Philip K. Dick
The middle decades of the twentieth century saw science fiction move steadily toward literary respectability, drawing writers who treated speculative premises as a serious mode of inquiry rather than mere genre exercise. Philip K. Dick worked within that broader current, producing fiction associated not only with science fiction but with speculative fiction and postmodern literature.
Born in Chicago on 16 December 1928, Dick was educated at Berkeley High School and later at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote in English across several forms — novels, short stories, and essays — and has been described as a philosopher as well as a writer, a characterization that points to the range of his concerns beyond narrative alone. He remained a citizen of the United States throughout his life.
His output encompassed a significant number of works. Among his novels, The Man in the High Castle, Ubik, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and A Scanner Darkly stand as notable titles, along with the VALIS trilogy. Working as a novelist, short story writer, and essayist, he moved across different forms and scales throughout his career, contributing to both science fiction and speculative fiction as recognized genres.
Recognition from within the field came in the form of two honors: the Hugo Award for Best Novel and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Dick died in Santa Ana on 2 March 1982. His work earned a standardized cataloguing entry at the Library of Congress under the label "Dick, Philip K.," a designation that marks the reach and persistence of his published record.
Quotes by Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick's insights on:
But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That's closer to it. The artistic life without the talent
He started keeping a journal - had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person.
For each person there is a sentence--a series of words--which has the power to destroy him ... another sentence exists, another series of words, which will heal the person. If you're lucky you will get the second; but you can be certain of getting the first: that is the way it works. On their own, without training, individuals know how to deal out the lethal sentence, but training is required to deal out the second.
In 1955, when I'd write a science-fiction novel, I'd set it in the year 2000. I realised around 1977 that, 'My God, it's getting exactly like those novels we used to write in the 1950s!' Everything's just turning out to be real.
I am basically analytical, not creative; my writing is simply a creative way of handling analysis.
The ultimate problem confronting me all my life has been the senseless injury to and neglect of my sister.