Talk:Philip K. Dick/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

This archive page covers approximately the dates between 26 February 2002 and 18 December 2007.

Pancreatic failure?

This isn't mentioned here and I'm not very clued up on PKD, but am I right in saying that he suffered from pancreatic failure later in life? It's a feature mentioned in The Divine Invasion, where a character awaits a new pancreas (and we know much of his later work was biographical in some way or another) and both the book and film versions of A Scanner Darkly feature PKD's mention of this. Does anyone know when it happened and exactly how it was caused? --StoneColdCrazy 09:51, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

FBI Investigation

"Dick was surprised to learn that the FBI was actually investigating him because of a letter he had written to Soviet scientist Alexander Topchev on a technical matter."

The reference for this assertion is from page 34 of Emmanuel Carrière's 'I am Alive and You are Dead', however the biography implies that Dick is making this up to tease the FBI agent:

"Phil couldn't resist the temptation to pull Scrubb's [FBI agent] leg one last time [...] he declared that he was engaged in a correspondence on this very subject with Professor Alexander Topchev onf the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Scruggs said he knew. Now it was Phil's turn to wonder who was taking whom for a ride".

I confess that my knowledge of Dick's life is minimal, but either the conclusion drawn by this reference is incorrect or the reference itself is incorrect. Can anyone confirm or deny this? NullPainter 06:47, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I was just thinking exactly the same thing. The biography definitely presents it as ambiguous. I think that unless another source can be cited, that quote should be removed. Pearce.duncan 01:46, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

The Carrière book is not a biography per se and really shouldn't be trusted on factual matters. Its strength is getting inside the mind of Dick in a subjective way, not in setting out actual biographical details. Now, Lawrence Sutin's 'Divine Invasions' is a more conventional biography, and is a better source for biographical information. In it, there is no indication that Dick had any notice that he actually was under investigation. He did send letters to the FBI, explaining to them why he was writing to Soviet scientists, because he was concerned that they would misunderstand and brand his as disloyal, and he did receive a form letter from the FBI director thanking him for writing, but there's nothing about Dick being told that he was undewr investigation. Much earlier in his life, in 1953 or 1954, Dick and his wife were visited by two FBI agents (George Smith amd George Scruggs) a number of times -- they apparently wanted assistance in identifying people who were under surveillance. How this came about is not clear, but it seems that Dick's concern about being under FBI investigation dates from that time. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) 07:26, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Non SF writing

I'd like to see his "normal" fiction addressed. He wrote conventional novels too, which were usually rejected, but posthumously published. 'Crap Artist' was in part about that. And put in something about how the fench loved him too. --brainhell

There are a few of them that seem to me to be decent novels, but not nearly as interesting or significant as the SF ones. Some of them ("Gather Yourselves Together" for instance, are awful, and practically unreadable. There's a reason they weren't published in their day, and it wasn't entirely because of prejudice against SF writers -- realistic fiction just wasn't Dick's metier. unfutz 07:49, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Well I disagree. I think that 'Confessions...' is a superior work, similiarly 'Puttering about...', 'Humpty-Dumpty in ...' and 'Anna and the giant' --they have characters that you care for. While not perfect (part of his production line ethos) they are to me better tham 95% of his cartoon sci-fi out put. See the Wikipedia page for 'Confessions...' Lentisco 05:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that 'Confessions of a Crap Artist' is not a bad book -- it drew me back for a second and third reading -- which may explain why it was the only one of his non-SF novels to be published in his lifetime. There are other decent non-SF works by Dick, you mention several of them, but none of them are as interesting in terms of mainstream fiction writing as Dick's SF writing is in terms of science fiction writing. As an SF writer, he's occasionally extraordinary, usually very good, and always in some way interesting, even in the hack potboilers he churned out, but as a non-SF writer he's merely sometimes adequate.

If Dick was not a celebrated genre writer, there's very little chance that any of his non-SF work would have been published posthumously. unfutz 02:26, 29 April 2006 (UTC) (Incidentally, please see the section below on the "PKD" reference in the lead paragraph.)

