Do Not Search For Philip K Dick On The Internet.....

...or at least, if you do, be prepared for some strange results. It's the surname, you see. The search engines misunderstand. Philip Kindred Dick was an American science fiction writer of the 50's and 60's - though to describe him in these terms is like saying Hitler was a German politician of the 30's and 40's. Generally speaking, I do not like science fiction. I cannot, therefore, adequately explain how I came to be reading a collection of Dick's short stories on a train journey about 20 years ago. But from that moment I was hooked. You are transported to what appears to be 1950's smalltown USA - but in fact behind the curtains lurk individuals with extraordinary powers, be they precogs, psis, telepaths, teleporters, telekinetics or others of that ilk. Much of Dick's work concerned itself with reality, unreality, and the difficulty of telling the difference. Thus, many characters find themselves realising that their apparently normal lives are in fact total fabrications, concealing an apalling underlying truth. So, the android hunter in 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' (filmed as Blade Runner) starts to suspect that he may himself be an android. False memory (implanted or otherwise), humans who are actually aliens but don't know that, dead people who think they are alive and living people who think they are dead - all of this is Dick's stock-in-trade. All is deception - nothing is real. Many of Dick's stories have been used as the basis for films, but while most of the films are total garbage, (Total Recall, Minority Report etc etc) the stories themselves are endlessly inventive and fascinating. I recommend you start with the short stories, which will get you used to the style. Then move on to the earlier novels like Time Out of Joint, Eye in the Sky, Martian Time Slip etc before getting to the real mind blowers like UBIK, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Flow My Tears The Policeman Said etc etc Your life will never be the same again. I have recently purchased, but not yet read, a biography of Dick called "I AM ALIVE BUT YOU ARE DEAD" which is a title pithily capturing the essence of Dick's work. If you've read any of his books then your reaction to that title will inevitably be "Or is it the other way round????"