An introduction to the work, philosophy and life of Philip K. Dick.

1. Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982)
November 26. 2012
Kristian A. Bjørkelo
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2. 36 novels
Gather Yourselves Together, Voices from the Street, Vulcan's Hammer, Dr. Futurity,
The Cosmic Puppets, Solar Lottery, Mary and the Giant, The World Jones Made,
Eye in the Sky, The Man Who Japed, A Time for George Stavros, Pilgrim on the Hill,
The Broken Bubble, Puttering About in a Small Land, Nicholas and the Higs,
Time Out of Joint, In Milton Lumky Territory, Confessions of a Crap Artist,
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland,
The Man in the High Castle, We Can Build You, Martian Time-Slip,
Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb, The Game-Players of Titan,
The Simulacra, The Crack in Space, Now Wait for Last Year,
Clans of the Alphane Moon,The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Zap Gun,
The Penultimate Truth, Deus Irae, Roger Zelazny, The Unteleported Man,
The Ganymede Takeover, Counter-Clock World, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,
Nick and the Glimmung, Ubik, Galactic Pot-Healer, A Maze of Death,
Our Friends from Frolix 8, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, A Scanner Darkly,
Radio Free Albemuth, VALIS, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
and The Owl in Daylight (unfinished)
And numerous essays and short stories (121).
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3. Movie adaptions
Blade Runner Total Recall (2 versions), Confessions d'un Barjo,
Screamers (though not Screamers 2), Minority Report, Out of This
World , Impostor, Paycheck (2003), A Scanner Darkly, Next ,
Radio Free Albemuth and The Adjustment Bureau.
Inspired:
The Matrix, Looper, Memento, Pi, Inception, Twelve Monkeys,
Being John Malkovich, Videodrome and + + +
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4. The three Dicks
1. Dick the man (Biography)
2. Dick the religious drug addict and schizophrenic (paranoid
psychosis and hallucinations)
3. Dick the writer (His work and themes)
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5. Dick, the man
His sister, Jane
The dark haired woman
Wives: Jeanette Marlin (May to November 1948), Kleo
Apostolides (June 14, 1950 to 1959), Anne Williams Rubinstein
(April 1, 1959 to October 1965), Nancy Hackett (July 6, 1966 to
1972), and Leslie (Tessa) Busby (April 18, 1973 to 1977).
Children: Laura Archer (February 25, 1960), Isolde Freya (now
Isa Dick Hackett) (March 15, 1967), and Christopher Kenneth
(July 25, 1973).
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6. Dick, the man
Berkley, sept. 1949 – nov. 11. 1949.
Philosophy
Radical politics – debriefed by the FBI
Poverty
Breakthrough (1963, Hugo Award), mainstream success and
death (1982)
Religious experience (1974)
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7. Religion, drugs and psychosis
“It just, it all started when I was on Pentothal and a girl came to the door
with some medication from the pharmacy. And she was wearing a
Christian fish sign. And i was dazed from the Pentothal and dazed from
the pain and I saw the fish sign and a strange funk came over me and I
said - now, I was in terrible pain you know and I’m reaching for the bag
and I said, “What is that?” and it shone when the sun struck it and it
blinded me. And she put a finger against it and she said that this is a sign
used by the early Christians and when she said that, I remembered, I
remembered. Back all the way to the time of the Acts. I remembered
events that took place in the book of Acts. I remembered it all and just for
a fraction of a second and then it was gone and then during the next
month it began to break through. It broke this world of the early Christian,
and I saw it here and now. Saw it here and now. It was here. Some of us
who are Christans and some of us who are not. And this terrible Iron
Empire. And I found out that it is the name of the particular age that this
is associated with, the age of iron. The Romans had designated it the
age of iron.”
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8. Religion, drugs and psychosis
“No, first there was this flash of light, hit me straight in the
face and blinded me. It did. And it came out and all I could
see was this pink and I was listening to this Beatles tune on
the stereo and all of a sudden the words rearranged
themselves. And there was something outside of me. But
what I heard was the Beatles’ words rearranged. It told me
that my little boy had this, you know, undiagnosed birth
defect, and it told me what the birth defect was. And when I
told Tess and I said, you must take him to the doctor
immediately, it’s urgent, she went right to the hospital to the
doctor, and it was true. He did have that defect, and he
scheduled for surgery as soon as possible. And, uh, this
went on for years. This went on for a whole year. This
presence would talk to me. And it used scientific terms. And
it used Greek terms, and it used Hebrew terms.”
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9. Religion, drugs and psychosis
Amphetamines
Paranoia, break-in
Dis-association with reality.
Autism? Schizophrenia?
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10. Religion, drugs and psychosis
“Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with
an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor,
up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from
the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead
machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here.
From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with
the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It
managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision,
as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it
assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he
experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He
had often felt its austere approach before; when it came it burst in
without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could
not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.”
- The Martian Time Slip
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11. Religion, drugs and psychosis
We can remember it for you wholesale, Total Recall.
Addiction: 1970-72.
Rehab: X-Kalay
A Scanner Darkly
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12. The author
“What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really
see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive
infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-
scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into
me—into us—clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought,
see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into
myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope,
for everyone’s sake, the scanners do better. Because, he
thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do,
then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been
continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very
little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”
- A Scanner Darkly
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13. The author
Android and man
Do Androids dream of electric sheep, Blade Runner.
Decartes: Cogito Ergo Sum
Then what of reality? Is that any more real?
Ubik
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14. The author
«But, he thought, this is a projection on my part. It isn’t the universe
which is being entombed by layers of wind, cold, darkness and ice; all
this is going on within me, and yet I seem to see it outside. Strange, he
thought. Is the whole world inside me? Engulfed by my body? When did
hat happen? It must be a manifestation of dying, he said to himself. The
uncertainty which I feel, the slowing down into entropy - that’s the
process, and the ice which I see the result of the success of the process.
When I blink out, he thought, the whole universe will disappear. But what
about the various lights which I should see, the entrances to new
wombs? Where in particular is the red smoky light of fornicating
couples? And the dull dark light signifying animal greed? All I can make
out, he thought, is encroaching darkness and utter loss of heat, a plain
which is cooling off, abandoned by its sun.
This can’t be normal death, he said tom himself. This is unnatural; the
regular momentum of dissolution has been replaced by another factor
imposed upon it, a pressure arbitrary and forced.»
Ubik
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15. The Author
«Maybe I can undertand it, he thought, if I can just lie down
and rest, if I can get enogh energy to think.
‘What’s the matter?’ Joe asked, as together, they
ascended in the elevator.
‘Nothing’, Al said curtly. They may make it, he thought, but
I’m not going to.
He and Joe continued on up in empty silence.»
- Ubik
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16. Author
World War 2 and 3, The Man in the High Castle, The
Penultimate Truth.
The existence of God,
The Three Stigmatas of Palmer Eldricht
«God promises eternal life, we can deliver it.»
Gnosticism
Jane, the disembodied guide
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17. Valis-trilogy
2-3-74, The exegesis
Radio Free Albemuth, Valis, Divine Invasions, The
Transmigration of Timothy Archer and The Owl by Daylight.
A resolution of his religious quest.
A return to normalcy?
What if our world, is their heaven?
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18. In the end
Reality is that which,
when you stop believing
in it, doesn't go away.
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19. uib.no