Philip K. Dick
From Free net encyclopedia
Image:PhilipDick.jpg Philip Kindred Dick (December 16 1928 Chicago, Illinois – March 2 1982, Santa Ana, California) , often known by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer. In addition to thirty-eight books currently in print, Dick produced a number of short stories and minor works which were published in pulp magazines. At least seven of his stories have been adapted into films. Though hailed during his lifetime by peers such as Stanisław Lem, Robert A. Heinlein and Robert Silverberg, Dick received little general recognition until after his death.
Foreshadowing the cyberpunk sub-genre, Dick brought the anomic world of California to many of his works, drawing upon his own life experiences in novels like A Scanner Darkly. His novels and stories frequently used plot devices such as alternate universes and simulacra, worlds inhabited by common working people, rather than galactic elites. "There are no heroics in Dick's books," Ursula K. LeGuin wrote, "but there are heroes. One is reminded of [Charles] Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people."
His acclaimed 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. Dick chose to write about the people he loved, placing them in fictional worlds where he 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," Dick wrote.
Dick's 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. "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."
Contents |
Early life
Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Edgar Dick, a fraud investigator for the United States Department of Agriculture, and Dorothy Kindred Dick. He was born six weeks prematurely, along with a twin sister, Jane, who died on January 26, 1929. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to California. The death of his twin had a profound effect on his writing, relationships, and every other aspect of his life.
Dick's parents divorced when he was young, and he grew up with his mother. He went to high school in Berkeley and briefly attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in German, but dropped out before completing any classes. He sold records and was a disc jockey before selling his first story in 1952. He wrote full-time, more or less, from then on. He sold his first novel in 1955. The 1950s were a hard-scrabble time for Dick, so much so that, as he once said, "we couldn't even pay the late fees on a library book." He associated with the pre-1960s counterculture of California and was sympathetic to beat poets and the Communist Party. There is some dispute regarding the latter and Dick later admitted to being literally thrown out of at least one of its rallies. Dick was opposed to the Vietnam War and he had a file at the FBI as a result.
In 1963, Dick won the Hugo Award for The Man in the High Castle. Though hailed as a genius at this time in the SF world, the literary world as a whole was as yet unappreciative, and so he could only publish books at low-paying SF publishers. Consequently, while he would regularly publish novels for the next several years, he continued to struggle financially and psychologically. Even in his later years, he continued to have financial troubles. In the introduction to the 1980 short story collection "The Golden Man", Dick wrote:
- "Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in the world. I don't agree with any of the ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time, when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn't raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to him in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine looking man, very impressive and military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I'm a flipped out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love."
Dick and his visions
In his youth, around the age of thirteen, Dick had a recurring dream for a number of weeks. He dreamt that he was in a bookstore, trying to find an issue of Astounding Magazine. This issue, when he found it, would contain a story called "The Empire Never Ended", which would reveal to him the secrets of the universe. As the dream repeated, the pile of magazines through which he was searching got smaller and smaller, but he never reached the bottom of it. Eventually, he became anxious that discovering the magazine would drive him mad (like the Lovecraftian Necronomicon, promising insanity to its readers). Shortly thereafter, the dreams stopped. They never returned, but the phrase "The Empire Never Ended" would appear in his later works. Template:QuoteSidebar
On February 20, 1974, he was recovering from the effects of sodium pentothal administered for the extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth. Answering the door to receive a delivery of additional painkillers, he noticed the woman delivering the package was wearing a pendant with what he called the "vesicle pisces". (He probably was referring to the intersecting arcs of the vesica piscis.) After her departure, Dick began experiencing strange visions. Although this may have been attributed initially to the painkillers, after weeks of these visions such a rationale becomes less probable. "I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane," Dick told Charles Platt.
Throughout February and March 1974 he received a series of visions which he collectively referred to as 2-3-74, shorthand for February/March 1974. 1974 He described his initial visions as laser beams and geometric patterns, and occasionally brief pictures of Jesus and ancient Rome, which he would glimpse periodically. As the pictures increased in length and frequency, Dick claimed that he began to live a double life, one as himself and one as Thomas, a Christian persecuted by Romans in the 1st century A.D. Despite his past and continued drug use, Dick accepted these visions as reality, believing that he had been contacted by a god-entity of some kind, which he referred to variously as Zebra, God, and, most often, VALIS.
