smile has the coldness of the grave." (Science Fiction at Large: A Collection of Essays, by Various Hands, About the Interface Between Science Fiction and Reality, edited by Peter Nicholls, New York: Harper & Row, 1976, p. 202) Dicks's paranoid view of reality was in contradiction with reality. It didn't make him different from many other science fiction writers of the same era but he brought up serious concerns about the dangers that technological advancements can bring.

As a result of their association with Communist Party fellow travellers on the Berkeley campus, Dick and his wife Kleo were recruited in the early 1950s to spy on leftist radicals. The author's fear of political or social repression was not mere illusion: he was under scrutiny by the FBI and Air Force intelligence for his opposition to the Vietnam War.

Several of Dicks's novels dealt with theme of alternate world and manipulation of the reality. In the late 1960s and especially 1970s the drug aspect and theology began to dominate the narration. Dick consulted the ancient Chinese work of divination and prophesy, I Ching, in writing the article 'Drugs, Hallucinations, and the Quest for Reality' (1964).

After a break-in at his house in San Rafael, Dick went to Vancouver for a period. In 1974 Dick began to believe that inside him was a part a reborn ancient personage, Simon Magus, the Gnostic. "When I learned about the later part of Phil's life, I felt sad," recalled Anne R. Dick. "At times, I felt that something must be terribly wrong with me that I had loved a person who was (to my way of thinking) I involved in such a terrible life at one period. But he had also been my best friend and a good husband—he played the role beautifully for a while—and a good father to my children. He was lots of fun, too." (The Search for Philip K. Dick by Anne R. Dick, San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2010, p. 17)

The traumatic encounter with the "beam of pink light" led Dick to write a diary known as the 'Exegesis'. He continued his self-examination in the trilogy Valis (1981), an analysis of a man who is mad and another who is not, The Divine Invasion (1981), and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982). Dick died of a stroke on March 2, 1982, just a few months before the film Blade Runner, based  based on his Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), was released. Dick had met Scott in December 1981. Their meeting was cordial. Dick was married five times and had three children. His papers are collected at the California State University in Fullerton. Dick's posthumous reputation has not shown signs of decline.

For Dick, the real question was not whether mankind's creations would turn against us. He seems to have believed that the existence of nuclear weapons proved they already had. Most of his novels take place in a world rising out of the ashes of nuclear war. His main fascination was the likelihood that technology would lead to the disappearance of the very frontier between what mankind creates and what mankind is. (Richard Bernstein in The New York Times, November 3, 1991)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was written at the height of the Vietnam War. It was  reworking of Philip K. Dick's unpublished novel, We Can Built You, which came out in 1972 and tells of a schizophrenic woman who builds androids. In Do Androids Dream, Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter working for the police, has a very long day, when he is hunting down six outlaw androids. The second plot, removed from Ridley Scott's film adaptation, deals with John Isidore, who seeks a messiah called Mercer, who turns out to be a fraud. Deckard realizes that he has become as inhuman as the androids. In wilderness with Mercer, the exhausted Deckard learns to love an electronic toad.

Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauger, and Daryl Hannah, was adapted from Dick's story by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. The title of the movie originated from William Burroughs's Blade Runner: A Movie (1979), which had nothing to do with the film. Moreover, Burroughs's work, about welfare and Medicare apocalypse, was a treatmen for an adaptation of Alan E. Nourse's science fiction book The Bladerunner from 1974. Scott, who objected to calling Rick Deckard a detective, spotted in Fancher's script a line which described him as a "blade runner". For a brief time, Scott played with the idea of naming the film as Gotham City.

