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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. While the most admired is Ridley Scott's classic movie Blade Runner, the action film Total Recall faithfully translates a number of Dick themes, albeit with uncharacteristic violence.

Philip K. Dick is often cited as a major influence on the Cyberpunk movement led by William Gibson, but as this work, and titles as diverse as the inventive Eye in the Sky and Martian Time Slip, the moving Galactic Pot Healer, the complex and yet delicate The Man in the High Castle and the chilling yet deeply moving A Scanner Darkly show, there was much more to his genius than just influence.

Table of contents
1 Bibliography
2 External links

Bibliography

Short stories

;1952
"Beyond Lies the Wub"
"The Gun"
"The Little Movement"
"The Skull"
"The Variable Man"

;1953
"The Builder"
"Colony"
"The Commuter"
"The Cookie Lady"
"The Cosmic Poachers"
"The Defenders"
"Expendable"
"The Eyes Have It"
"The Great C"
"The Hanging Stranger"
"The Impossible Planet"
"Impostor"
"The Indefatigable Frog"
"The Infinities"
"The King of the Elves"
"Martians Come in Clouds"
"Mr. Spaceship"
"Out in the Garden"
"Paycheck"
"Piper in the Woods"
"Planet for Transients"
"The Preserving Machine"
"Project: Earth"
"Roog"
"Second Variety"
"Some Kinds of Life"
"The Trouble with Bubbles"
"The World She Wanted"

;1954
"A World of Talent"
"The Last of the Master"
"Adjustment Team"
"Beyond the Door"
"Breakfast at Twilight"
"The Crawlers"
"The Crystal Crypt"
"The Exhibit Piece"
"The Father-thing"
"The Golden Man"
"James P. Crow"
"Jon's World"
"The Little Black Box"
"Meddler"
"Of Withered Apples"
"A Present for Pat"
"Prize Ship"
"Progeny"
"Prominent Author"
"Sales Pitch"
"Shell Game"
"The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford"
"Small Town"
"Souvenir"
"Strange Eden"
"Survey Team"
"Time Pawn"
"Tony and the Beetles"
"The Turning Wheel"
"Upon the Dull Earth"

;1955
"Autofac"
"Captive Market"
"The Chromium Fence"
"Foster, You're Dead!"
"The Hood Maker"
"Human Is"
"The Mold of Yancy"
"Nanny"
"Psi-man Heal My Child!"
"Service Call"
"A Surface Raid"
"Vulcan's Hammer"
"War Veteran"

;1956
"A Glass of Darkness"
"Minority Report"
"Pay for the Printer"
"To Serve the Master"

;1957
"Misadjustment"
"The Unreconstructed M"

;1958
"Null-o"

;1959
"Explorers We"
"Fair Game"
"Recall Mechanism"
"War Game"

;1963
"All We Marsmen"
"The Days of Perky Pat"
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli"
"Stand-by"
"What'll We Do With Ragland Park?"

;1964
"Cantata 140"
"A Game of Unchance"
"Novelty Act"
"Oh, to be a Blobel!"
"Orpheus with Clay Feet"
"Precious Artifact"
"The Unteleported Man"
"The War with the Fnools"
"Waterspider"
"What the Dead Men Say"

;1965
"Project Plowshare"
"Retreat Syndrome"

;1966
"Holy Quarrel"
"We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"
"Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday"

;1967
"Faith of our Fathers"
"Return Match"

;1968
"Not By Its Cover"
"The Story To End All Stories"

;1969
"A. Lincoln, Simulacrum"
"The Electric Ant"

;1972
"Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked"

;1974
"The Different Stages of Love"
"The Pre-persons"
"A Little Something For Us Tempunauts"

;1979
"The Exit Door Leads In"

;1980
"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon"
"Rautavaara's Case"
"Chains of Air, Web of Aethyr"

;1981
"The Alien Mind"

;1984
"Strange Memories Of Death"

;1987
"The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out of Its Tree"
"The Eye of The Sibyl"
"Fawn, Look Back"
"Stability"

;1988
"Goodbye, Vincent"

;1989
"11-17-80"

;1992
"The Name of the Game is Death"

Novels

;1955:Solar Lottery ;1956:The World Jones Made
The Man Who Japed
;1957:Eye in the Sky
The Cosmic Puppets
;1959:Time Out of Joint ;1960:Dr. Futurity
Vulcan's Hammer
;1962:The Man in the High Castle ;1963:The Game-Players of Titan ;1964:Martian Time-Slip
The Simulacra
Clans of the Alphane Moon
The Penultimate Truth
;1965:The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb
;1966:The Crack in Space
Now Wait for Last Year
The Unteleported Man
;1967:Counter-Clock World
The Zap Gun
The Ganymede Takeover with Ray Nelson
;1968:Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ;1969:Ubik
Galactic Pot-Healer
;1970:Maze of Death
Our Friends from Frolix 8
;1972:We Can Build You ;1974:Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said ;1975:Confessions of a Crap Artist ;1976:Deus Irae with Roger Zelazny ;1977:A Scanner Darkly ;1981:Valis
The Divine Invasion
;1982:The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike
;1985:Radio Free Albemuth
Puttering About in a Small Land
In Milton Lumky Territory
;1986:Humpty Dumpty in Oakland ;1987:Mary and the Giant ;1988:The Broken Bubble
Nick and the Glimmung (for children)
;1994:Gather Yourselves Together

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 Impostor 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.
  • Dick's personal essay Strange Memories of Death was adapted into a short film of the same name by Yates House Studios, but the film has yet to be distributed.

Awards

External links


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