Philip K. Dick

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Philip K. Dick - Science Fiction Author - Official Site - [ Traduci questa pagina ]Official site of science fiction author, Philip K. Dick.www.philipkdick.com/ - 21k - Copia cache - Pag-ine simili

Philip K. Dick - Author - Official Biography - Sci-ence Fiction - [ Traduci questa pagina ]Such is no longer the case, and the novels of Philip K. Dick frequently appear on ... Philip K. Dick has done more than arrive. He has become a looming and ...www.philipkdick.com/aa_biography.html - 24k - Copia cache - Pagine similiAltri risultati in www.philipkdick.com »

Philip K. Dick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - [ Traduci questa pagina ]Dorothy, determined to raise Philip alone, took a job in Washington, D.C. and moved there with her son. Philip K. Dick was enrolled at John Eaton Elementary ...

Il mio riferimento èDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

ovvero Il Cacciatore di Androidi diPhilip K. Dick

il riferimento è anche al più grande film (per me...) Blade Runner

tratto dal romanzo

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Philip K. Dick - Science Fiction Author - Official Site - [ Traduci questa pagina ]Official site of science fiction author, Philip K. Dick.www.philipkdick.com/ - 21k - Copia cache - Pag-ine simili

Philip K. Dick - Author - Official Biography - Sci-ence Fiction - [ Traduci questa pagina ]Such is no longer the case, and the novels of Philip K. Dick frequently appear on ... Philip K. Dick has done more than arrive. He has become a looming and ...www.philipkdick.com/aa_biography.html - 24k - Copia cache - Pagine similiAltri risultati in www.philipkdick.com »

Philip K. Dick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - [ Traduci questa pagina ]Dorothy, determined to raise Philip alone, took a job in Washington, D.C. and moved there with her son. Philip K. Dick was enrolled at John Eaton Elementary ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick - 180k - Co-pia cache - Pagine simili

Philip K. Dick - [ Traduci questa pagina ]Writer: Blade Runner. Philip Kindred Dick was born in Chicago in December 1928, along with a... Visit IMDb for Photos, Filmography, Discussions, Bio, News, ...www.imdb.com/name/nm0001140/ - 35k - Copia cache - Pagine simili

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Fabrizio Fiandanese recensisce Redenzione immo-rale di Philip K. DickPHILIP K. DICK, Redenzione Immorale (The Man Who Japed, 1963), “Classici Urania n.256”, Mon-dadori, 1998, pp. 205 L. 6.500. ...www.futureshock-online.info/pubblicati/fsk28/html/redenzione.htm - 1k - Copia cache - Pagine simili

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Philip K. DickFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American science fiction novelist and short story writer. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels domi-nated by monopolistic corporations, authoritar-ian governments, and altered states. In his later works, Dick’s thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences and addressed the nature of drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, and mystical experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.

The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. “I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,” Dick wrote of these stories. “In my writing I even ques-

tion the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.”

In addition to thirty-six novels, Dick wrote ap-proximately 121 short stories, many of which appeared in science fiction magazines. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, nine of his stories have been adapted into popular films since his death, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly and Minor-ity Report. In 2005, Time Magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

LifePhilip Kindred Dick and his twin sister, Jane Charlotte Dick, were born six weeks premature to Dorothy Kindred Dick and Joseph Edgar Dick in Chicago.[10] Dick’s father, a fraud investigator for the United States Department of Agriculture, had recently taken out life insurance policies on the family. An insurance nurse was dispatched to the Dick household. Upon seeing the malnourished Philip and injured Jane, the nurse rushed the babies to hospital. Baby Jane died en route, just five weeks after her birth (January 26, 1929). The death of Philip’s twin sister profoundly affected his writing, relationships, and every aspect of his life, leading to the recurrent motif of the “phan-tom twin” in many of his books.