The view that Dick's mainstream novels are at best "merely adequate" is consistent with neither their publishing history nor their eventual critical reception. These novels were not rejected because they were felt to be mediocre; at least one editor thought Dick the unpublished mainstream writer to be a talent the equal of any of his contemporaries, e.g., Updike. The novels were unpublished because they were felt to be too downbeat to be saleable, and (to a much lesser extent) because they didn't end neatly. In fact, Mary and the Giant was essentially accepted for publication by its editor who, however, failed to sell the book to the accountants.

There's no question that Dick could do things in sf that he couldn't do in these novels. That just speaks to the innate superiority of the sf medium for addressing the issues that most concerned him. However, the critical consensus is that these novels, as portaits of life in the 50's, are the equal of the best contemporary fiction of that time period. They are an impotant sidebar to his lifework. I'm at work on an expanded literary history that will make these points.Emvan 11:06, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I guess that why on Amazon's bestselling list, the non-SF novels listed are at 20 (Crap Artist), 50 (Mary and the Giant), 74, 76 and 79, the last of them listed just before the foreign language editions start. In other words, nobody reads them except PKD fanatics like us, and that's because, with the singulary exception of "Crap Artist" they've received basically zero attention from non-genre reviewers. They are *not* a mainstream success story, even with the juggernaut of Dick's currently popularity to support them. To believe otherwise is to be disconnected from reality (certainly a Phildickian condition, but hardly an advantage when attempting to put together a *fact-based* encyclopedia on Dick. Certainly, something should be said about Dick's non-genre writing, but to allot any significant amount of space to them is not warranted. unfutz 05:48, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

All you've done by citing the Amazon sales figures is demonstrate that the mainstream novels have been overshadowed by the superior sf novels, just as you'd expect. What alternate scenario could possibly exist? Mainstream reviewers who are unwilling to read the sf but who laud these now outdated portraits of contemporary life in the 50's to such a degree that a separate audience develops for them to rival the sf audience? That's absurd. Yes, no one reads these books except big PKD fans, and no one should. The fact remains, however, that your low opinion of their quality is a minority one. Nothing in your argument, in fact, rebuts the points I made in mine; they only underscore the lack of relevance that contempory 50's fiction has in comparison to visionary 60's and 70's sf. The mainstream novels deserve a solid paragraph in the expanded overview of his career (after all, that's almost all he wrote for nearly half a decade) that I hope to complete later in the summer.

The funny thing is, we are in solid agreement as to the relative interest and worth of the sf and mainstream novels. However, in assessing the *inherent quality* of the mainstream fiction, I would quote your line describing the sf: "occasionally extraordinary, usually very good, and always in some way interesting." The vast gulf in interest and worth is inherent in the genres. There's not a single work of realist contemporary 50's fiction that's merely "very good" that you could even name; that stuff has only survived if it's brilliant. Whereas merely "very good" (relative to the genre) sf from that period is still in print and still being read.Emvan 10:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

This "debate" is silly. It doesn't address the point first made that more mention should be made of his "straight fiction". It simply should be. What any of your individual opinions may be on the merits of any given title of Dick's is irrelevant. Fact is that this page is about a writer named Philip K Dick, and as such should represent his entire life and entire breadth of work... --Amedeo Felix 09:26, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Popularity in France

I hear that PKD gained a lot of popularity among European post-modern intellectuals due to the high quality of the French translations (which reportedly improve on Dick's own writing). Might be worth mentioning, but I'm not adding it to the article because I'd like to get some confirmation first. --Goblin 14:03, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

It's true that he's quite popular in France, and not only amongst post-modern intellectuals. Actually, I'd say he's ranked right behind Asimov, Herbert, Silverberg and A.C. Clarke. It's also true that he benefitted from good translations but I wouldn't say it's better than his own writing, though I never compared directly a French translation with the original. In the same vein, it might also be worth mentioning that in the early 70's he sold more copies in France and Germany than in the US and couldn't have gone on being a professional writer without his European income. _R_ 20:05, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, PKD was and is still extremly popular in France. I'm not sure this has something to do with the high quality of translations: A. E. van Vogt was translated by Boris Vian and is still obscure to me. I have also compared independent translations of Asimov's short short short whithout noticing any obvious differences (save for the unbearable translation of "nitrogen" into "nitrogen" which should be "azote" in french). I don't know why PKD is so popular in France, it's a deep mystery even for myself: as a scientist my flavor is "hard science" in the SF domain, so, how do you explain that I have just spent 84 euros (about 100 $) to get the compilation of PKD's shorts? I have also tried to see PKD's grave in Fort-Morgan (Colorado, USA) but I was unsuccessful to locate it because they have a HUGE cemetery there (and nobody knows about PKD in Fort-Morgan). The best confirmation for the popularity in France of PKD is the french wikipedia link itself I guess.