Scott had achieved fame with Alien (1979). Before his new project, Scott stated  that he had not read the novel. Dick was afraid that the director would make a movie with the spirit of "eat lead, robot!" in which he was wrong in this particular case. Dick did not expect much from Hollywood and said in an interview in 1980: "You would have to kill me and prop me up in the seat of my car with a smile painted on my face to get me to go near Hollywood." (quoted in 'That Old Feeling: You Know Dick' by Richard Corliss, Time, January 12, 2004)

Blade Runner was set in Los Angeles AD 2019, where a licenced-to-kill Deckard tracks down and destroys a group of intelligent robots who have returned to Earth. But is Deckard also an android? To Dick, the  replicant were deprorable, they were cruel, cold, and heartless, but Scott regarded them as supermen who couldn't fly. "His attitude was quite a divergence from my original point of view, since the theme of my book is that Deckard is dehumanized through tracking down the androids. When I told him this, Scott said that he considered it an intellectual idea and added that he was not interested in making an esotetic film." (Philip K. Dick on Blade Runner: "They Did Sight Stimulation On My Brain" by Gregg Rickman, in Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheeo, edited by Judith B. Kerman, Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997, p. 107)

"Each of the collaborators had a distinct conception of what Blade Runner should be: Dick wanted the androids to be the catalyst for Deckard and Isidore's moral and spiritual growth in facing evil, Fancher saw it as a love story about a man who descovers his conscience; Scott, a futuristic film noir set in a densely packed, garish cityscape (he wanted the title to be Gotham City); Peoples, an exploration of the distinguishing qualities of humans and their replicants." (from Encyclopedia of Novels into Film by John C. Tibbets and James M. Welsh, foreword by Robert Wise, New York: Checkmark Books, 2005, p. 100) The film did not do well at the box office, and the studio insisted on a happy ending. Directors original cut, which different ending and without much voice-over narration, was released in 1991.

The blockbuster movie Total Recal from 1990, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and directed by Paul Verhoeven, was loosely based on the story 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.' The music was composed Jerry Goldsmith. Verhoeven's Total Recall was remade in 2012. Other film adaptations include Confessions d'un Barjo (1993), directed by Jerome Bolvin, Screamers (1995), directed by by Chriastian Duduay, based on the short story 'Second Variety,' Impostor (2002), direted by Gary Fleder, starring Gary Sinise, Madeleine Stowe, Vincent D'onofrio, and Minority Report (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise. Spielberg's intelligent adaptation of Dick's short story with the same title from 1956 dealt with the author's favorite themes – free will and the nature of reality. Cruise plays John Anderton, a member of an élite squad known as Pre-Crime, which tries to prevent murders by arresting people before they commit the crime. Anderton lives a double-life and due his family tragedy he is soon hunted as a potential murderer.

For further reading: Philip K. Dick, Electric Shepherd, ed. by B. Gillespie (1975); PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography by D. Levack (1981); Philip K. Dick, ed. by J.D. Olander and M.H. Greenberg (1983): Philip K. Dick: In His Own Words by G. Rickmann (1983); The Novels of Philip K. Dick by Kim Stanley Robinson (1984); Only Apparently Real by Paul Williams (1986); Mind in Motion by Patricia Warrick (1987); To the High Castle by Gregg Rickmann (1989); Divine Invasions by Lawrence Sutin (1989); Philip Kindred Dick, Metaphysical Conjurer: A Working Bibliography by Gordon Benson (1990-); Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Elerctric Sheep?, ed. by Judith B. Kerman (1991); Trillion Year of Spree by Brian Aldiss & David Wingrove (2001); The Search for Philip K. Dick by Anne R. Dick (2010); Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations, ed. by David Streitfeld (2015); The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick by Kyle Arnold (2016); Philip K. Dick: Essays of the Here and Now, edited by David Sandner (2020); Il mondo secondo Philip K. Dick: guida ai romanzi di uno scrittore di fantascienza by Carlo Pagetti (2022) 

Selected bibliography:

  • 'Second Variety,' 1953
    - Film: Screamers (1995), dir. by Chriastian Duduay, starring Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis, Jennifer Rubin
  • 'Paycheck,' 1953
    - Film: Paycheck (2003), dir. by John Woo, starring Ben Affleck, Uma Thurman, Aaron Eckhart
  • 'Impostor,' 1953
    - Film: Impostor (2002), dir. Gary Fleder, starring Gary Sinise, Madeleine Stowe, Vincent D'Onofrio, Tony Shalhoub
  • 'The Cosmic Poachers,' 1953 (aka Burglar)
    - Silmukka: kuunnelma kapteeni Shuren matkoista menneisyyteen (radio play, translated into Finnish by Atro Lahtela, 1995)
  • 'The Commuter,' 1953
    - Kotimatka: kuunnelma Bobista, Laurasta ja ajan esiin tunkemasta Macondosta (radio play, translated into Finnish by Atro Lahtela, 1995)
  • 'The King of the Elves,' 1953 (aka Shadrach Jones and the Elves)
    - Film: King of Elves (2012), prod. Electric Shepherd Productions, Walt Disney Animation Studios, dir. Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker
  • 'Adjustment Team,' 1954
    - Film: Adjustment Team (2010), prod. Electric Shepherd Productions, Media Rights Capital, Universal Pictures, dir. George Nolfi, starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt
  • 'The World She Wanted,' 1954
    - Mun maailma: kuunnelma Allisonista ottamassa Larryn maailma hallintaansa (radio play, translated into Finnish by Atro Lahtela, 1995)
  • 'Sales Pitch,' 1954
    - Myyntitykki: kuunnelma (radio play, translated into Finnish by Atro Lahtela, 1995)
  • Handfull of Darkness, 1955
  • Solar Lottery / World of Change, 1955
  • The World Jones Made, 1956
    - Maailma jonka Jones teki (translated into Finnish by Jorma-Veikko Sappinen, 1991)
  • 'The Minority Report,' 1956
    - Film 2002, dir. Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Max von Sydow, Samantha Morton, Kathryn Morris, Steve Harris; TV series 2015, created by Max Borenstein, starring Stark Sands, Meagan Good, Nick Zano, Daniel London, Laura Regan
  • The Man Who Japed, 1956
  • Eye in the Sky, 1957
    - Jumalan kahdeksan sormea (translated into Finnish by Pekka Markkula, 1980)
  • The Variable Man, 1957
  • The Cosmic Puppets, 1957
  • Time Out of Joint, 1959
    - On aika sijoiltaan (translated into Finnish by J. Pekka Mäkelä, 1996)
  • 'Recall Mechanism,' 1959
    - Mahdoton terapia: kuunnelma Paul Sharpia riivaavasta korkean paikan kammosta (radio play, translated into Finnish by Atro Lahtela, 1995)
  • Dr. Futurity, 1960
  • Vulcan's Hammer, 1960
  • The Man in the High Castle, 1962
    - Oraakkelin kirja (translated into Finnish by Matti Rosvall, 1992)
    - TV series 2015-, created by Frank Spotnitz, starring Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans, Luke Kleintank, DJ Qualls, Joel de la Funte
  • Martian Time Slip, 1964
    - Mars on meidän (translated into Finnish by Matti Rosvall, 1993)
  • The Simulacra, 1964
    - Simulantit (transl. into Finnish by J. Pekka Mäkelä, 1999)
  • The Penultimate Truth, 1964
  • Clans of the Alphane Moon, 1964
    - Alfan kuun klaanit (transl. into Finnish by J. Pekka Mäkelä, 2005)
  • The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, 1965
    - Palmer Eldrich - kolmesti merkitty mies 1965 (transated into Finnish by Arvi Tamminen, 2002)
  • Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb, 1965
    - Tohtori Veriraha (translated into Finnish by J. Pekka Mäkelä, 2010)
  • 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,' 1966
    - Filmed as Total Recall (1990), dir. by Paul Verhoeven, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone
  • The Crack in Space (Cantata-140), 1966
  • Now Wait for Last Year, 1966
    - Varro vain viime vuotta (translated into Finnish by J. Pekka Mäkelä, 2001)
  • The Unteleported Man / Lies, Inc., 1966
    - Lies Inc. (translated into Finnishy by Arvi Tamminen, 1995)
  • Counter-Clock World, 1967
    - Haudasta kohtuun (translated into Finnish by by J. Pekka Mäkelä, 1997)