The family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. When Philip turned five, his father was trans-ferred to Reno, Nevada. Dorothy refused to move, and she and Joseph were divorced. Joseph fought her for custody of Philip but did not win the case. Dorothy, determined to raise Philip alone, took a job in Washington, D.C. and moved there with her son. Philip K. Dick was enrolled at John Eaton Elementary School from 1936 to 1938, completing the second through the fourth grades. His lowest grade was a “C” in written composition, although a teacher remarked that he “shows interest and ability in story telling.” In June 1938, Dorothy and Philip returned to California.

Dick attended Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California. He and Ursula K. Le Guin were mem-bers of the same high school graduating class (1947), yet were unknown to each other at the time. After graduating from high school he briefly attended the University of California, Berkeley as a German major, but dropped out before complet-ing any coursework. At Berkeley, Dick befriended poets Robert Duncan and poet and linguist Jack Spicer, who gave Dick ideas for a Martian lan-guage. Dick claimed to have been host of a classical music program on KSMO Radio in 1947. From 1948 to 1952 he worked in a record store. In 1955, Dick and his second wife, Kleo Apostolides, received a visit from the FBI. They believed this resulted from Kleo’s socialist views and left-wing activities. The couple briefly befriended one of the FBI agents.

CareerDick sold his first story in 1952. From that point on he wrote full-time, selling his first novel in 1955. The 1950s were a difficult and impover-ished time for Dick. He once said, “We couldn’t even pay the late fees on a library book.” He published almost exclusively within the science fiction genre, but dreamed of a career in the mainstream of American literature. During the 1950s he produced a series of nongenre, non-sci-ence fiction novels. In 1960 he wrote that he was willing to “take twenty to thirty years to succeed as a literary writer.” The dream of mainstream success formally died in January 1963 when the Scott Meredith Literary Agency returned all of his unsold mainstream novels. Only one of these works, Confessions of a Crap Artist, was published during Dick’s lifetime.

In 1963, Dick won the Hugo Award for The Man in the High Castle. Although he was hailed as a ge-nius in the science fiction world, the mainstream literary world was unappreciative, and he could publish books only through low-paying science fiction publishers such as Ace. Even in his later years, he continued to have financial troubles. In the introduction to the 1980 short story collection The Golden Man, Dick wrote: “Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was do-ing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in

this world. I don’t agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn’t raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to them in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine-looking man, very im-pressive and very military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the hair-cut. He knows I’m a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love.”

The last novel published during Dick’s life was The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. In 1972, Dick donated his manuscripts and papers to the Special Collections Library at California State University, Fullerton where they are archived in the Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Collection in the Pollak Library. It was in Fullerton that Philip K. Dick befriended budding science-fiction writers K. W. Jeter, James Blaylock, and Tim Powers.

Mental healthIn his boyhood, around the age of thirteen, Dick had a recurring dream for several weeks. He dreamed he was in a bookstore, trying to find an issue of Astounding Magazine. This issue of the magazine would contain the story titled “The Empire Never Ended”, which would reveal the secrets of the universe to him. As the dream recurred, the pile of magazines he searched

grew smaller and smaller, but he never reached the bottom. Eventually, he became anxious that discovering the magazine would drive him mad (as in Lovecraft’s Necronomicon or Chambers’ The King in Yellow, promising insanity to the reader). Shortly thereafter, the dreams ceased, but the phrase “The Empire Never Ended” would appear later in his work. Dick was a voracious reader of religion, philosophy, metaphysics and Gnosticism, ideas of which appear in many of his stories and visions.

On February 20, 1974, Dick was recovering from the effects of sodium pentothal administered for the extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth. Answering the door to receive delivery of extra analgesic, he noticed that the delivery woman was wearing a pendant with a symbol that he called the “vesicle pisces”. This name seems to have been based on his confusion of two re-lated symbols, the ichthys (two intersecting arcs delineating a fish in profile) that early Christians used as a secret symbol, and the vesica piscis. After the delivery woman’s departure, Dick began experiencing strange visions. Although they may have been initially attributable to the medication, after weeks of visions he considered this explana-tion implausible. “I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane,” Dick told Charles Platt.