VALIS
VALIS is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System; he used this term as the title of one of his novels (and continued the theme in at least three more books) and later theorized that VALIS was both a "reality generator" and a means of extraterrestrial communication. VALIS has been described as one node of an artificial satellite network originating from the star Fomalhaut in the Piscis Austrinus constellation. According to Dick, the Earth satellite used "pink laser beams" to transfer information and project holograms on Earth and to facilitate communication between an extraterrestrial species and humanity. Dick claimed that VALIS used "disinhibiting stimuli" to communicate, using symbols to trigger recollection of intrinsic knowledge through the loss of amnesia, achieving gnosis. Drawing directly from Platonism and Gnosticism, Dick wrote in his Exegesis: "We appear to be memory coils (DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like thinking system which, although we have correctly recorded and stored thousands of years of experiential information, and each of us possesses somewhat different deposits from all the other life forms, there is a malfunction - a failure - of memory retrieval."
At one point, Dick claimed to be in a state of enthousiasmos with VALIS, where he was informed his infant son was in danger of perishing from an unnamed malady. Routine checkups on the child had shown no trouble or illness; however, Dick insisted that thorough tests be run to ensure his son's health. The doctor eventually complied, despite the fact that there were no apparent symptoms. During the examination doctors discovered an inguinal hernia, which would have killed the child if an operation was not quickly performed. His son survived thanks to the operation, which Dick attributed to the "intervention" of VALIS.
Another event was an episode of xenoglossia. Dick's wife transcribed the sounds she heard him speak, and discovered that he was speaking Koine Greek, an ancient dialect which he had never studied. As Dick was to later discover, Koine Greek was originally used to write the New Testament and the Septuagint. However, this was not the first time Dick had experienced xenoglossia. A decade earlier, Dick claimed he was able to think, speak, and read fluent Latin under the influence of Sandoz LSD-25.
In his essay, Will the Atomic Bomb Ever be Perfected, And if so, What becomes of Robert Heinlein?, Dick mentions that he began seeing pink light during an LSD experience, eight years before he wrote and attributed the so-called pink lasers to VALIS.
Exegesis
Regardless of the feeling that he was somehow experiencing a divine communication, Dick was unable ever to fully rationalize the events. For the rest of his life, he struggled to fully comprehend what was occurring, questioning his own sanity and perception of reality. He transcribed what thoughts he could into an 8,000 page, million word journal dubbed the Exegesis. Template:QuoteSidebar He spent sleepless nights furiously writing into this journal, in some instances high on large quantities of amphetamines, which no doubt contributed to its eclectic tone. A recurring theme in the Exegesis is Dick's hypothesis that history had been stopped in the 1st century, and that "The [Roman] Empire never ended". He saw Rome as the pinnacle of materialism, which, after forcing the Gnostics underground 1900 years earlier, had kept the population of the Earth as slaves to worldly possessions. Dick believed that VALIS had contacted him and unnamed others to induce the "impeachment" of Richard M. Nixon, whom Dick believed to be the current Emperor incarnate.
As time went on, he became increasingly paranoid, imagining plots against him perpetrated by the KGB or FBI, who he believed were constantly laying traps for him. At one point he alleged that they had been responsible for a burglary at his house in which various documents had been stolen. However, he later stated that he had probably committed the burglary himself, and then forgotten he had done so.
His later works, especially the VALIS trilogy, were heavily autobiographical, many with 2-3-74 references or influences. 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. The final novel to be published during his life was The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, though many more were published posthumously, most notably Lies, Inc.
Dick himself speculated as to whether or not he may have suffered from schizophrenia, and themes of mental illness permeated his work, especially that of Jack Bohlen, an "ex-schizophrenic" in the 1964 novel, Martian Time-Slip. The topic of mental illness interested Dick, and in 1965 he wrote an essay entitled "Schizophrenia and the Book of Changes." <ref>Sutin, Lawrence. Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick. Carroll & Graf, 2005 </ref>
Marriages and children
Dick married five times, and had two daughters and a son. All five marriages ended in divorce.
- May 1948, to Jeanette Marlin (lasted six months)
- June 1950, to Kleo Apostolides (divorced 1958)
- 1958, to Anne Williams Rubinstein (child: Laura Archer, born February 26, 1960) (divorced 1964)
- 1966 or 1967 (sources conflict), to Nancy Hackett (child: Isolde, usually called "Isa") (divorced 1970)
- April 18, 1973, to Tessa Busby (child: Christopher) (divorced 1976)
Death
Philip K. Dick died on March 2, 1982, the result of a combination of recurrent strokes accompanied by heart failure.
