Editing Philip K. Dick (section)

===Selected works===
{{For|a complete bibliography|Philip K. Dick bibliography}}
''[[The Man in the High Castle]]'' (1962) is set in an [[alternate history|alternative history]] in which the United States is ruled by the victorious [[Axis powers]]. It is the only Dick novel to win a [[Hugo Award]]. In 2015 this was adapted into a television series by [[Amazon Studios]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://observer.com/2015/11/isa-hackett-daughter-of-philip-k-dick-discusses-amazons-man-in-the-high-castle/|title=Isa Hackett, Daughter of Philip K. Dick, Discusses Amazon's 'Man in the High Castle'|website=[[The New York Observer]]|date=November 19, 2015|access-date=August 26, 2021|archive-date=August 26, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210826221331/https://observer.com/2015/11/isa-hackett-daughter-of-philip-k-dick-discusses-amazons-man-in-the-high-castle/|url-status=live}}</ref>

''[[The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch]]'' (1965) utilizes an array of science fiction concepts and features several layers of reality and unreality. It is also one of Dick's first works to explore religious themes. The novel takes place in the 21st century, when, under UN authority, mankind has colonized the [[Solar System]]'s every [[habitability|habitable]] [[planet]] and [[moon]]. Life is physically daunting and psychologically monotonous for most colonists, so the UN must draft people to go to the colonies. Most entertain themselves using "Perky Pat" [[doll]]s and accessories manufactured by Earth-based "P.P. Layouts". The company also secretly creates "Can-D", an illegal but widely available hallucinogenic drug allowing the user to "translate" into Perky Pat (if the drug user is a woman) or Pat's boyfriend, Walt (if the drug user is a man). This recreational use of Can-D allows colonists to experience a few minutes of an idealized life on Earth by participating in a collective hallucination.<ref name="NYT-20221026" />

''[[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]'' (1968) is the story of a bounty hunter policing the local android population. It occurs on a dying, poisoned Earth de-populated of almost all animals and all "successful" humans; the only remaining inhabitants of the planet are people with no prospects off-world. The 1968 novel is the literary source of the film ''[[Blade Runner]]'' (1982).<ref name="Sammon">^ Sammon, Paul M. (1996). Future Noir: the Making of Blade Runner. London: Orion Media. p. 49. {{ISBN|0-06-105314-7}}.</ref> It is both a conflation and an intensification of the pivotally Dickian question: "What is real, what is fake? What crucial factor defines humanity as distinctly 'alive', versus those merely alive only in their outward appearance?"{{citation needed|date=April 2021}}

''[[Ubik]]'' (1969) employs extensive psychic telepathy and a suspended state after death in creating a state of eroding reality. A group of psychics is sent to investigate a rival organisation, but several of them are apparently killed by a saboteur's bomb. Much of the following novel flicks between different equally plausible realities and the "real" reality, a state of half-life and psychically manipulated realities. In 2005, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine listed it among the "All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels" published since 1923.<ref name="Time"/>

''[[Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said]]'' (1974) concerns Jason Taverner, a television star living in a dystopian near-future [[police state]]. After being attacked by an angry ex-girlfriend, Taverner awakens in a dingy Los Angeles hotel room. He still has his money in his wallet, but his identification cards are missing. This is no minor inconvenience, as security checkpoints (staffed by "pols" and "nats", the police and National Guard) are set up throughout the city to stop and arrest anyone without valid ID. Jason at first thinks that he was robbed, but soon discovers that his entire identity has been erased. There is no record of him in any official database, and even his closest associates do not recognize or remember him. For the first time in many years, Jason has no fame or reputation to rely on. He has only his innate charm and social graces to help him as he tries to find out what happened to his past while avoiding the attention of the pols. The novel was Dick's first published novel after years of silence, during which time his critical reputation had grown, and this novel was awarded the [[John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel]].<ref name="WWE-1975"/> It is the only Philip K. Dick novel nominated for both a Hugo and a [[Nebula Award]].{{citation needed|date=April 2021}}

In an essay written two years before his death, Dick described how he learned from his Episcopal priest that an important scene in ''Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said'' – involving its other main character, the eponymous Police General Felix Buckman, was very similar to a scene in ''[[Acts of the Apostles]]'',<ref name="Adherents"/> a book of the [[New Testament]]. Film director Richard Linklater discusses this novel in his film ''[[Waking Life]]'', which begins with a scene reminiscent of another Dick novel, ''[[Time Out of Joint]]''.{{citation needed|date=April 2021}}

