Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick was an American
novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost
entirely in the science fiction genre. He often presented dystopias that are
dominated by political and business hegemonic organizations. Philip K. Dick
considered himself a “fictionalizing philosopher.”
Biography
Philip Kindred Dick was born in
Chicago in December 1928. Dick's parents split up during his childhood, and he
moved with his mother to Berkeley, California, where he lived for most of the
rest of his life. In June 1938, Dorothy and Philip
returned to California, and it was around this time that he became interested
in science fiction. Dick attended high school Berkeley.
He and fellow science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin were members of the same
graduating class (1947) but were unknown to each other at the time. From
1949 to 1950, Philip K. Dick was a student at the University of
California—Berkeley. Philip K. Dick studied history, military science,
philosophy and zoology. From 1948 to 1952, Dick worked at Art
Music Company, a record store on Telegraph Avenue. He was married five times.
In 1947 he had a profound religious experience that
would forever alter his life. Dick's final years were haunted by what he alleged
to be a 1974 visitation from God, or at least a God-like being. He was not a
financially successful writer. He worked mainly for low-paying science-fiction
publishers and never seemed to see any royalties from his novels after the
advance had been paid, no matter how many copies they sold. But towards the
very end of his life, he achieved a measure of financial stability, partly due
to the money he received from the producers of Blade Runner (1982) for the
rights to his novel "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" upon which
the film was based. Shortly before the film premiered, however, he died of a
heart attack at the age of 53. Since his death, several other films have been
adapted from his works and several unpublished novels have been published
posthumously.
Works
In 1951, Philip K. Dick sold his
first piece of short fiction. Four years later he sold his first novel. In the
1950s, Dick tried to write mainstream fiction. In 1963, he was awarded the Hugo
Award for his novel The Man in the
High Castle. His novel Flow My Tears, the
Policeman Said won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Time magazine declared that Dick’s Ubik was one of the greatest novels
written in English since 1923. In 1968,
Philip K. Dick published Do Androids Dream
of Electric Sheep?. This novel would become one of Dick’s most
renowned works. In 1982, the film Blade Runner
was made based on this works. . For several months, Philip K. Dick had visions.
These intensifying visions fueled the VALIS
triology: Radio Free Albemuth, VALIS, The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
A
supremely chaotic personal life (Dick was married five times) along with drug
experimentation, sidetracked Dick's career in the early 1970s. Dick returned to
action in 1974 with the Campbell award-winning novel "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said". In A Scanner
Darkly published in 1977 , there is an underlying thread of paranoia and
dissociation with multiple realities perceived simultaneously Dick's final
years were haunted by what he alleged to be a 1974 visitation from God, or at
least a God-like being. He spent the rest of his life writing copious journals
regarding the visitation and his interpretations of the event. His final novels
all deal in some way with the entity he saw in 1974, especially
"Valis," in which the title-character is an extraterrestrial God-like
machine that chooses to make contact with a hopelessly schizophrenic, possibly
drug-addled and decidedly mixed-up science fiction writer named Philip K. Dick.
.
The last novel Dick wrote was The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. It
was published shortly after his death in 1982.
In addition to 44 published
novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in
science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his
career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have
been produced, including Blade Runner Total Recall A Scanner Darkly Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers ...
