When I was in high school, a friend loaned me a paperback novel written by Philip K. Dick, and I was instantly hooked. As I worked my way through his short stories and novels, I was left dizzy from the creative dilemmas, dire predictions, and philosophical questions posed by one of the true masters of science fiction. His ability to combine gritty humanist characters with mind-bending plots has not gone unnoticed by Hollywood. "Blade Runner, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, and other films have all been inspired by his work.
Philip Kindred Dick was born in Chicago on this day in 1928. His teenage years brought troubling episodes of extreme vertigo and a diagnosis of schizophrenia that was later disputed by psychotherapists and psychiatrists who determined that the writer was of sound mind. Dick always struggled with mental demons, describing occasional nervous breakdowns, which inevitably worked their way into his writing. Starting in the early '50s, he produced short stories at a fevered pace, carrying his work ethic through with his novels of the '60s and '70s.
In 1974, he described a life-changing experience in the form of a "pink beam of light" that transmitted information directly into his consciousness, and he provided the details of this experience in his semi-autobiographical novel, VALIS. Some speculate that he had actually suffered a stroke, and this was merely his brain's interpretation of what happened. Dick himself tried to maintain a skeptical view of this profound event, never believing entirely that what he experienced was real. That skepticism became the central question in his amazing body of work: Exactly what is reality when you cannot be sure of your own observations?
If it was indeed a stroke that gave him his insights, then it’s ironic that a stroke killed him in 1982. Even more ironic, is that after his death, an admirer built an android of Dick that "was able to conduct rudimentary conversations about Mr. Dick's work and ideas, was at the cutting edge of robotic technology, able to make eye contact and believable facial expressions," further blurring the lines of "reality." The android's head vanished under mysterious circumstances in 2006, and has never been recovered.
Given Dick's paranoia about the KGB and CIA, I have to wonder if the head’s disappearance was, in reality, an "accident."
Suggested Sites...
- Philip K. Dick, The Official Site - official site of the author, from the Philip K. Dick Trust.
- Scriptorium: Philip K. Dick - Richard Behrens and Allen B. Ruch investigate the author's life, work, and legacy.
- BladeZone - original stories, art, chat, and articles about the science fiction film "Blade Runner," based on a Philip K. Dick story.
- Philip K. Dick Fans - devoted to the work of the science fiction master, with news, articles, covers, interviews, biography, and more.
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