I heard someone on (French) TV who said PKD had a left-wing style, which is loved in France. QuasarFR 01:03, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

That's very interesting. I'll see if I can find some cites. —Viriditas | Talk 03:10, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Fact is that in France, and other places, literature is literature and people there are not bothered by silly genre tags... --Amedeo Felix 09:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Heinlein reference

I'm not quite sure about the "friends with Heinlein" part of the general text. I think I've read that his opinion on Heinlein changed a few times during his life and I'm quite sure that he even wrote an article on Heinlein and the atomic bomb or something, which was indeed not very friendly. So, maybe someone who has some more biographical references could look this up and change it if nesecary. [Ben]

• I remember reading sometime around Heinlein's death that although he and Dick had tremendously different world views, and that each man felt rather scornful of the other, Heinlein nevertheless helped Dick financially at least once and perhaps more often even after they were in some ways estranged. This may have been in Charley Brown's long obit about Heinlein in Locus.Hayford Peirce 20:16, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• One of PKD's books is dedicated to Heinlein, and he thanks him explicitly for the assistance. Stanley Lieber 21:13, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Lem and the KGB

I removed two occurrences of 'rather', and the casual diagnosis of 'paranoia'. Known drug-use and exhibiting symptoms are one thing, but unless a diagnosis is backed up with sources.... MichaelTinkler

I heard that he believed that Stanislav Lem is in reality soviet team created from many s-f authors to take control over american sf. [[szopen]]

Yep, he did state that Lem is a special KGB unit. Ausir 13:27, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This was just added -- what does it mean (obviously it's a typo, but I can't figure it out, otherwise I'd correct it): Music and sociology are themes in my novels....Hayford Peirce 22:54, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The Variable Man

I have added a link from the article to The Variable Man - a short article I just did about the short story. Findel 16:15, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Re "vesicle pisces"

Reading vesicle pisces and vesica piscis leaves me with the sense that

wearing a pendant with the intersecting arcs called "vesicle pisces"

is imprecise. Am i wrong in thinking that this language i've edited in makes more sense?:

wearing a pendant with what he called "vesicle pisces". (He probably was referring to the intersecting arcs of the vesica piscis.)

If i am wrong, i would hope more info can be provided, e.g., where he described this incident and who else used "vesicle pisces" before him. --Jerzy(t) 08:55, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

The actual date of 2-3-74 (why I changed it, despite Google).

In the biography I've been skimming, "I Am Alive and You Are Dead" (ISBN 0805054642), the date of 2-3-74 (the revelation with the girl and the necklace) is given as February 20. I'm considering this authoritative. If it gets changed, I'd like to see a reference. I can find internet resources referring both to February 20 [1] and February 2 [2]. Since the internet tends to be a bit of an echo chamber, I'm sticking with what I skimmed from the biography. grendel|khan 21:59, 2004 Jul 15 (UTC)

I've been reading the Lawrence Sutin compiled "In Pursuit of VALIS: Excerpts from the Exegesis". In one of the aforementioned excerpts, PKD refers to it as "2-3/74". This formatting inclines me to believe that it is in fact short hand for February and March of 1974, and not February 3, 1974.

In fact, just speaking generally, I think its a preferred formatting of the shorthand, and if I'm correct, I'd prefer to see it in wider usage, so as to avoid precisely this misunderstanding. --Seanlanders 02:34, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hailed by Heinlein?

The beginning of the article says Dick was hailed by Heinlein. I'd like to see some verification of this. His works were very different from Heinlein's and Heinlein wrote very few blurbs for his friends and/or S.F. colleagues. I'm not saying it ain't so, I'd just like to know when and where Heinlein publicly "hailed" him.Hayford Peirce 20:37, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I can't tell you where I first ran across this, but I saw an anecdote from a source I considered knowledable that Heinlein loaned Dick money while he was finishing up one of his books (see http://303.ubik.com.ar/pkdfaq.html for another source of this). This seems to be an indication that Heinlein found Dick's work worthwhile. While they were complete opposites in style, personality and politics, they were also both acclaimed masters of the genre at the same time. Another quote I found, from the intro to the short story collection titled "The Golden Man" (which may well be where I first ran across it; I have all 5 volumes of Dicks short stories)

"I consider Heinlein to be my spiritual father, even though our political ideologies are totally at variance. 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 doing. 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.