Throughout February and March 1974, he experi-enced a series of visions, which he referred to as “two-three-seventy four” (2-3-74), shorthand for February-March 1974. He described the initial vi-sions as laser beams and geometric patterns, and, occasionally, brief pictures of Jesus and of an-cient Rome. As the visions increased in length and frequency, Dick claimed he began to live a double life, one as himself, “Philip K. Dick”, and one as “Thomas”, a Christian persecuted by Romans in the 1st century A.D. Despite his history of drug use and elevated stroke risk, Dick began seeking other rationalist and religious explanations for these experiences. He referred to the “transcen-dentally rational mind” as “Zebra”, “God” and, most often, “VALIS”. Dick wrote about the experi-ences in the semi-autobiographical novels VALIS and Radio Free Albemuth.

At one point Dick felt that he had been taken over by the spirit of the prophet Elijah. He believed that an episode in his novel Flow My Tears The Policeman Said was a detailed retelling of a story from the Biblical Book of Acts, which he had never read.

In time, Dick became paranoid, imagining plots against him by the KGB and FBI. At one point, he alleged they were responsible for a burglary of his house, from which documents were stolen. He later came to suspect that he might have com-mitted the burglary against himself, and then forgotten he had done so. Dick himself speculated

as to whether he may have suffered from schizo-phrenia.

FilmsA number of Dick’s stories have been made into films. Dick himself wrote a screenplay for an intended film adaptation of Ubik in 1974, but the film was never made. Many film adaptations have not used Dick’s original titles. When asked why this was, Dick’s ex-wife Tessa said, “Actu-ally, the books rarely carry Phil’s original titles, as the editors usually wrote new titles after reading his manuscripts. Phil often commented that he couldn’t write good titles. If he could, he would have been an advertising writer instead of a nov-elist.” Films based on Dick’s writing have accumu-lated a total revenue of around US $700 million as of 2004.

The most famous film adaptation is Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (based on Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). A screenplay had been in the works for years before Scott took the helm, with Dick being extremely critical of all versions. Dick was still apprehensive about how his story would be adapted for the film when the project was finally put into motion. Among other things, he refused to do a novelization of the film. But contrary to his initial reactions, when he was given an opportunity to see some of the special effects sequences of Los Angeles 2019, Dick was amazed that the environment was “exactly as

how I’d imagined it!” Following the screening, Dick and Scott had a frank but cordial discussion of Blade Runner’s themes and characters, and although they had incredibly differing views, Dick fully backed the film from then on. Dick died from a stroke less than four months before the release of the film.

Total Recall (1990), based on the short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”, evokes a feeling similar to that of the original story while streamlining the plot; however, the action-film protagonist is totally unlike Dick’s typical neb-bishy protagonist, a fearful and insecure anti-hero. The film includes such Dickian elements as the confusion of fantasy and reality, the progression towards more fantastic elements as the story progresses, machines talking back to humans, and the protagonist’s doubts about his own identity. Total Recall 2070 (1999), a single season Canadian TV show (22 episodes), based on thematic elements from “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and interwoven with snippets of other Dick stories, is much closer in feel to both Dick’s works than the better-known films based on them[citation needed]. The main character is aptly named David Hume.

Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of “The Minority Re-port” faithfully translates many of Dick’s themes, but changes major plot points and adds an action-adventure framework.

Dick’s 1953 story “Impostor” has been adapted twice: first in 1962 for the British anthology television series Out of This World and then in 2002 for the movie Impostor. Impostor utilizes two of Dick’s most common themes: mental illness, which diminishes the sufferer’s ability to discrimi-nate between reality and hallucination, and a protagonist persecuted by an oppressive govern-ment.

The film Screamers (1995) was based on a Dick short story “Second Variety”; the location was altered from a war-devastated Earth to a generic science fiction environment of a distant planet. A sequel, titled Screamers 2, is currently in produc-tion.