After his death (he was disconnected from life support on March 2 but his EEG had been isoelectric for five days prior to that), his father Edgar brought his son's body to Fort Morgan, Colorado. When his twin Jane had died, a tombstone had been carved with both of their names on it, and an empty space for Dick's date of death. After fifty-three years, that final date was carved in, and Philip K. Dick was buried beside his sister.
Aliases
Dick occasionally wrote using pen names, most notably Richard Philips and Jack Dowland.
The surname Dowland is a reference to the composer John Dowland, who is featured in a number of Dick works. The title Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is a direct reference to Dowland's best-known composition Flow My Teares. Some protagonists in Dick's short-fiction bear the name Dowland.
Dick's short story Orpheus with Clay Feet was one such story published under the pen name Jack Dowland.
In this, the protagonist desires to be the muse for a fictional author, Jack Dowland, considered to be the greatest science-fiction author of the 20th century. In the story, Dowland publishes a story of his own, also entitled Orpheus with Clay Feet, under the pen-name Philip K. Dick.
In the semi-autobiographical novel Valis, the protagonist is called Horselover Fat. Philip, or Phil-Hippos is Greek for Horselover, Dick is German for Fat.
Films and other adaptations
A number of Dick's stories have been made into movies, most of them only loosely based on Dick's original, using them as a starting-point for a Hollywood action-adventure story, introducing violence uncharacteristic of Dick's stories, and replacing the typically nondescript Dick protagonist with an action hero.
The most admired film adaptation is Ridley Scott's classic movie Blade Runner (based on Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). Dick was apprehensive about how his story would be adapted for the film; he refused to do a novelization of the film and he was critical of it and its director, Ridley Scott, during its production. When given an opportunity to see some of the special effects sequences of Los Angeles 2019, Dick was amazed that the environment was "exactly as how I'd imagined it!". Following the screening, Dick and Scott had a frank but cordial discussion of Blade Runner's themes and characters, and although they had differing views, Dick fully backed the film from then on. Dick died from a stroke less than four months before the release of the film.
Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Minority Report rather faithfully translates a number of Dick's themes within an action-adventure framework, though it changes some major plot points. Similarly, Total Recall (1990), based on the short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale evokes a feeling similiar to that of the original story while streamlining the plot. It includes such Phildickian elements as the confusion of fantasy and reality, the progression towards more fantastic elements through the story, machines talking back to humans, and the protagonist's doubts about his own identity. Impostor, a 2002 movie based on Dick's 1953 story of the same title, utilizes two of Dick's most common themes: mental illness, which diminishes the sufferer's ability to discriminate between reality and hallucination, and a protagonist persecuted by an oppressive government.
John Woo's 2003 film, Paycheck, was a very loose adaptation of Dick's short story of that name, and suffered greatly both at the hands of critics and at the box office.
The film Screamers (1995) was based on a Dick short story Second Variety; however, the location was altered from a war-devastated Earth in the story, to a generic science fiction environment of a distant planet in the film. Second Variety has been cited as a possible influence on the scenes in the machine-dominated future of The Terminator (1984) and its sequels.
The French film Barjo ("Confessions d'un Barjo") is based on Dick's non-sf book Confessions of a Crap Artist.
The animated film A Scanner Darkly (based on Dick's novel by that name) is scheduled for release in July 2006, and will star Keanu Reeves as Fred/Bob Arctor and Winona Ryder as Donna. Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, actors both noted for drug issues, are also cast in the film. The film was produced using the process of rotoscoping: it was first shot in live-action then the live footage was animated over.
Dick himself wrote a screenplay for an intended film adaptation of Ubik in 1974, but the film was never made.
At least one of Dick's works has been adapted for the legitimate stage: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, was presented by the New York-based avante-garde company Mabou Mines in 1988 and has subsequently been produced elsewhere.
Another stage adaptation is the opera VALIS, composed and with libretto by Tod Machover, which premiered at the Pompidou Center in Paris on December 1, 1987, with a French libretto. It was subsequently revised and readapted into English, and was recorded and released on CD (Bridge Records BCD9007) in 1988.