". . . 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."

(found at http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/works/articles/rahrahrah.html)

I think it's safe to say that Heinlein was very supportive of Dick's writing; "hailed" might be the wrong word, but I think that Heinlien's support of Dick should be mentioned; the fact that Dick and Heinlein were such opposites, yet had a strong mutual respect for each other is a very good insight into the personalities of both Heinlien and Dick. scot 14:26, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Heinlein has done more to harm SF than has any other writer, I think - with the possible exception of George O. Smith. The dialogue in Stranger in a Strange Land has to be read to be believed. 'Give the little lady a box of cigars!' a character cries, meaning that the girl has said something that is correct. One wonders what the rejoinder would be if a truly inspired remark had to be answered, rather than a routine statement; it would probably burst the book's gizzard." -- PKD in Will the Atomic Bomb Ever Be Perfected, and If So, What Becomes of Robert Heinlein? -- noosphere 05:12, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

PKD also apologized for this statement (and others about him) after Heinlein loaned him the money. Stanley Lieber 21:21, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Removed

• "This distance is suggested by at least one music reviewer explaining the character "Horselover Fat" as being introduced by the opera's librettist, in order to interact with the PKD character in the opera. The fact that "Horse-lover Fat" was in fact invented by PKD, included in the novel to interact with a Philip-Dick character, and more or less faithfully retained in the opera, betrays a striking communication gap."

I removed the above text because I doubt the criticism: the "one music reviewer" is not cited, and would be mistaken themselves (if true), and the para reads simly as misplaced anti-classical music POV. More importantly:

1. There were three original librettists, Catherine Ikam, Bill Raymond, and Tod Machover, later revised by Machover alone.
2. In the liner notes it is made clear the Machover did not come up with the name "Horse-lover Fat": "To transpose his personal traits into exploratory fiction, Dick uses the convention of dividing himself (as the main character) in two...Phil Dick the science fiction writer observes and comments on Horselover Fat." Hyacinth 01:23, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

asthma / methamphetamine removal

I removed the sentence relating Dick's childhood asthma and the fact that he was prescribed a form of methamphetamine, although the asthma point might be reworked into the article, if relevant.

Dick's childhood methamphetamine prescription is irrelevant and misleading, at least because it is almost certain that the form of methamphetamine Dick took was (A) in inhaler form, not useful for obtaining substantial psychoactive effects of the amphetamine-class drugs; and (B) the isomer of methamphetamine contained in inhalers was not the psychoactive dextro-methamphetamine, but rather the much less active (especially for mental efficacy) laevo-methamphetamine, sometimes called benzedrine.

Furthermore, the sentence I deleted made a statement that is misleading, in that it termed methamphetamine as "dangerous" and likely to produce mental states similar to schizophrenia. While it certainly is true that methamphetamine can be dangerous, especially in high doses; and further although methamphetamine can produce "amphetamine psychosis," both of these effects are usually observed mostly in chronic abusers and/or at high doses (which were quite unlikely to ever have been attained by a child using a Vick's benzedrine inhaler). The sentence as it stood before would give the reader the impression that such effects are common or indeed, likely (which they generally are not—millions of people use amphetamine and methamphetamine (see Desoxyn) at therapeutic doses for treatment of ADHD or narcolepsy, and experience no such complications over years or decades of use). --Ryanaxp 06:13, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

