“I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,”
PHILIP K. DICK!! All you must have heard the name. If you haven’t, go sit in a corner and reflect on the big mistakes of your life ! He is one of the greatest Science-Fiction Authors that ever existed. He was not well known, but he was a prolific author of his time. This is my 300th post and it is dedicated to Philip K. Dick.
Phillip Kindred Dick, born on December 16th 1928 , is an American author, short-story and essay writer. He, in his novels, has explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes. His novels usually centered around monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. His main genre was Science-Fiction. He has 36 novels, 121 short stories, and 14 short story collections. His stories are crazy, mad and usually have interesting plot twists. He has also explored drug abuse and drug use in his book A Scanner Darkly. Many of his stories have been adapted into movies.
His novel The Man in the High Castle (1962) is set in an alternate universe in which the United States is ruled by the victorious Axis powers. It is considered a defining novel of the alternate history sub-genre,and is the only Dick novel to win a Hugo Award. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975.
A Scanner Darkly is a bleak mixture of science fiction and police procedural novels; in its story, an undercover narcotics police detective begins to lose touch with reality after falling victim to the same permanently mind altering drug, Substance D, he was enlisted to help fight. Substance D is instantly addictive, beginning with a pleasant euphoria which is quickly replaced with increasing confusion, hallucinations and eventually total psychosis.It won the BSFA award in 1978 for the best novel.
Many people don’t know that he was broke when he died. He was broke most of his life. Philip K Dick passed away just before Blade Runner came out and the Hollywood gold rush began. Even during the most profitable time of his career from 1965-1968. he was only making about $12,000 a year. For instance, in the early 50’s when he wrote Paycheck he ironically was so poor he had to buy horse meat from a pet shop to survive.
Twenty-plus years into his career, Dick was so broke that Robert Heinlein, an author who was his polar opposite, offered to buy him a typewriter. By the way, this was around the same time in his life that Dick began to believe he was traveling to ancient Rome, courtesy of a time travelling alien who visited him in his sleep. Almost forgot to mention he was crazy too.
Dick books had “what’s real and what’s not” twists. That was because he didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t Dick was paranoid and may have been schizophrenic.Dick, from a very young age suffered from Vertigo. When he started writing full time in the 50’s he’d get paid about $20 per short story, which led to the formation of his amphetamine habit as he used to lock himself away with his drugs and his typewriter writing 68 pages a day.
In the March of 1974, Dick believed that he was receiving a series of communication from an entity called VALIS, for Vast Active Living Intelligent System.These were delivered via an “information-rich pink beam” that transmitted directly into his mind. At first the messages were in the form of laser beams and geometric patterns, eventually they involved him living a double live as a persecuted Christian in Rome during the first century A.D. He wrote about his experiences in the book VALIS, Radio Free Albemuth.
Here’s one of his journal entries on the subject:
“March 20, 1974: It seized me entirely, lifting me from the limitations of the space-time matrix; it mastered me as, at the same time, I knew that the world around me was cardboard, a fake. Through its power of perception I saw what really existed, and through its power of no-thought decision, I acted to free myself. It took on in battle, as a champion of all human spirits in thrall, every evil, every Iron Imprisoning thing.”
Philip K. Dick. predicted the future once. When Minority Report came out in 2002, it was right in the middle of the war on terror and everyone thought the movie was a thinly veiled allusion to the invasive Homeland Security tactics we were seeing in the headlines. And in fact, a few years later the government introduced cameras that could supposedly detect when you intend to commit a crime in the future. He predicted this in 1956.
Philip K Dick’s books were hard to adapt. If you’ve read ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ and seen Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, you’d realise that there are TONS of differences from the book. It appears as if they have just picked up the theme and idea and made it into a movie. Same goes for ‘We Can Remember It for You Wholesale‘ and if you’ve seen both the Total Recall movies you’d see that there are differences. In Total Recall we have to keep deciding if this is real or if it’s all happening in Rekall. In Blade Runner we keep wondering if Deckard is human or a replicant. Many directors like Darren Arnofsky, have said that they were influenced by Philip K. Dick.
So, here’s to Mr. Philip Kindered Dick, the Van Gogh of Sci-Fi.
“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.”
Galactica 