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, that he is a clever sleight-of-hand artist whose entertainments are conjured out of thin air and exhibit little philosophy other than a fashionable nihilism or despair in the face of a universe thought too large and unregulated for comprehension. Yet Dick is far from being the unrelenting pessimist he is often considered. Rather, through his often dark vision he assumes a critical stance against the world-view that informs modern society; beyond this he presents a vision of a brighter world not beyond the reach of those informed of its possibility. But between unexamined reality and affirmed possibility lies an arduous journey: from the destruction of one world of knowledge to the creation of another. Dick's fiction is the story of this journey. (pp. 9-10)
In fiction, and increasingly in the public mind, the gods and demons of yesterday have become the aliens of today. Aliens are symbols of the intrusion of the unknown into the realm of the human—meteorites of mystery and unease buried in the collective human psyche. If the image of the alien plays so large a role in the fiction of Philip K. Dick it is because he deals always with man's fallen state; and it is the realization, often sudden and unexpected, of his condition that initiates the frightful but necessary struggle toward a new reality. (p. 11)
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