Biography of Philip k. Dick

The reality is just a point of view

December 16, 1928
February 2, 1982
The great science fiction writer Philip Kindred Dick was born on December 16, 1928 in Chicago and spent in California, in Los Angeles and in the Bay area, most of his life: a life of restless and disorderly, but always shines from the literary point of view, since its inception in 1952. Philip Dick was at the Center, after death, to a sensational case of literary appreciation. Underestimated in life, has emerged in the criticism and general consideration as one of the most original and visionary talents of contemporary American literature. He is now a symbol for readers young and old, fascinated by the many facets of a work that lends itself to both an immediate reading that in most serious reflections, and several of his works are now considered true classics.
Drug culture, apparent and subjective reality, difficulty of defining the divine and real and, in reality, the human (fading continuously in its artificial Simulacra), occult control over individuals ... these issues of her profligate, but brilliant narrative production, permeated by that tragic aura of pessimism that the author brought Remy for life. Raised by a possessive mother and neurotic, she had soon divorced her father, Dick developed a contradictory personality, characterized by conflicting attitudes towards female distrustful and.
It is therefore not by chance that his relations with women have always been especially difficult (but his life was also marked by physical and psychological problems, such as asthma, tachycardia and agoraphobia). The encounter with science fiction was in 1949, at the age of twelve, when he bought a copy of "Stirring Science Fiction" instead of "Popular Science," popular science magazine. Since he was born in him the passion for this literary genre, that he would never left. His greatest interest, in addition to writing and literature, was the music. In his youth he made a clerk in a record store and oversaw a program of classical music on the radio station of St. Matthew.
At the end of high school met and married Therese Marlin. The marriage lasted six months, then divorced and never met any more. He began College at Berkeley, attending courses of German and philosophy and during this period he met his second wife, Kleo Apistolides, whom he married in 1950. Bad student, he was unable to finish school, partly because of his (at the time), passionate political activity, which led him to oppose American military initiative in Korea. Already since Dick showed signs of a particular distaste for the politics of the American right, and not a few were his clashes with the exponents of "McCarthyism": his biographers tell with some irony as two FBI agents were as diligent in checking the intimate life and work of Dick to eventually become good friends. At that time, however, had started out as many writing stories and sending them by mail to magazines. In 1952 he chose an agent, Scott Meredith, and almost immediately sold his first story: "The Little Movement" which appeared only on "Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction".
The sale of the story made him decide to become a full-time writer. His first novel, "Solar Lottery", was released three years later, in 1955, when Dick was not yet thirty years old. A very simple statistic shows the difficulties of Dick at that time: in just over the years ' 50 wrote eleven novels over seventy short stories, outside of science fiction and all received refusal for publication (only one was later released, "confessions of a crap artist"). In the years that followed, Dick published a number of short stories and novels, including "The flame disk" (1955), "Autofac" (1955), "We the Martians" (1963/64). The list could go on and on. Among the many, we quote obviously "the Hunter of androids" (original title: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", 1968), from which Ridley Scott then stretch the movie "Blade Runner" and "Ubik (1969), perhaps his most significant novel. In 1958 leaves the life of the metropolis to Pt Reyes Station where he met Anne Rubenstein whom he married the following year, after her divorce from Kleo.
For him, life changes and takes on a more familiar: the three daughters of his wife's background is added the birth of her daughter, Laura Archer. Gli anni ' 60 are for him a tumultuous period: his style changes, becomes more and more pressing the question becomes, metaphysical but rather for Dick mold related to changes of perspective brought about by technological evolution, "what is it that makes a man?". In 1962 he published "The Man in the High Castle" (translated in Italy as "the swastika on the Sun") that will attract the Hugo Award in 1963 and with it the recognition as an author of the foreground. It also changes the type of written works: during the ' 60 writes eighteen novels and 20 short stories.
Awesome writing rhythm, to the limit of physical and psychological stress (more than sixty pages per day) will end up destroying his family life (divorced in 1964) and his body (will turn increasingly to drugs, especially amphetamines). Soon Dick will fall into depression and in this dark period marries Nancy Hackett (1966), a schizophrenic woman that will leave four years later but that will contribute not just to push it towards an increasingly unstoppable decline. The arrival of another woman, Kathy DeMuelle, stop the fall even though it won't begin the ascent. The beginning of the years ' 70, so it looks like a barren period, steeped in paranoia and dominated by the drug. Following the departure of Kathy, travel in Canada, and a meeting with Tessa Busby who married in 1973 and that will give him a son, Christopher, divorced again in 1976.
In 1974, namely the 2 March, Dick's life changes: has what it calls a "mystical experience". Start writing fiction very different from those written previously, and loses interest in short fiction (the last story will be "Frozen Journey" published in Playboy in 1980) and directs all her enthusiasm towards an ambitious dream: a trilogy of novels with mystical tendencies: the Valis trilogy (includes the novels: "Valis", "The Divine Invasion" and "The Trasmigration of Timothy Archer"). A heart attack, on February 2, 1982, the stroncherà while it is working on a new novel, "The Owl in Daylight". As a writer, Dick has always remained faithful to the classical themes of science fiction, but he employed in a highly personal, with a literary discourse whose consistency and depth of inspiration has few equals. All his major works, revolve around the theme of reality/illusion, in which projecting the anguish and fragility of modern man. In his portraits of the future, from urban landscapes to post-nuclear scenarios, we find themes ever: the violence of power, technological alienation, the relationship between humans and artificial creatures. Within society disintegrated, his characters seek heavily a glimmer of humanity and the reaffirmation of a moral principle.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.