Son of Joseph Edgar Dick, a government employee, and his wife Dorothy Kindred, Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 He lived most of his life in California, however, and spent his life commenting on America and encouraging Americans to break through to a better, less strife-filled reality. A music lover, Dick worked as an announcer on a classical music station, KSMO, in 1947, and worked in a record store from 1948 to 1952. In 1950 he attended the University of California at Berkeley, but dropped out because the University's requited ROTC courses conflicted with his antiwar convictions. Meanwhile, he had begun writing, and in 1952 sold his first story, "Roog," to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In the same year, Planet Stories published his more well-known short story "Beyond Lies the Wub."

In 1953, Dick published twenty-eight short stories, and another twenty-eight followed in 1954. After the success of...