Philip K. Dick

By Logan Wright

Even if you don’t read (I’m sure most people reading this fall into that category), you’ve probably seen at least one of Philip K. Dick’s novels on the big screen. Blade Runner, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and Total Recall are just a few films based on his work.

Dick’s stories and novels often centre on the question of what is real and what is an illusion. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? asks if androids that look and act like humans can be considered humans. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said has the main character slowly learning that his identity has been erased from history.

Perhaps you’ve heard that Philip K. Dick was a little crazy. Whether he was or not depends entirely on your definition of “crazy”. On the one hand, he staunchly believed that Richard Nixon was the current Emperor of Rome incarnate. On the other, he wrote a lot of very critically-acclaimed and intelligent books that are just crazy-hard to put down.

A top title from Dick:
Philip K. Dick, (1999), Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Gollancz, ISBN: 1857988132

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