Works influenced by PKD
It has been noted, though the connection (if any) is unknown, that the subjective reality created by the cryonic Life Extension system in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky and its Spanish original, Abre los ojos ("Open Your Eyes") strongly resembles that of 'half-life' in Dick's Ubik. The 1998 movie The Truman Show bears a similar resemblance to Dick's novel Time Out of Joint. The 1999 David Cronenberg film "eXistenZ" features a reference to "Perky Pat", a recurring name from Dick's books, and takes as its theme virtual reality, on a number of levels.
Since his death, Dick has featured as a character in a number of novels and stories, most notably Michael Bishop's The Secret Ascension (1987; published in the UK under the author's preferred title Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas), which is set in a Gnostic alternative universe where his non-genre work is published but his science fiction is banned by a totalitarian USA in thrall with a demonically possessed Richard Nixon. Other fictional appearances by Dick include the short play Kindred Blood in Kensington Gore (1992) by Brian W. Aldiss and the Faction Paradox novel Of the City of the Saved... (2004) by Philip Purser-Hallard.
K. W. Jeter's novel Doctor Adder has a radio disk jockey who is obviously Dick. Orval Wintermute, translator of the Nag Hammadi codices and major figure in Dick's VALIS mythos lends his name to an artificial intelligence in William Gibson's Neuromancer.
Dick's influence is particularly evident in Jonathan Lethem's novels, such as Gun, With Occasional Music (1994), Amnesia Moon (1995), and Girl in Landscape (1998). Hints at Dick's VALIS can also be found in Lethem's last novel, The Fortress of Solitude (2003). Richard Linklater name-checked Dick in the climactic sequence of his experimental film Waking Life (2001) and is currently working on a film adaptation of Dick's A Scanner Darkly employing a similar rotoscoping process to the earlier film.
Famous Italian fantasy and science fiction writer Valerio Evangelisti repeatedly acknowledged being deeply influenced by Dick, especially in his novel Cherudek (1997), which can be read as a clever and surprisingly original development of ideas found in Dick's Ubik. Evident traces of Dick's influence can be also found in the fiction of another young Italian avantpop novelist, Tommaso Pincio.
Trivia
- Dick's former wife Tessa was asked in an interview why she thought his original titles have rarely been used in film adaptations (Blade Runner versus Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, etc). She replied, "Actually, the books rarely carry Phil's original titles, as the editors usually wrote new titles after reading his manuscripts. Phil often commented that he couldn't write good titles. If he could, he would have been an advertising writer instead of a novelist." [1]
- Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin--perhaps his only peer in terms of academic and literary reputation among late 20th-century science fiction authors--were members of the same high school graduating class (Berkeley (Ca.) High School, 1947), yet did not know one another. Le Guin (then Ursula Kroeber) had been accelerated a grade, while Dick missed much of his senior year with the agoraphobia that would plague him as an adult. Le Guin later became one of Dick's great champions (calling him "our own home-grown Borges") and wrote The Lathe of Heaven as a conscious Dick homage; the two maintained a friendship and correspondence until Dick's death.
Bibliography
Best-known novels
- The Man in the High Castle (1962), which takes place in an alternate United States ruled by the victorious Axis powers. It is considered a defining novel in the sub genre of alternate history and is the only Dick novel to win a Hugo Award. Along with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik, it’s one of the recommended novels to newcomers to Dick’s work at philipkdickfans.com [2]
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), about the moral crisis of a bounty hunter of escaped androids. It is well known as the inspiration for the influential 1982 film Blade Runner.
- Ubik (1969), which uses extensive networks of psychics and a suspended state after death to create an eroding state of reality. In 2005, Time Magazine named it one of the hundred best English language novels published since 1923 [3].
- Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), about a television star in a future police state who awakes one morning to discover that he is not famous and does not even have the identification cards crucial to his survival. It was awarded the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and is the only Dick novel nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula Award.
- A Scanner Darkly (1977), a bleak mixture of science fiction and police procedural, in which an undercover narcotics detective ingests massive amounts of a dangerous drug in order to maintain his cover. It was adapted into an upcoming film by Richard Linklater. It is currently the best-selling Dick book on Amazon.com [4].