This needs to be added back into the early life section. —Viriditas | Talk 10:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, Ryanaxp, no offense... but I'm ADD. I've been on that kind of med before. And ONCE, one night, when I made the mistake of taking it before bed, I did, in fact, get what I'm assuming was high. I felt locked in a trance-like state for a solid eight hours, thinking that my mind was going up staircase after staircase all night long, but somehow still aware that my body was incapable of moving, and woke up completely exhausted, snapped right out of it in a way that's completely unlike the way I have ever woken up from a genuine, normal dream. You can't tell me that ain't a little "psychoactive". Eight solid hours (I'm not kidding; I went to bed at midnight, snapped awake at 8 AM on the dot, and did NOT have that feeling of having had a normal dream cycle with occasional delta wave sleep) of hallucinating that your mind is going up and down staircases... that is impossible to describe as anything else but but a "psychoactive" trance-like state. I never had it happen after then, but it did happen once, when I took it at a time I wasn't used to taking it at. Make no mistake; it can still happen (I only say this because you give the impression that it's pretty much impossible to derive an odd side effect from that kind of stimulant, and it's NOT impossible, I've gone through it once myself. No, it's apparently not -thank GOD! - common at all, but it CAN and DOES occasionally happen, especially if you're altering your usual medication schedule. So please don't make statements such as "millions... experience no such complications over years or decades of use", because it's obviously directly implying something that isn't quite true. Yes, millions haven't had such complications, but there are some who HAVE, probably because of how the medication is derived in the first place). Also, I do not believe ADD had much of a foothold as a diagnosis, let alone one for which medication was prescribed, until fairly recently, probably not before the 1980s or early 1990s, but I can't recall for certain. In any case, they don't really even use the same meds, do they? How can you compare the medications from two different eras as if they're the exact same thing? It doesn't really make much sense to me. For that matter, I am very surprised you did not link Ritalin or Adderall, both of which are much more common nowadays (I know my old meds were referred to as "Ritalin", and they were methylphenidate). Runa27 08:58, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Thats not at all consistent with the psychoactive properties of amphetamine. What you're describing could be all number of things but its definetly not amphetamine intoxication. Adderall is a racemic mixture of amphetamine which means it contains dextro-amphetamine, the same exact drug dick took. Amphetamines havent changed at all in the last 75 years. Methylphenidate is a DA/NE reuptake inhibitor which has some properties that resemble amphetamines but isnt really related to them. lupus23 07:44, 26 October 2006

Death, stroke or heart attack

The section titled Death states that Dick died of a stroke. Immediately below under Dick's Influence the second paragraph states he died of a heart attack. It could not have been both. Can we get some clarification? Wjbean 22:47, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Content removed

Most observers of this phenomenon would conclude that Dick's visions were a brief psychotic episode, and they might be correct in that assumption. What has allowed the mystery of Dick's experiences to endure are anecdotal reports of several intriguing incidences such as the following

Removed spoon-feeding. Eventually, this should be replaced with factual reports of his alleged "psychosis", rather than what unnamed "observers" conclude. --Viriditas | Talk 09:14, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Minor add by newbie

I added two sentences in the "Dick's Influence" section noting the Dick-inspired movie "Impostor". I am unable to assess the faithfulness of the movie to the short story; I'd welcome any thoughts on this. This is my first edit of any kind on Wikipedia, so please excuse any mistakes and let me know how to correct them for the future. --Shakrat 24 August 2005

POV?

Is this not (unnecessary) POV?

Novels recommended as an introduction to Dick's work

Some good choices for a reader new to Dick are...

Cigsandalcohol 03:21, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

PKD as Schizophrenic

The explanation of PKDs hallucinations being caused by complications from a stroke are revisionist and ignorant at best. There is plenty of evidence to suggest PKD suffered from undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, and that the drug abuse, homelessness, poverty, multiple divorces and bizzarre behavior(severe agoraphobia, fear and paranoia about the police and fbi, etc) were the result of schizophrenia.

His Aunt was a catatonic schizophrenic. Schizophrenia is a hereditary disease and much of Dick's life was the life of a schizophrenic. There is so very little public awareness of this illness. Even after films like "A Beautiful Mind" and "The Aviator" most people still have a poor understanding of schizophrenia. I find it a disservice to PKD and his readers to misrepresent his life.

Statistically speaking, 1 of every 100 people suffer from schizophrenia. I had been suffering with schizophrenia for years without understanding what was wrong. It took me 15 terrible years before I was diagnosed. I was drawn to Dick's style of writing because it resonated with me. It might have been helpful for me to come to a wiki like this and see that Dick suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Maybe through that information people like myself can seek help earlier. I'm not suggesting that all of PDKs readers are schizophrenic, but I do think many of his readers relate to him because they see the world in the same way. Perhaps some of those people will benefit from knowing all the facts about PDK, not just the facts PDKs fans want to 'select' for him.

