PHILIP K DICKPersico Francesco e Capano Tommaso

INDEX Personal life Career Themes Influence and legacy Do the androids dream of electric

sheeps? Plot Main themes

PHILIP K DICK● Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2,

1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely accepted as being in the science fiction genre.

● He got married five times, ● Jeanette Marlin (May to November 1948)● Kleo Apostolides (June 14, 1950 to 1959)● Anne Williams Rubinstein (April 1, 1959 to October

1965)● Nancy Hackett (July 6, 1966 to 1972)● Leslie (Tessa) Busby (April 18, 1973 to 1977)

He greatly influenced every literary genre. However, in general, Dick’s fortune and influence emerged after his death, when his works at first ignored or misunderstood by the critics were revalued.

PERSONAL LIFE: CHILDHOOD AND STUDIES

● His intense political activity influenced his career: in 50s he joined an anti-vietnam war.

● He briefly attended University of California, Berkely, but he was not a brilliant student.

Dick's twin sister, Jane, died few

week after their birth. He decided, before his death, to be

buried next to her.

PERSONAL LIFE - 50S● Even at that time he showed his opposition to

American Government: he likes to tell how he became a close friend of two FBI agents who controlled him so assiduously.

● 1952 he sold his first story: "The little Movement”. After the sale of this tale he decided to become a full-time writer

● In 1955 he published “Solar lottery”.

PERSONAL LIFE – 60S AND 70S● New intimate writing style● Period of intense activity● In 1965, devasted by a massive use of amphetamine,he

fell in depression and divorced with his third wife.● 2 March, 1974: mystique experience and radical change

of life● 1982: he died of a heart attack

7

CARRER1960s

• “The Man in the High Castle”

• 1962

• dystopian world dominated by the Nazism and the Japanese imperialism

• Hugo Award in 1963

• Martian Time-Slip

• 1964autistic child Manfred Steiner Arnie Kott, the

rich chief of the union of plumbers

planet Mars

• protagonist

• antagonist

• setting

• The Simulacra

• 1964

• sociopolitical allegory

• Democratic and Republican Party

• United states of Europe •and America (USEA)

• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

(1965)

• dystopian novel

• Nebula Award in 1965

• several layers of reality and unreality

• religious themes

21st centuryColonization of the planets and moons in the solar system

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheeps? (1968)

film “Blade Runner” of Ridley Scott

• Ubik (1969)

• dystopian novel

• "North American Confederation" of 1992

1970s

Jason Taverner

dystopian nearfuture police state.

• John W. Campbell Memorial Award

• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)

• protagonist

• setting

• British Science Fiction Association

Award (1978)

• Graouilly d'Or (1979).

• A Scanner Darkly (1977)

Substance D• police detective

• paranoia and dissociation

• multiple realities

THEMES – SPLINTERED IDENTITIES

● Many of Dick's stories deal with the idea that the reality is not as it seems to be, expressed through parallel worlds, false and illusorial identities of protagonists.

THEMES - PARANOIA AND MADNESS

Dick's characters are usuallly affected by mental disorders, presented by Dick as reasonable responses, necessary reaction to extreme situation where they're out of their minds on drugs, completely unsure of who they are and not even certain what world they live in or whether they're alive or dead.

THEMES – POLICE AND WAR

Dick's political ideas are often expressed is an overwhelming dread of the effects of war. The fear of destruction, after all, is a fear of death and annihilation at the hands of abusive authority, that often comes in the guise of an intense antipathy toward the police.

THEMES – ROBOT AND HUMANSDicks likes to present the image of a robot that is indistinguishable from human being.

Androids are able to feel emotions, pain, even memories, but they're infinitely reproducible; this is an essential difference that makes robots different from men, thus creating considerable problems in defining the concept of life.

• “Blade Runner” (1982)

directed Ridley Scott

• cinematographic adaptations

Influence and legacy

• “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheeps?” (1968)

“Total Recall” (1990), directed by Paul Verhoeven

• short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”,

•“A Scanner Darkly” (2006), directed by

Richard Linklater

•“Next” (2007), directed by Lee Tamahori

•“The Adjustment Bureau” (2011) of George Nolfi

• “Adjustment Team.”(1954)

• short story "The Golden Man” (1980)

cyberpunk, (cyber fantasy)

Ucronìa (The Man in the High Castle)

Influences in the postmodern literature

technology

robotic

the Historical Course represented is different than the real one.

The Terminator (1984)

The Truman Show (1998) 

Influences in the cinema

killer androids confound themselves between the human beings

Screamers

pseudo-reality

Time Out of Joint

the trilogy of Matrix (1999-2003)

Inception(2010)

• alienation• the existence of several sides of reality• superior entity

•Valis •Ubik •The Man in the High Castle

• "Journey into the Subconscious" • "Oneiric Architecture"

Ubik

DO THE ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEPS? PLOT

setting future 1992 nuclear war

most of mankind

escape to Earth

off-world colonies on Mars

has destoyed animal and plant lives

androids

slaves

state of isolation

specific testslack of empathy towards the other living forms

THE PROTAGONIST

Who: Rick Deckard, a Bounty hunter

When: 1992

Where: S.Francico

What: the task to find six replicants escaped from a colony and “retire” them.

Why: to give a meaning to his life and fight the boredom of his existence and to overcome the social stigma that afflicts him

Deckard’s wife

• Rachael Rosen

apparently unaware

loving relationship

her feelings are false

ends his mission

fist android known

Rick Deckard

retiring all the androids escaped

• conclusion

electrical insects

artificial toad

found in the desertby Deckard

HUMAN AND ANDROID

● Central issue: difficulty to discern humans from androids; I● Androids: presented as sentient but inhuman machines who do

not possess the empathy that would qualify them as humans.

THE ONLY SUBJECT

Ego cogito. Ergo sum?

The novel lives of another great contrast, the religious and epistemological shifted in the struggle between Deckard and the androids.

If an android isn’t conscious to be android and a man isn’t conscious to be human, how can you discern real true from false? Dick affirms it’s impossible.

BIBLIOGRAPHY http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick_bibliography http://biografieonline.it/biografia.htm?BioID=372&biografia=Philip+K.+

Dick http://www.philipkdickfans.com/ Philip K. Dick Fan site: www.philipkdickfans.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_Time-Slip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simulacra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_Eldritch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep%

3F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_My_Tears,_the_Policeman_Said http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly http://pkdreligion.blogspot.it/2011/10/quick-thoughts-on-undermining-ontology.html http://www.avclub.com/article/ema-scanner-darklyem-philip-k-dicks-thematic-obses-42528