  • The Zap Gun, 1967
  • The Ganymede Takeover, 1967
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 1968 (also published as Blade Runner in 1982)
    - Palkkionmetsästäjä (translated into Finnish by Kari Nenonen, 1989) / Uneksivatko androidit sähkölampaista? (translated by Pekka J. Mäkelä, 2022)
    - Films: Blade Runner (1982), dir. by Ridley Scott, adapted by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples; Blade Runner: The Director's Cut (1992), dir. by Ridley Scott, adapted by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples
  • The Preserving Machine, 1969
  • Ubik, 1969
    - Ubik (translated into Finnish by Matti Rosvall, 1994)
  • Galactic Pot-Healer, 1969
    - Ruukunkorjaaja (translated into Finnish by J. Pekka Mäkelä, 2003)
  • A Maze of Death, 1970
  • Our Friends from Frolix 8, 1970
  • The Philip K. Dick Omnibus, 1970
  • We Can Built You, 1972
    - Rakennamme sinut (translated into Finnish by J. Pekka Mäkelä, 1998)
  • The Book of Philip K. Dick / The Turning Wheel and Other Stories, 1973
  • Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, 1974
    - Anna kyynelten tulla, pyysi poliisi (translated into Finnish by Matti Rosvall, 1993)
  • Deus Irae, 1976 (with Roger Zelazny)
  • A Scanner Darkly, 1977
    - Hämärän vartija (translated into Finnish by Markku Salo, 1990)
    - Film in 2006, dir. by Richard Linklater, starring Keanu Reeves, Mitch Baker, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson
  • The Best of Philip K. Dick, 1977
  • Confessions of a Crap Artist, 1978
    - Film: Confessions d'un Barjo (1992), dir. by Jerome Bolvin, starring: Anne Brochet, Richard Bohringer, Hippolyte Girardot
  • The Golden Man, 1980
  • Valis, 1981
    - Valis transl. into Finnish by Matti Rosvall, 1995)
  • The Divine Invasion, 1981
    - Jumalan pojan paluu (translated into Finnish by J. Pekka Mäkelä, 2004)
  • The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, 1982
    - Timothy Archerin sielunvaellus (translated into Finnish by J. Pekka Mäkelä, 1997)
  • Valis Regained, 1982 (unfinished)
  • The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, 1984
  • Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick, 1985
  • I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, 1985
  • Radio Free Albemuth, 1985
  • In Milton Lumky Territory, 1985
  • Warning: We Are Your Police, 1985
  • Puttering About in a Small Land, 1985
  • Humpty Dumpty in Oakland, 1986
  • The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Volume 1, 1987
    - Mahdoton planeetta (translated into Finnish by Kristiina Drews, 1990)
  • Mary and the Giant, 1987
  • Nazism and The High Castle, 1987
  • Schizophrenia and the Book of Changes, 1987 (ed. Paul Williams)
  • Beyond Lies the Wub, 1987
  • Second Variety, 1987 (includes the short story 'Second Variety')
  • The Father-Thing, 1987
  • The Days of Perky Pat, 1987
  • The Little Black Box, 1987
  • The Broken Bubble, 1988
  • Nick and the Glimmung, 1988
  • The Dark Haired Girl, 1988
  • The Valis Trilogy, 1989
  • We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, 1990
  • Paycheck and 24 Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick, 2003
  • The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, 1-2, 2011-2012 (edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem)
  • The Early Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick, 2013
  • The Early Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick. Volume 2, 2015
  • Second Variety: and Other Classic Stories, 2017 (with an introduction by John Brunner)
  • We Can Remember It For You Wholesale: and Other Classic Stories, 2017 (with an introduction by Norman Spinrad)
  • Radio Free Albemuth, 2020 (first published in 1985 by Arbor House)
  • The Variable Man: And Other Stories, 2023 (Dover Publications)


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