Philip K. Dick

Although his talent was acknowledged within the world of science fiction—he won the Hugo Award for The Man in the High Castle (1963)—Dick did not experience mainstream success during his lifetime, and made little money for his stories. To survive financially, he wrote at a rapid pace, generating 45 novels and 121 short stories over his 30-year career. Dick’s stories contemplate themes such as identity, paranoia, mental illness, drug use, alternative realities, surveillance, and authoritarianism. His characters often question appearances, struggle to discern what is real and true, and seek to uncover sinister plots. Dick often incorporated his own life experiences into his stories, and in several respects the themes of his life parallel those of his fiction. In 1955, the FBI visited Dick and his second wife, who held socialist views. Throughout the 1960s, he abused amphetamines, which allowed him to write for extended periods of time without sleep. In 1972, after the end of his fourth of five marriages, he unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide. Dick reported having a series of mystical and/or past-life visions in 1973, seeing images of geometric patterns, and of Jesus in Ancient Rome. On the basis of these visions, he claimed he was simultaneously living his life in the present, as well as the life of a Christian named Thomas in the first century CE. He incorporated these experiences into VALIS (1981), which, along with his other later novels, focused upon metaphysics and theology. Several of his stories have been adapted to television and film, including: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) as Blade Runner (1982); “We Can Remember It For Your Wholesale” (1966) as Total Recall (1990, 2012); and “The Minority Report” (1956) as Minority Report (2002).