- VALIS, (1980) perhaps Dick’s most postmodern and autobiographical novel, examining his own supposed encounters with a divine presence. It is perhaps his most academically studied work and was adapted into an opera by Todd Machover [5]. It was voted Dick‘s best novel at philipkdickfans.com [6]
Novels by year of composition
Image:PKD-The-Game-Players-of-Tit.png
Dates are for completion of first (and usually only) draft. Publication dates follow. + indicates subsequent significant expansion, * subsequent revision or minor expansion
- 1950
- Gather Yourselves Together (1994)
- 1952
- Voices From the Street (forthcoming 2006)
- 1953
- Vulcan's Hammer (1960+)
- Dr. Futurity (1960+)
- The Cosmic Puppets (1957*)
- 1954
- Solar Lottery (1955*)
- Mary and the Giant (1987*)
- The World Jones Made (1956)
- 1955
- Eye in the Sky (1957)
- The Man Who Japed (1956)
- 1956
- A Time for George Stavros (ms. lost)
- Pilgrim on the Hill (ms. lost)
- The Broken Bubble (1988)
- 1957
- Puttering About in a Small Land (1985)
- 1958
- Nicholas and the Higs (ms. lost)
- Time Out of Joint (1959)
- In Milton Lumky Territory (1985)
- 1959
- Confessions of a Crap Artist (1975)
- 1960
- The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1982)
- Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1986)
- 1961
- The Man in the High Castle (1962)
- 1962
- We Can Build You (1972)
- Martian Time-Slip (1964)
- 1963
- Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965)
- The Game-Players of Titan (1963) (ISBN 0679740651)
- The Simulacra (1964)
- The Crack in Space (1966+)
- Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
Image:PKD-Do-Androids-Dream-of-Electric-Sheep.png
- 1964
- Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965)
- The Zap Gun (1967)
- The Penultimate Truth (1964)
- Deus Irae with Roger Zelazny (1976*+)
- The Unteleported Man (1966 / 1983+ / 1984*+ as Lies, Inc.)
- 1965
- The Ganymede Takeover with Ray Nelson (1967*)
- Counter-Clock World (1967)
- 1966
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
- Nick and the Glimmung (for children) (1988)
- Ubik (1969)
- 1968
- Galactic Pot-Healer (1969)
- A Maze of Death (1970)
- 1969
- Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1970)
- 1970
- Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974*)
- 1973
- A Scanner Darkly (1977*)
- 1976
- Radio Free Albemuth (1985)
- 1978
- VALIS (1981)
- 1980
- The Divine Invasion (1981)
- 1981
- The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
Short stories
The short stories of Philip K. Dick have recently been republished in five omnibus volumes, as follows:
- The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Stories, ISBN 0806511532
- We Can Remember It for You Wholesale and Other Stories, ISBN 0806512091
- Second Variety and Other Stories, ISBN 0806512261
- The Minority Report and Other Stories, ISBN 0806512768
- The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Stories, ISBN 0806513284
- 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 Masters
- Adjustment Team
- Beyond the Door
- Breakfast at Twilight
- The Crawlers
- The Crystal Crypt
- 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
- 1958
- Null-o
- 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
- 1968
- Not By Its Cover
- The Story To End All Stories
- 1969
- A. Lincoln, Simulacrum
- The Electric Ant
- 1974
- The Different Stages of Love
- The Pre-persons
- A Little Something For Us Tempunauts
- 1980
- I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon - originally titled Frozen Journey
- Rautavaara's Case
- Chains of Air, Web of Aether
- 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
Film adaptations of Philip K. Dick's works
| # | Film | Date | Director | Source work | Date | Type | TV Series | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blade Runner | 1982 | Ridley Scott | Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? | 1968 | Novel | - | - |
| 2 | Total Recall | 1990 | Paul Verhoeven | We Can Remember It For You Wholesale | 1966 | Short Story | Total Recall 2070 | 1999 |
| 3 | Confessions d'un Barjo | 1992 | Jérôme Boivin | Confessions of a Crap Artist | 1975 | Novel | - | - |
| 4 | Screamers | 1995 | Christian Duguay | Second Variety | 1953 | Short Story | - | - |
| 5 | Minority Report | 2002 | Steven Spielberg | Minority Report | 1956 | Short Story | - | - |
| 6 | Impostor | 2002 | Gary Fleder | Impostor | 1953 | Short Story | Episode of Out of This World adapted by Terry Nation | 1962 |
| 7 | Paycheck | 2003 | John Woo | Paycheck | 1953 | Short Story | - | - |
| 8 | A Scanner Darkly | 2006 | Richard Linklater | A Scanner Darkly | 1977 | Novel | - | - |
| 9 | Next* | 2007 | Lee Tamahori | The Golden Man | 1954 | Short Story | - | - |
- * stars Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore [7].