John Woo’s 2003 film, Paycheck, was a very loose adaptation of Dick’s short story of that name, and suffered greatly both at the hands of critics and at the box office.

The French film Confessions d’un Barjo (Barjo in English-language release) is based on Dick’s non-science-fiction book Confessions of a Crap Artist. Reflecting Dick’s popularity and critical respect in France, Barjo faithfully conveys a strong sense of Dick’s aesthetic sensibility, unseen in the better-known film adaptations. A brief science fiction homage is slipped into the film in the form of a TV show.

The live action/animated film, A Scanner Darkly (2006) was directed by Richard Linklater and stars Keanu Reeves as Fred/Bob Arctor and Winona Ryder as Donna. Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, actors both noted for drug issues, were also cast in the film. The film was produced using the process of rotoscoping: it was first shot in live-action and then the live footage was ani-mated over.

Next, a loose adaptation of the short story “The Golden Man”, was released in 2007. It stars Nico-las Cage, Julianne Moore and Jessica Biel.

The Walt Disney Animation Studios is to produce a CGI adaptation of King of the Elves set to be released in winter 2012.



Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) is a science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. It contains two interlinking plots: the main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter of androids, while the secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-normal intelligence who befriends some of the androids.

The novel explores a number of philosophi-cal issues including what it is to be human. By introducing organic and realistically humanoid androids in this novel, Dick asks what qualities, if any, are unique to or are able to define what is human.

In 1982, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples’ loose cinematic adaptation became the film Blade Runner. The international success of Blade Runnerhelped bring Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and its author into the public eye. For that reason, after 1982 some editions of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? were branded with the title Blade Runner.

Concepts and back storyDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? occurs in 1992 [2021, in some editions], years after the ra-dioactive fallout of World War Terminus destroyed most of Earth. The U.N. encourage emigration to off-world colonies, in hope of preserving the hu-man race from the terminal effects of the fallout. One emigration incentive is giving each emigrant an “andy” — a servant android.

The remaining populace live in cluttered, decay-ing cities wherein radiation poisoning sickens them and damages their genes. All animals are endangered; owning and caring for one is a civic virtue, and a social status symbol, per the ani-mal’s rarity. They are bought and sold as priced in “Sidney’s Catalog” — which includes extinct species, marked “E”, and currently unavailable animals, marked in italic text and at the last price paid. People who cannot afford a real animal buy an electric animal for the sake of social status. The protagonist, Rick Deckard, owned a sheep, but it died of tetanus, and he replaced it with an electric sheep, thus maintaining his illusion of animal ownership.

Androids are used only in the Martian colonies, yet many escape to Earth, fleeing the psychologi-cal isolation and chattel slavery; although organic and indistinguishable from humans, they are

considered things. Police bounty hunters, such as Rick Deckard, hunt and “retire” (kill) fugitive androids passing for human. Afterwards, the killed android’s bone marrow is tested to confirm it was not a human. Because of anatomic vagus nerve differences, an android can commit suicide by holding his or her breath. Androids live some four years, because they cannot reproduce most life-function cells.

Early androids were detectable, because of their limited intelligence. As androids were improved, bounty hunters had to apply an empathy shibbo-leth — the Voight-Kampff — to distinguish humans from androids, by measuring blushing, involuntary eye movement, and responses to emotional ques-tions about harming animals. Because androids are unempathic, their responses are either absent or fake — measurably slower than a human’s; the simpler Boneli Test measures the reflex-arc veloc-ity in the spinal column’s upper ganglia.

People cope with existential angst using the “Penfield Mood Organ” (by neurologist Wilder Penfield), to induce feeling by availing the user of a selection of moods, e.g. “awareness of the manifold possibilities of the future”, the “desire to watch television, no matter what’s on it”; the “pleased acknowledgement of husband’s superior wisdom in all matters”, and the “desire to dial”.

Users schedule their moods — even a depression — which contradicts the mood organ’s cheerful purpose.

