SOURCE: Lawson, Terry. “Author Gave a Blueprint of the Future.” Detroit Free Press (16 June 2002): G1, G6.

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 manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who use the words.

—Philip K. Dick

Forget Nostradamus. The real prophet for our age was Philip K. Dick. If you need proof, just go to the “news” section of the authoritative Web site philipkdick.com (from which the above quote was plucked). You'll find a story published recently in the English paper Independent News about a software system developed by researchers at London's Kingston University.

Called Cromatica, it examines images of people on closed-circuit TV cameras and rapidly compares their behavior patterns with...