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Philip K. Dick

Matti Schneider
May 14, 2009
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Philip K. Dick

A presentation of one of my favorite authors’ work and life.

Matti Schneider

May 14, 2009
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Transcript

  1. Philip K. Dick
    Science-Fiction author
    1928-1982

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  2. Philip K. Dick
    I.Themes and stories
    II.Personality
    III.Influences on society

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  3. I - Themes and Stories

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  4. Main theme
    Fragile nature of what is "real"
    "All of his work starts with the basic assumption that
    there cannot be one, single, objective reality"
    "A protagonist may find himself living out another
    person's dream, or he may enter a drug-induced state
    that actually makes better sense than the real world
    […]."
    Quotes from Charles Platt.

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  5. Theme incarnations
    Mental illness
    Clans of the Alphane Moon : society made up
    from asylum inmates
    Drug uses
    A Scanner Darkly : main character becoming
    addicted to Substance D, hallucinogenic drug
    Manipulations from greater entities
    Governments agencies, extraterrestrials,
    mutants, whatever…
    The short story "Orpheus with Clay Feet" was published under the pen name "Jack Dowland".
    The protagonist desires to be the muse for fictional author Jack Dowland, considered the
    greatest science fiction author of the 20th century. In the story, Dowland publishes a short
    story titled "Orpheus with Clay Feet", under the pen name "Philip K. Dick".

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  6. Sci-Fi ≠ Boom-Boom
    No big shiny spaceships bombing each other
    Always based on persons, usually following the thoughts
    of an individual lost in a shifting world
    No heroes
    Common, working people
    Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said : a superfamous TV
    star loses his identity overnight

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  7. Famous adaptations
    Blade Runner
    Based on Do Androids Dream of
    Electric Sheeps ?
    Minority Report, Paycheck, Next
    Use of the stories, but much more
    action-based, less reflective
    Vanilla Sky
    Not a real adaptation, but clearly
    more representative (Ubik)
    Blade Runner : Deckard is a Blade Runner, a police man of the future who hunts down and terminates replicants, artificially created humans. He wants to get out
    of the force, but is drawn back in when 4 "skin jobs", a slang term for replicants, hijack a ship back to Earth. The city that Deckard must search for his prey is a huge,
    sprawling, bleak vision of the future. This film questions what it is to be human, and why life is so precious.
    Payckeck : Ben Affleck plays an engineer who is hired to work on a top-secret project with the understanding that his memory will be erased after he completes the
    job. He completes the job, and he gives up millions of dollars to receive an envelope, which contains several items such as a key, a pack of cigarettes, sunglasses, a bullet,
    etc. Ben uses these items to regain his memory while his old employer is trying to kill him, and the government is trying to put him in jail for something he doesn't remember
    doing. Every item plays a part in saving his life, his memory, and our future. Douglas Young (the-movie-guy)

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  8. II - Personality

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  9. Unstable reality
    Took hallucinogen drugs
    Schizoid/Paranoid behavior
    Wanted to be interned in a psychiatric hospital
    The Exegesis, monumental last work
    More than 8000 handwritten pages
    Tells about his visions

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  10. Difficult personal life
    Married five times, always ended with a divorce
    His work didn’t get any attention until the very end of
    his life
    Success started in France, then came back to the U.S.

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  11. Consequences on work
    An author who put a lot of himself into his stories
    Makes the difference between him and his successors:
    same themes, but not as true
    VALIS, one of his last books, has a lot of references to his
    life

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  12. III - Influences on
    society

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  13. Influences on literature
    Shifting realities is referred to as a « Dickian » theme
    Precursor of the cyberpunk genre
    Neuromancer, by William Gibson

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  14. Influences on society
    Work deeply linked with the American hippy
    movement
    Not remarked at first in the U.S.
    In France : big success due to arrival on 68
    Representative of the new generation’s realities
    Doubtful of the old hero and happy-ends models
    Drugs, delusive reality

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  15. Philip K. Dick
    I.Themes of shifting, unstable
    reality
    II.Tortured personality
    III.Representative of a worldwide
    change

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  16. Sources
    Wikipedia (en)
    IMDB
    An analysis in Aurore sur un jardin de palmes, a
    collection of Dick’s works at Omnibus editions
    Questions?

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