There are two sides to the coin of schizophrenia. Many schizophrenics are highly intelligent and creative people, but the stigma surrounding paranoid schizophrenia is troublesome. Please consider that the disease is what fueled PKDs genius and imaginative abilities to create the stories he did. He suffered from delusions, paranoia, anxiety and depression throughout his entire adult life. These are the characteristics of schizophrenia...a terrible illness that is now beginning to be treatable.

I suggest watching "Philip K Dick - A Day In The Afterlife (1994 Arena Documentary)" to learn more about PDK through the accounts of his friends and family.

• NOTE: I added one line to the end of the title page and edited the highly speculative and innacurate comments regarding the complications from stroke being the cause of his hallucinations. Feel free to change my comments, but please do not remove the reference to schizophrenia entirely from the wiki for reasons I stated above.

That PKD was schizophrenic is a particular POV - it is not proven fact, and it is notoriously difficult to perform accurate psychological diagnoses after a person's death. You're right, it may be helpful to put information about PKD's possible schizophrenia in the article, but the purpose of wikipedia is to present information in an NPOV manner, not to help people. What would be appropriate in this article, on the other hand, is to mention schizophrenia as a possibility (which it certainly is), and reasons that have been given for supposing he was schizophrenic (I understand that there have been a number of psychologists who have tried to perform post-mortem diagnoses). -Seth Mahoney 20:24, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Seth ,

• Schizophrenia is not a concretely diagnosable disease like Diabetes or HIV, it's characterized by a very specific class of behaviors. Facts like his aunt suffering from catatonic schizophrenia, a very severe type, and Dick being plagued by paranoia, hallucinations, difficulty dicerning reality, and delusional thoughts of persecution throughout his entire adult life all overwhelmingly support the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Any competant psychiatrist with experience treating schizophrenia would concur with that diagnosis. His last wife even commented that at one point Dick was bedridden for 3 weeks out of fear of being monitored by the FBI if he were to leave the room. That is textbook schizophrenic behavior. None of these facts are disputed or a product of 'POV'. I would suggest that you carefully research these accounts and the definition of schizophrenia before dismissing my comments as a 'speculative theory'. None of this should in any way lessen the value of his writings or his contributions to science fiction. I'm unfamiliar with the editing style used on wikipedia so if you'd like to start an appropriate stub for me on the main page I would be more than happy to complete it in detail.

I'm not dismissing your narrative as mere "speculative theory", or a product of POV, nor did I dismiss the facts you brought up. I actually have researched PKD's life, and have two friends who have been diagnosed schizophrenic, and I have myself noticed similarities in Dick's reported behavior and stories my friends have told me. That, however, is not the point. There are several competing theories as to why Dick behaved the way he did (including a handfull based on the idea that in some sense elements of his philosophical writings are true - his philosophical writings, by the way, are required reading for anyone attempting to understand why certain themes repeat in Dick's work and why they seem to resonate with so many people today, along with Baudrillard's writing, who claimed Dick was something of a prophet of the postmodern age), and schizophrenia is just one of them. It may be a particularly compelling narrative within the context of psychology and contemporary science (and a narrative that Dick himself speculated about at times), but that doesn't make it true, and since Dick is dead its not likely that we will ever know the truth. This, in the end, does make any theorizing as to why Dick behaved the way he did speculative, though not mere speculation. It is useful, and I would support information along those lines being added to the article (by the way, go ahead and add it - if its not quite in line with the style of the rest of the article, other editors will copyedit it - your contributions are welcome) so long as they stay within the realm of reports of the research of notable literary theorists, psychologists, etc. , since original research is not exactly warmly embraced in wikipedia. -Seth Mahoney 00:30, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I've been doing more reading on this subject and found a good description of the problem:

"While no psychiatrist's opinion is verity, in light of Dick's chronic drug addiction, institutionalizations, suicide attempts, and diagnoses of schizophrenia (his aunt was a catatonic schizophrenic), an objective analysis of the facts of Dick's life as it is currently understood would be helpful to fans, Forteans, and general readers alike. For those genuinely interested, separating the various facets of Dick's existence as carefully, cautiously, and sensitively as possible is a must, and the only proper route to an accurate understanding."

