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The Stop
Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) - frequently referred to as PKD - was an American science fiction writer whose work often focusses on the ‘psychological struggles of characters trapped in illusory environments.’ The author of 44 novels and over 120 short stories, many of Dick’s works produced over a ‘remarkable’ 30-year period have inspired or been directly adapted for several well-received films including Minority Report (2002), Total Recall (1990; 2012), the Amazon series The Man in the High Castle (2015), and - most famously - Blade Runner (1982).1
Born in Chicago, Dick’s family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was very young. His father - Joseph - worked for the US Department of Agriculture, and shortly after this move was asked to relocate to Nevada. Dick’s mother refused to move again, so his parents divorced and after a two-year period spent in Washington, D.C., he and his mother (who had received custody) returned to California where he would reside for the rest of his life. After a short period working in radio, Dick briefly studied history, psychology, philosophy, and zoology at the University of California, Berkeley for less than a year before dropping out due to anxiety issues and continuing to teach himself. He published his first short story in 1951 and thereafter turned his attention fully to writing. His career was extraordinarily productive, as he generally completed a new work - usually a short story or novella - every two weeks to be published as pulp paperbacks or in one of the many science fiction magazines around at the time. Dick published his first novel, Solar Lottery, in 1955 and with it began to establish the theme that would become his ‘central preoccupation:’ the idea of a ‘reality at variance with what it appeared or was intended to be.’
Throughout his work, Dick’s interest in this theme found him investigating various philosophical issues such as the nature of reality and human identity, and his works feature characters embroiled in plots containing alternate realities, monopolies, drug abuse, altered states of consciousness and authoritarian/totalitarian governments. He was decidedly anti-establishment, with his work featuring ‘authorities and companies consistently abusing their power, especially when it comes to surveillance.’ His fictional worlds are also ‘ultra-commodified’ with citizens who are ‘addicted to materialism,’ a theme exemplified by the ‘invasive nature of advertising in his work’ - which, like many of his ideas, was remarkably prescient.2
Dick had a twin sister, Jane, who died six weeks after birth. Though far too young for any memory of her, he nevertheless remained haunted by her loss and often included a phantom twin motif in his work. Episodes of mental illness, five fractious marriages, a considerable amount of drug abuse and visions he claimed were paranormal experiences3 contributed to a lifelong ‘troubled and fragmented relationship with reality.’ This relationship informed such novels as Time out of Joint (1959), The Man in the High Castle (1962) and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) - all of which involve characters trapped in an ‘alternate world,’ while others - including Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) - are concerned with characters ‘grappling with what is authentic in a real world of the future.’ In his own life, perhaps his ‘most unnerving’ belief was that the world itself is ultimately only a ‘simulation.’
In February 1982, Dick suffered two strokes which led to his death. Though he died ‘impoverished and with little literary reputation outside of science-fiction circles,’ by the beginning of the 21st century a renewed interest in his ideas and work saw him recast as a ‘master of imaginative, paranoid fiction in the vein of Franz Kafka and Thomas Pynchon’. Of course, the best way to step into his world is to read him, so here is a list of my favourite PKD novels - each will open a door into his world: The Man in the High Castle (1962), The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Ubik (1969), Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974) and A Scanner Darkly (1977).4
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to a marketing video for Colossal Biosciences, a company dedicated to developing the technology of de-exinction - described on its webpage as a ‘functional application of advanced gene editing technology aimed at rebuilding the DNA of lost megafauna and other creatures that had a measurably positive impact on our fragile ecosystems.’ It appears to be science fiction, but it is most definitely not.5
De-Extinction (Colossal Biosciences)
The Recommendation
Today’s Recommendation is Blade Runner (1982). Directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Sean Young and Rutger Hauer, the film is probably the best known adaptation of a PKD story, in this case the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Set in a dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, the plot is centred on burnt-out cop Rick Deckard who is sent to hunt and ‘terminate’ a group of replicants - synthetic humans bio-engineered to work on space colonies - who have illegally escaped to Earth. Highly-stylised, atmospheric and deeply disturbing in its vision of a high-tech decaying future, the film is certainly worth watching if you’ve never seen it before - or haven’t in a long time.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is composed of five tracks directly or indirectly related to today’s topic: ‘Main Titles’ (Blade Runner Original Soundtrack; Vangelis, 1982), ‘Strawberry Pie’ (A Scanner Darkly Original Soundtrack; Graham Reynolds, feat. Golden Arm Trio, 2006), ‘Drugs in Public’ (Kiko, 2019), ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ (The Weeknd, 2015) and ‘Losing Touch with My Mind’ (Spacemen 3, 1986). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought - from Philip K. Dick - is a sentiment your Bus Driver appreciates a bit more these days:6
‘The trouble with being educated is that it takes a long time; it uses up the better part of your life and when you are finished what you know is that you would have benefited more by going into banking.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next Stop …
Minority Report is based on the short story ‘The Minority Report’ (1956), Total Recall is based on the short story ‘We Can Remember it for You Wholesale’ (1966), The Man in the High Castle on the novel by the same name (1962) and Blade Runner on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. I discovered PKD as a young science fiction fan in the 1980s, but it was only in the mid-90s that I began to really appreciate the alternate worlds he created. Sources for today’s Stop include: Philip K. Dick (Britannica), philipdick.com and Philip K Dick (BBC Culture).
For example, in the novel The Simulacra (1964), advertising is ‘embodied by a mechanical fly-like creature’ that becomes a physical manifestation of today’s ‘spam or tailored adverts’ that pop up on social media: ‘the commercial, fly-sized, began to buzz out its message as soon as it managed to force entry. ‘Say! Haven't you sometimes said to yourself, I'll bet other people in restaurants can see me!’’
In the early 1970s, Dick began to experience what he believed were ‘two parallel timelines of his own life,’ that his thoughts had been invaded in 1974 by a ‘transcendentally rational mind.’ He had many names for this mind, but the primary one he used was VALIS - Vast Active Living Intelligence System - the subject of the 1981 novel VALIS.
Adding further respectability to Dick’s work, in 2007 the Library of America began to publish what would become three collections of his work - the first science fiction to be published by the LOA. The first four of these novels can be found in Volume 1; the other two in Volume 2.
You can check out the company’s website here: Colossal Biosciences.
Not that I’d ever have gone into banking, but possibly a few investments in, say, Microsoft or early bitcoin might have been advised …
This was an especially good one Bryan ... but that video from Colossus has got to be straight SciFi
This time in America—1960 to 1970—and this place, the Bay Area of Northern California, was totally fucked. I’m sorry to tell you this, but that’s the truth. Fancy terms and ornate theories cannot cover this fact up. The authorities became as psychotic as those they hunted.
Philip K. Dick, The Valis Trilogy
“Ha! No wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed to control a population that knows it’ll never die? When that was always their last big chip, when they thought they had the power of life and death. But acid gave us the X-ray vision to see through that one, so of course they had to take it away from us.”
“Yeah, but they can’t take what happened, what we found out.”
“Easy. They just let us forget. Give us too much to process, fill up every minute, keep us distracted, it’s what the Tube is for, and though it kills me to say it, it’s what rock and roll is becoming—just another way to claim our attention, so that beautiful certainty we had starts to fade, and after a while they have us convinced all over again that we really are going to die.”
Thomas Pynchon, Vineland