The Earth’s most significant cultural icon, Buster Friendly, is a jovial talk show host whose simul-taneous radio and television programs are broad-cast twenty-three hours daily. Roy Baty identifies him as an android. Buster Friendly ideologically competes with Mercerism, openly attacking it in his programs.

MercerismMercerism is a prominent religious/philosophi-cal movement on Earth. The movement is based on the legend of Wilbur Mercer, a man who lived before the war. Adherents of Mercerism grip the handles of an electrically powered empathy box, while viewing a monitor which displays pat-terns that are meaningless until the handles are gripped. After a short interval the user’s senses are transported to the world of Wilbur Mercer, where they inhabit his mind in an experience shared with any other people using an empathy box at that moment.

Mercerism blends the concept of a life-death-rebirth deity with the values of unity and empa-thy. According to legend, Mercer had the power to revive dead animals, but local officials used

radioactive cobalt to nullify the part of his brain where the ability originated. This forced Mercer into the “tomb world.” He strives to reverse the decay of the tomb world and ascend back to Earth by climbing an enormous hill. His adversaries throw rocks at him along the way (inflicting actual physical injuries on the adherents “fused” with Mercer), until he reaches the top, when the cycle starts again, much like the plight of Sisyphus.



Blade RunnerFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Har-rison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically manufac-tured beings called replicants – visually indistin-guishable from adult humans – are used for dan-gerous and degrading work on Earth’s “off-world colonies”. Following a small replicant uprising, replicants become illegal on Earth and specialist police called “blade runners” are trained to hunt down and “retire” (kill) escaped replicants on Earth. The plot focuses on a brutal and cunning group of recently-escaped replicants hiding in Los Angeles and the semi-retired blade runner, Rick Deckard (Ford), who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment.

Blade Runner initially polarized critics: some were displeased with the pacing, while others enjoyed

its thematic complexity. The film performed poorly in North American theaters. Despite the box office failure of the film, it has since become a cult classic. Blade Runner has been hailed for its production design, depicting a “retrofitted” future. The film is credited with prefiguring im-portant concerns of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, such as overpopulation, globalization, climate change[4] and genetic engineering. It remains a leading example of the neo-noir genre.Blade Runner brought author Philip K. Dick to the attention of Hollywood, and several more films have since been based on his work.Ridley Scott regards Blade Runner as “probably” his most complete and personal film.In 1993, Blade Runner was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. In 2007, the American Film Institute named it the 97th greatest American film of all time in the 10th Anniversary edition of its 100 years... 100 Movies list.

Seven versions of the film have been shown, for various markets, and as a result of controver-sial changes made by film executives. A rushed Director’s Cut was released in 1992 after a strong response to workprint screenings. This, in con-junction with its popularity as a video rental, made it one of the first films released on DVD,

resulting in a basic disc with mediocre video and audio quality. In 2007 Warner Bros. released in select theaters and DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray, the 25th anniversary digitally remastered definitive Final Cut by Scott.

Scriptorium - Philip K. Dick - [ Traduci questa pagina ]The Modern Word’s page on Philip K. Dick is a comprehensive introduction to his life and work, placing him in context with the great writers of the modern ...www.themodernword.com/SCRIPTorium/dick.html - 78k - Copia cache - Pagine simili

Philip K. Dick Quotes - The Quotations Page - [ Traduci questa pagina ]Philip K. Dick, “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” , 1978 ... Philip K. Dick, The Shifting Realities of Phillip K. Dick ...www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Philip_K._Dick/ - 13k - Copia cache - Pagine simili

Fabrizio Fiandanese recensisce Redenzione immo-rale di Philip K. DickPHILIP K. DICK, Redenzione Immorale (The Man Who Japed, 1963), “Classici Urania n.256”, Mon-dadori, 1998, pp. 205 L. 6.500. ...www.futureshock-online.info/pubblicati/fsk28/html/redenzione.htm - 1k - Copia cache - Pagine simili

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