Philip K. Dick

   Philip K. Dick was an American writer of novels and short stories. His focus was the Science Fiction genre, totaling 121 shorts and 44 published novels. While Dick was influential during his life, it is amazing to see how impactful he has been to modern SciFi in his death. Philip K. Dick was an interesting man. He had some mental problems, which led to hallucinations and a wild imagination which he attributed to paranormal activity, but he also abused drugs quite frequently. Through these visions, Dick created many of his stories and novels. 

    Dick is said to have been “the writer who witnessed the future” as well as the most influential author of the SciFi genre. Dick was unlike most other SciFi writers because he did not focus on the predictable, ultra-futuristic side of SciFi. He liked the genre because it was an outlet for his imagination, and he was not so much infatuated with things such as flying cars. Dick focused on themes such as life being a simulation, time travel, artificial intelligence (AI), etc.; basically, everything we are focusing on in this course! It is almost eerie how similar the focus of his writings in the mid 1900s are to the modern world. Dick was able to foreshadow today’s society and technology, even predicting what are now pop-up online advertisements marketed specifically to certain users. 

    Some of Philip K. Dick’s most popular work is The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which has since been turned into Blade Runner, although Blade Runner was in the process of being made when Dick died in 1982. Despite his death, he has influenced an entire generation of SciFi authors. It is rare that so much of one’s work lives on much past their death, yet Dick has only become more well-known. He has influenced authors such as Jonathan Lethem and Ursula K. Le Guin, who actually went to the same high school as Dick. Dick is extremely impactful because his creations are visual and surreal, laying down the foundation of modern SciFi film and literature. 

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