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 Philip K. Dick
was a science
fiction writer. His full name was Philip Kindred Dick. He was born on
December 1928 and died on March 1982. I was born in October 1986, so I
have never had the occasion to know him or is work before his death,
but this author has left behind him a huge quantity of novels and short
stories. I discovered this writer thanks to my passion for the cinema
as I said in the section concerning my life. In fact, no less than 9 of
his works have been adapted into films, three of them were novels and
the other six were short stories. But at makes this author and his work
so particular and so unique? That's what I'll try to explain to you in
the lines below. I'll try to show you what I appreciate in his books,
and why do I consider this man as a Genius…
Philip's life really looks like a novel. In fact, Philip has had a hard childhood. Born in Chicago , he had a twin sister who died only five weeks after her birth. Her absence seems to have affected Philip very much, and a lot of his novels remind this lack. As he was only five, his parents divorced, and Dick was separated from his father. All these separations in his family made his childhood difficult, and Dick wasn't a good student, even in written composition. He has always had a weak health, and has soon been confronted to medication. At the age of twelve, he meets for the first time a psychoanalyst. As he is at the college, he suffers from vertigo, agoraphobia, claustrophobia, fear of the illness and is a little paranoiac. All his life he'll take drugs, first because of his health problems, but soon because of the dependence he has developed. He becomes an official science fiction writer, advised by his wife, around 1952. The new kind of Science Fiction he's writing isn't appreciated at the beginning. In fact, Dick's work is very particular and one of the major themes we can find in his novels is the duality between reality and illusion. Here below are some quotations from various books of Philip K. Dick which show this illusion/reality confrontation:
Philip K. Dick soon became insane, and his insanity never ceased to increase. He takes amphetamines to be able to write 60 pages per day in order to earn enough money to live, and this causes his depression. In 1971, he is burgled and is convinced that this is the work of the KGB or the CIA. Dick is more and more dependant of drugs and their effects are more and more present in his life and in his books. He dies in 1982 from a stroke. He now is buried beside his twin sister. It is often said that the separation between genius and madness is really thin. I think Philip K. Dick is an example of this. He wrote hundreds of stories which are so amazing by the inventive topic and action. He used drugs to help him find inspiration, and these drugs made him fall across the line between genius and insanity. I'm really found of his work, even if it is often dark, because when you read a Dick's book, you can't do less than be impressed by the story. It's sometimes just a concept, an idea, but something fabulous around which he builds a whole story. Minority report for example has been adapted in film, but the film just takes the major idea of the book and rewrites a story around. And what's fabulous in dick's work, it's exactly this idea. THE idea that makes his book unique and inimitable. Something that I appreciate very much in Dick's work, are the titles of his stories. Here's a list of the most interesting ones:
Well that's just a short list of some titles I find attractive, but you'll have understood that the whole list is really bigger… Another thing I find funny, is the pen name that Philip K. Dick uses in one of his books: Horselover Fat. This can look like a strange name, but Philip has made studies of German, and is quite interested in languages. Philip means “friend of the horses” in Greek, and dick means “fat” in German. That's how is pen name came out. That's just a detail, but I found that this showed quite well the ingenuity of the author which is among other things, something that I appreciate very much in his work. I have just one thing to say to conclude this article, Thank you mister Philip Kindred Dick, and well done… |