Two Books by Phillip K. Dick
I have just read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Minority Report and Other Classic Stories. This is my first exposure to the infamous Phillip K.Dick, and I must say he makes me uneasy. Not much literature does, but these stories had me feeling strangely paranoid and disturbed in many places. For that I am thankful.
The writing itself is nothing special. This is not poetry, and in fact the language comes across as surprisingly amateurish in many places. Rather, it’s the gradually building sense that all is not as it should be that captivates the reader. Dick was a paranoid man. Reading his biography, it is apparent that he distrusted reality to the point of near insanity. What seems mundane and solid for us is full of hidden menace and meaning for Dick. His extraordinary talent is the ability to transmit this paranoia.
I am referring to the passages in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (upon which Blade Runner was based, of course) where Decker is forced to realize that he’s s either a replicant (android) or somehow psychologically defective, lacking in empathy. I am thinking of the disorientation of “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” (which later became Total Recall) where the protagonist simply can’t figure out any more if he ever did, or did not go to Mars. And in one terrifying story, the main character takes illicit anti-hallucinogenics to counteract the mind control drugs of his dystopian police state, only to discover that the Supreme Dictator is none other than God himself. God is neither good nor evil, the supreme being explains, God is all of these together, but mostly God is all powerful and doesn’t even remotely care what you think.
This is all the “existential dread” of Borges packaged into Science Fiction. This is wondering whether the world will still be there when you wake up. This is the original Truman Show, the original Matrix. This is the real thing.
As the extraordinarily, inspirationally evil villain of one story explains, power alone is nothing against imagination. Phillip K Dick has such an amazing imagination that when he writes those words, I am inclined to believe him.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:45 am
Oooo the excellent and loopy Phillip K. Dick. I’m surprised you hadn’t read him yet. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep always catches new readers by surprise as they come in expecting Blade Runner and frankly the movie and book bear almost no relationship. The movie’s philosophic premise is about what makes us human; whereas the book is more about the modern urban hunt for meaning and veridicality.
The competitive religious nature of “real” animal ownership; the strange shared sufferings of the televised prophet/martyr; and the hunt for replicants itself are all symptoms of this disparate fight against the tides of loneliness and meaninglessness. He deals a lot with how our need to belong is often contrasted with feeling alien to those around us.
Veridicality and the desire to belong is are important themes in several of his books. I think of specifically “A Scanner Darkly” which the movie is very true to the book. Also, I highly recommend “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch” and “Confessions of a Crap Artist”
If you go on to read more, I’d avoid Phillip K. Dick’s Valis trilogy. He wrote this during his odd religious quantum Christian god epiphany era. R. Crumb drew a comic about this era and what happened to Phillip K. Dick, which you can read online here. I know it sounds interesting in the ramblings of a psychotic kinda way. However, I read it and the obsessive redundancy of him trying to hammer home is god epiphany is frankly boring.
November 12th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
167bh9k0dk8q473h