- 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
- Hugo Awards
- Best Novel
- 1963 - The Man in the High Castle (winner)
- 1975 - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (nominee)
- Best Novelette
- 1968 - Faith of Our Fathers (nominee)
- Best Novel
- Nebula Awards
- Best Novel
- 1965 - Dr. Bloodmoney (nominee)
- 1965 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (nominee)
- 1968 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (nominee)
- 1974 - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (nominee)
- 1982 - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (nominee)
- Best Novel
- John W. Campbell Memorial Award
- Best Novel
- 1975 - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (winner)
- Best Novel
Biographies
- Carrère, Emmanuel. Bent, Timothy. (translator) (2005). I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick. Picador. ISBN 0312424515
- Dick, Ann R. (Former Wife). (1995). Search for Philip K. Dick, 1928-1982: A Memoir and Biography of the Science Fiction Writer. Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0773491376
- Mason, Daryl. (2006). The Biography of Philip K. Dick. Gollancz. ISBN 0575072806
- Rickman, Gregg. (1989). To the High Castle: Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962. Fragments West.
- Sutin, Lawrence (Official biographer). (1989). Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick. Citadel Press; Rep edition. ISBN 0806512288
- Williams, Paul. (1986). Only Apparently Real - The Worlds of Philip K. Dick. Entwhistle Books. ISBN 0934558310
Interviews
- Apel, D. Scott. (1999). Philip K. Dick : The Dream Connection. The Impermanent Press. ISBN 1886404038
- Lee, Gwen (ed). What If Our World Is Their Heaven? The Final Conversations Of Philip K. Dick. Overlook Press. ISBN 1585673781
- Rickman, Gregg. (1984). Philip K. Dick: In His Own Words. Fragments West.
- Rickman, Gregg. (1985). Philip K. Dick: The Last Testament. Fragments West.
See also
- Philip K. Dick Memorial Award
- List of science fiction authors
- List of science fiction novels
- List of science fiction short stories
- List of science fiction television
- Ontology
- Modern Gnosticism
Notes
<references/>
External links
- Official website
- Philip K Dick Biography - PopSubCulture.com - with additional essays and analysis
- Philip K. Dick fans (with many articles & interviews)
- The Philip K. Dick Bookshelf - A complete pictorial bibliography of Philip K Dick with more than 1200 coverscans
- Review of PKD's Selected Stories
- Template:Isfdb name
- {{{2|{{{name|Philip K. Dick}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
- The PKDicktionary, originally authored by Simon Hickinbotham
- VALBS: Vast, Active, Living Bibliographic System: Dick's secondary bibliography online
- Open Directory entry for Philip K. Dick
- Robert Crumb comic strip about Philip K. Dick's theophany
- A fan's website with an extensive bibliography and many photos
- Philip K. Dick Comes to Life in Robotic Form
- The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick by Frank Rose, an article from Wired about movies based on the Dick's novels
- How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (Essay by PKD on his "discovery" that we are living in the Roman Empire)
- A Very PhilDickian Existence
- The Secret Gray-Robed Christians
- Benjamen Walker talks with authors Jonathan Lethem and Josh Glenn about the Science Fiction genius Philip K Dick in his podcast.
- NNDB entry for Philip K. Dick
- Examination of Gnostic themes in Dick's life
- Various articles on Philip K. Dick's ideas and fiction
- Various Philip K. Dick related linksTemplate:Link FA
bg:Филип Дик br:Philip K. Dick cs:Philip K. Dick da:Philip K. Dick de:Philip K. Dick el:Φίλιπ Ντικ eo:Philip K. DICK es:Philip K. Dick fi:Philip K. Dick fr:Philip K. Dick he:פיליפ ק. דיק hu:Philip K. Dick it:Philip K. Dick ja:フィリップ・K・ディック mk:Филип Дик nl:Philip K. Dick pl:Philip Kindred Dick pt:Philip K. Dick ru:Дик, Филип Киндред sv:Philip K. Dick th:ฟิลิป เค. ดิก tr:Philip K. Dick zh:菲利普·K·迪克
Categories: 1928 births | 1982 deaths | Agoraphobic celebrities | American science fiction writers | American short story writers | Autodidacts | Chicagoans | Christian writers | Episcopalians | Hugo Award winning authors | Philip K. Dick | Postmodernists | Tax resisters | Wikipedia articles needing factual verification