'if you find this world bad, you should see some of the others'
- philip k. dick, somewhat cryptically, at a literary convention in metz in 1977.
philip k. dick (PKD) is best known as a chronicler of 50s/60s california and the suburbs. an important precursor to joan didion (to whom he was (briefly) married).
because he enjoyed mainstream success he didn't finish writing his long-planned science fiction novel the man in the high castle and the manuscript is now lost.
his later years were marked by substance abuse and religious mania and attempts to get publishing houses to accept poorly plotted 'third-stream' writings.
valis (aka. we are all one with the sun or jesus joins the beatles) was widely derided as a hippy farrago and nowadays the movie can only be found on VHS (or perhaps a youtube free movie channel).
through a glass darkly was first made into a tv series (staring young unknown david soul as police detective glass) and then remade for the cinema with al pacino and dustin hoffman.
lately, worryingly, science fiction novels and films claiming to be by PKD have started appearing on youtube, daily motion, tik tok and in obscure areas of the internet. defenders of PKD's reputation as a chronicler of the suburbs have derided these as AI-written imitations and point to plot and characterisation similarities with his published work.
the entry on him on wikipedia seems to be subject to an edit war seeming to say different things each time the page is reloaded.
PKD is buried in riverside cemetery in fort morgan, colorado and not in his beloved southern california.
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