Dick, Philip K. (1928-1982)
Author of 26 novels and 112 short stories, Philip K. Dick started his career as a science fiction writer in 1952. He was awarded the Hugo Award, a presentation made by fans...
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The fictional worlds of Philip K. Dick are populated by strange creatures and situations: men with enormous steel teeth, private detectives who own electric animals, self-governing insane asylums. It ...
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From Philip K. Dick's first sale of a story entitled "Roog" to Anthony Boucher of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1952 and his first published story, "Beyond Lies the Wub" in Planet St...
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Critical Essay by Stanislaw Lem
[The following essay was published in a special issue of Science-Fiction Studies devoted to Philip K. Dick's works.]
In SF there is little room left for creative...
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Critical Essay by Roger Zelazny
Brian Aldiss has called [Philip Dick] "one of the masters of present-day discontents", a thing readily apparent in much of his work. But one of the great ...
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Critical Essay by Bruce Gillespie
[The following essay was written in 1967 and first published in a shortened form in SF Commentary, January, 1969.]
Nobody has ever accused Dick of being stupid, unori...
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Critical Essay by Angus Taylor
Although it is often noted that Philip K. Dick is concerned with "the nature of reality," the assumption is usually that he is merely playing parlor tricks...
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Critical Essay by Ursula K. Leguin
Philip K. Dick comes on without fanfare. All his novels are published as science fiction, which limits their "packaging" to purple-monster jackets, ens...
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Critical Essay by Philip Strick
Dick does not make easy reading. He lacks the informality of [Arthur C.] Clarke, the vocabulary of [Anthony] Burgess, the pointillism of [John] Fowles. His phrasing is ...
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Critical Essay by Patricia S. Warrick
What is the authentically human? What is the nature of the alien elements that are threatening and vitiating living, intelligent human beings? These questions are...
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In the following essay, Abrash examines Dick's early short stories and novels that portray technology and the institutional use of machines to symbolize “the values and operating princip...
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In the following essay, Palmer regards Dick as an author “who mixes parable and fantasy with licentious impurity,” resulting in a reflection on morality and the question of humanness.
Fa...
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In the following essay, Gillis considers the question of what is human as it applies to Dick's role as a writer of speculative fiction.
Philip K. Dick viewed the act of questioning as a fundame...
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In the following essay, DiTommaso investigates the dualistic, gnostic Christian themes in Dick's early short fiction and novels.
Introduction
It has been long recognized that gnostic Christiani...
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In the following essay, Bertrand examines the role Jungian concepts of individuation, projection, and the unconscious have upon Dick's first published short story “Beyond Lies the Wub.&#...
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In the following essay, Bertrand analyzes two themes common to Dick's short stories and novels: what is reality and what makes a being human.
From a wide perspective “The Father-Thing&#x...
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Critical Essay by Carl Malmgren
Malmgren, Carl. “Meta-SF: The Examples of Dick, LeGuin, and Russ.” Extrapolation 43, no. 1 (spring 2002): 22-35.
In the following excerpt, Malmgren discus...
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In the following essay, Lawson investigates Dick's influence upon contemporary cinema, and discusses the numerous film adaptations of Dick's stories and novels.
The basic tool for the ma...
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In the following essay, Desowitz examines multiple film adaptations of Dick's work, including Steven Spielberg's Minority Report.
It has been 20 years since the seminal sci-fi film Blade...
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In the following excerpt, Warren explores the struggle of Dick's characters to find an “Absolute Reality” and the profound ambiguities caused by the dependence on such a reality.
...
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In the following review, Turan claims that what is most impressive about the film Minority Report stems from Dick's short story “The Minority Report.”
It took paranoid visionary P...
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Critical Review by Kirkus Reviews
Review of Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick, by Philip K. Dick. Kirkus Reviews 70, no. 18 (15 September 2002): 1358.
Twenty-one stories Selected Stories of Philip K....
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In the following essay, Warrick investigates “what is truly human and what only masquerades as human,” as suggested by the work of Dick.
What is the authentically human? What is the natu...
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In the following essay, which was written in 1978, Dick discusses rereading his early stories, the autobiographical elements of his fiction, and his professional role and personal life as an outcast s...
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In the following review, the critic considers this five-volume set of Dick's short fiction to be both “wonderful reading” and “a publishing event.”
Even before his u...
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In the following essay, Warrick provides a critical overview of Dick's short fiction with a focus on the notion of morality.
This critical study of Dick's fiction is a work without a con...
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In the following essay, Zoreda employs Bakhtin's idea of dialogism to analyze Dick's story “Oh, To Be a Blobel!”
One of the notable contributions of the philosopher, lingui...
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In the following essay, Easterbrook cites the story “Impostor” as forming “several of Dick's paradigmatic gestures and traces a problem increasingly important to poststruct...
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In the following essay, Wessel explores the themes of forgery, conspiratorial “reality,” and paranoia in Dick's work and the writing of Stanislaw Lem, especially in the former�...
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Dick, Philip K. (1928-1982)
Philip K. Dick
Philip K(indred) Dick