''[[A Scanner Darkly]]'' (1977) is a bleak mixture of science fiction and [[police procedural]] novels; in its story, an undercover narcotics police detective begins to lose touch with reality after falling victim to Substance D, the same permanently mind-altering drug he was enlisted to help fight. Substance D is instantly addictive, beginning with a pleasant euphoria which is quickly replaced with increasing confusion, hallucinations and eventually total psychosis. In this novel, as with all Dick novels, there is an underlying thread of paranoia and dissociation with multiple realities perceived simultaneously. It was adapted to [[A Scanner Darkly (film)|film]] by [[Richard Linklater]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/3284|title=A Scanner Darkly. 2006. Directed by Richard Linklater &#124; MoMA|access-date=August 25, 2021|archive-date=April 20, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220420150627/https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/3284|url-status=live}}</ref>

''[[The Philip K. Dick Reader]]''<ref>{{cite book|last=Dick|first=Philip K.|title=Philip K. Dick Reader, The|year=1997|publisher=Citadel Press|location=New York, NY|isbn=0-8065-1856-1|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780806518565}}</ref> is an introduction to the variety of Dick's short fiction.

''[[VALIS]]'' (1980) is perhaps Dick's most [[postmodernism|postmodern]] and autobiographical novel, examining his own unexplained experiences. It may also be his most academically studied work, and was adapted as an opera by [[Tod Machover]].<ref>{{cite web| last = Machover| first = Tod| author-link = Tod Machover| title = Valis CD| publisher = [[MIT Media Lab]]| url = http://web.media.mit.edu/~tod/Tod/valiscd.html| access-date = April 14, 2008| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080312210723/http://web.media.mit.edu/~tod/Tod/valiscd.html| archive-date = March 12, 2008| url-status = dead}}</ref> Later works like the [[VALIS trilogy]] were heavily autobiographical, many with "two-three-seventy-four" (2-3-74) references and influences. The word [[VALIS]] is the acronym for ''Vast Active Living Intelligence System''. Later, Dick theorized that VALIS was both a "reality generator" and a means of extraterrestrial communication. A fourth VALIS manuscript, ''Radio Free Albemuth'', although composed in 1976, was posthumously published in 1985. This work is described by the publisher (Arbor House) as "an introduction and key to his magnificent VALIS trilogy".<ref>{{cite book |last=Dick |first=Philip K. |author-link=Philip K. Dick |date=1985 |title=Radio Free Albemuth |url=https://archive.org/details/radiofreealbemu000dick/page/n229/mode/2up |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Arbor House |at=Rear dust jacket |isbn=0877957622}}</ref>

Regardless of the feeling that he was somehow experiencing a divine communication, Dick was never fully able to rationalize the events. For the rest of his life, he struggled to comprehend what was occurring, questioning his own sanity and perception of reality. He transcribed what thoughts he could into an eight-thousand-page, one-million-word [[diary|journal]] dubbed the ''[[Exegesis (book)|Exegesis]]''. From 1974 until his death in 1982, Dick spent many nights writing in this journal. A recurring theme in ''Exegesis'' is Dick's hypothesis that history had been stopped in the first century AD, and that "the [[Roman Empire|Empire]] never ended". He saw Rome as the pinnacle of [[materialism]] and [[despotism]], which, after forcing the [[Gnosticism|Gnostics]] underground, had kept the population of Earth enslaved to worldly possessions. Dick believed that VALIS had communicated with him, and anonymously others, to induce the [[Federal impeachment in the United States|impeachment]] of U.S. President [[Richard Nixon]], whom Dick believed to be the current Emperor of Rome incarnate.<ref>{{Cite book|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=cptHDAAAQBAJ&q=Nixon+emperor+of+rome+philip+k+dick&pg=PA139|title = The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick|isbn = 978-0-19-049830-6|last1 = Arnold|first1 = Kyle|date = May 2, 2016| publisher=Oxford University Press |access-date = September 20, 2021|archive-date = April 28, 2023|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230428155005/https://books.google.com/books?id=cptHDAAAQBAJ&q=Nixon+emperor+of+rome+philip+k+dick&pg=PA139|url-status = live}}</ref>

In a 1968 essay titled "Self Portrait", collected in the 1995 book ''The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick'', Dick reflects on his work and lists which books he feels "might escape World War Three": ''[[Eye in the Sky (novel)|Eye in the Sky]]'', ''[[The Man in the High Castle]]'', ''[[Martian Time-Slip]]'', ''[[Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb]]'', ''[[The Zap Gun]]'', ''[[The Penultimate Truth]]'', ''[[The Simulacra]]'', ''[[The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch]]'' (which he refers to as "the most vital of them all"), ''[[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]'', and ''[[Ubik]]''.<ref>Philip K. Dick, "Self Portrait", 1968, (''The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick'', 1995)</ref> In a 1976 interview, Dick cited ''A Scanner Darkly'' as his best work, feeling that he "had finally written a true masterpiece, after 25 years of writing".<ref>[http://philipkdick.com/media_sfreview.html AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP K. DICK] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120511085817/http://philipkdick.com/media_sfreview.html |date=May 11, 2012 }} Daniel DePerez, September 10, 1976, Science Fiction Review, No. 19, Vol. 5, no. 3, August 1976</ref>