Philip K. Dick - ProfilesArchive

About Me

I, Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 March 2, 1982) was an American science fiction writer. In addition to forty-four books currently in print, I produced a number of short stories and minor works which were published in pulp magazines. At least seven of my stories have been adapted into films. Though hailed during my lifetime by peers such as Stanislaw Lem, Robert A. Heinlein, and Robert Silverberg, I received little general recognition until after my death.
Foreshadowing the cyberpunk sub-genre, I brought the anomic world of California to many of my works, exploring sociological and political themes in my early novels and stories while my later work tackled drugs and theology, drawing upon my own life experiences in novels like A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. Alternate universes and simulacra were common plot devices, with fictional worlds inhabited by common working people, rather than galactic elites. "There are no heroics in Dick's books," Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, "but there are heroes. One is reminded of [Charles] Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people." Only intelligent thing she ever wrote.
My novel, The Man in the High Castle, bridged the genres of alternative history and science fiction, resulting in a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who wakes up in a parallel universe where he is completely unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. In these stories, I wrote about people I loved, placing them in fictional worlds where I questioned the reality of ideas and institutions. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real," I wrote.
My stories often descend into seemingly surreal fantasies, with characters discovering that their everyday world is an illusion, emanating either from external entities or from the vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator. "All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality," Charles Platt writes, whoever he is. "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."
These characteristic themes and the atmosphere of paranoia they generate are sometimes described as "Dickian" or "Phildickian." "Phildickian," what an ugly word. Please don't use it, it's stupid.

My Interests

Androids, Methamphetamine, Gnosticism, History, Women.

I'd like to meet:

God, of course. Who else?

Music:

Never made any. When I was young, I worked in a record store that specialized in classical music. I also hosted a classical radio show for a while. I did like it when White Zombie used the "More Human Than Human" line from Blade Runner in their wittily-entitled song, "More Human Than Human." That was witty of them to do. Witty in the sense of, I didn't see a dime. They don't care if I have to eat horsemeat. Now where did I put that methamphetamine?

Movies:

Yeah, but they all suck. Okay, Blade Runner's okay. They cut out all my best stuff, but I guess it hangs together okay. Total Recall, that was a piece of crap. And now that guy's the governor? I die and things get even worse. Minority report, well they put some money into it, I'll give em that. But still, it's all just so ridiculous. That part with the eyeballs on the organ? And when he sits up inside the car they just put together and drives away? Whatever happened to realism? It's just silly. I am looking forward to the new Scanner Darkly one, though. I really liked Linklater's Waking Life, especially the part about me. The rest of it was a little boring, but you should all go rent it for that part. Dazed and Confused was pretty good, too. No androids, but otherwise pretty good. ***UPDATE*** I have since seen the new Scanner Darkly, and it wasn't bad at all! The animation is incredible, it perfectly captures the kind of feel I used to go for in my writing. Everything seems a little off, a little unreal, things might change at any second, something might leap out at you, everything might be torn out from under you like a rug, etc. Very nicely nicely done. Storywise, I gotta say, I found it a little boring. "Did I really write it this way?" I kept asking myself. But I couldn't remember. It seems like some things happen in a different order than the way I meant them to. Unless maybe I just watched them in the wrong order? Or my brain processed them incorrectly and "showed" them to me in the wrong order? Any of these things are possible. Anyway, I thought it was a little boring. Just a little. But still, worth seeing, perhaps multiple times, just for the animation. Did you see it?

Books:

I've written a couple. *The Solar Lottery [1954] (aka World of Chance) *The World Jones Made [1956] *Man Who Japed [1956] *The Eye in the Sky [1956] *Variable Man [1957] *The Cosmic Puppets [1957] *Time Out of Joint [1959] *Dr. Futurity [1960] *Vulcan's Hammer [1960] *The Man In the High Castle [1962] *The Game Players of Titan [1963] *Martian Timeslip [1964] *Dr. Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After the Bomb [1964] *Penultimate Truth [1964] *The Simulacra [1964] *Clans of the Alphane Moon [1964] *Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch [1965] *The Crack In Space [1966] *Now Wait For Last Year [1966] *The Unteleported Man (Later published as Lies, Inc. in the UK) [1966] *The Zap Gun [1967] *The Ganymede Takeover [1967] (with Ray Nelson) *Counter-Clock World [1967] *Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep [1968] *The Galactic Pot-Healer [1969] *The Preserving Machine [1969] (short story anthology) *Ubik [1969] *Maze of Death [1970] *Our Friends From Frolix 8 [1970] *We Can Build You [1972] *Confessions of a Crap-Artist [1975] *Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said [1974] *Deus Irae [1976] (with Roger Zelazny) *A Scanner Darkly [1977] *VALIS [1981] *The Divine Invasion [1981] *The Transmigration of Timothy Archer [1982] *Blade Runner [1982] (AKA Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) *The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike [1984?] *Puttering About In This Small Land [1985] *Radio Free Albemuth [1985] *Ubik: The Screenplay [1985] *In Milton Lumky Territory [1985] *Humpty Dumpty In Oakland [1986] *Mary and the Giant [1987] *The Broken Bubble [1988?] *Nick and the Glimmung [1988?] *The Dark-Haired Girl [1988] (collection of fiction and non-fiction) *Voices from the Street [unpublished] *Gather Yourself Together [unpublished]