Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Patricia S. Warrick

Critical Essay by Patricia S. Warrick

SOURCE: Warrick, Patricia S. “Philip K. Dick's Moral Vision.” In Mind in Motion: The Fiction of Philip K. Dick, pp. 194-203. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

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 concluding chapter—and appropriately so. To summarize his ideas, to categorize his work, to deliver the final word would be to violate Dick's vision. He saw a universe of infinite possibility, with shapes that constantly transformed themselves—a universe in process. He had not delivered his final word when he died on March 3, 1982, because for him the Word was truly the Living Word, the power that creates and re-creates patterns. Trapped in the stasis of a final statement, the Word would have been defeated by entropy and death.

But if...
(read more)