I don't believe I'm qualified to make such a careful analysis. Such a treatment of Dick's life would be lengthy, cumbersome, and would probably overwhelm the wiki. Most people are visiting the PKD wiki to read praise of Dick's literary achievments and to learn more about his writings specifically. It would be nice to simply preserve the reference to the likelyhood that Dick was schizophrenic without belaboring the point. Unfortunately there seems to be a specific cult following of PKD who 'want to believe' that Dick was a kind of prophet or medium who was sensitive to other realities and dimensions(as demonstrated by his 'visions'). Making such a conclusion about an individual who has a genetic predisposition for, and a behavioral history of schizophrenic behavior(hallucinations, hearing voices, delusional thinking) is dubious. This does not mean that Dick's philosophical questions were invalid or irrelevant, nor does it need to tarnish his reputation as a writer. As for my own theorizing, most of Dick's best work was written while on amphetamines, a class of drugs that are known to increase positive schizophrenic symptoms(hallucinations, intricate structures of thought, delusions). The combination of schizophrenia and amphetamines was the 'perfect storm' of generative creativity that allowed PDK to create the stories he did.

I don't really want to drag this out, so I'll just add a few comments: I agree that most people come to this page to read about Dick's literary achievements, but I think understanding him as a person helps to understand his literary works, so I don't think the two are really separable. I'd like to see a large section devoted to analyzing his life and works in terms of his possible schizophrenia. I'd just, and I'd like to make it clear here where my objection lies, not like to see it say, or imply, that he was schizophrenic. This isn't to protect his name from any sort of scandalous association or any nonsense like that, but just because, though it does seem likely, we don't know that he was schizophrenic. As far as his fans wanting to treat him like a prophet or medium, that's sort of a strawman representation of the general statements I've seen. Finally, as far as his possible schizophrenia affecting his relevance as a writer, far from it. Baudrillard, who I mentioned above, seems to view the postmodern age as somewhat schizophrenic (and not in a metaphoric sense), so a firm diagnosis of schizophrenia for Dick would only make his writing more relevant, not less. Please, and I'm going to try to put this a third way in this paragraph, don't try to take my statements that we shouldn't say that Dick was schizophrenic as some sort of attack on schizophrenia or dismissal of schizophrenics, because that is not what I'm doing here. I'm saying, and this is all I'm saying, that there are several competing narratives for Dick's life (Dick gives us several himself), and those involving schizophrenia are only a subset. We don't know that he was schizophrenic, and there are a lot of bizarre events in his life that schizophrenia alone doesn't explain.

Finally, if you want to add such a section, you certainly seem a capable writer, so I'd say go for it. If you don't feel comfortable doing so, but are able to research it, feel free to compile any information you find on this talk page (with references - this isn't to doubt your integrity, but because there has been a strong push in Wikipedia to include more references in articles), and other editors can piece it into an article section. -Seth Mahoney 22:38, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

OK. I would however appreciate a bit more detail on your statement "there are a lot of bizarre events in his life that schizophrenia alone doesn't explain". I would like to read more about those because I have yet to read or hear of any of his experiences which aren't easily attributable to schizophrenia. This includes the infamous 'break in'.

I should have added, "if they are true", to be fair. There's the whole story of him predicting his son's illness, his acquiring knowledge of Aramaic, etc. Some of them are discussed in the intro to The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, others on [3]. The point, if this is the direction we're headed, though, isn't to discredit a diagnosis of schizophrenia on scientific grounds, but to say that structuring his life according to a scientific or psychological narrative is one way, among many, to do it, and one that doesn't, and shouldn't, get a privileged truth value. I personally think it would be better to follow an approach similar to that which Dick takes himself and present sets of possibilities. For example, Dick vasillated between the possibility that he was schizophrenic, that everyone else was (more or less), that we were being intentionally deceived as to the nature of reality, that reality itself was deceptive, and so on. Many of these possibilities are very much in line with prominent philosophical ideas, and Dick makes these connections (and that they are in line with philosophical ideas and that Dick makes the connections doesn't mean, and isn't intended to prove, that he wasn't schizophrenic - that's not the point). Dick also questioned what schizophrenia actually is (I so wish I knew where I left my copy of The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick), making arguments that would suggest a bland diagnosis of "schizophrenic" doesn't really work - significantly more explanation would be needed. Finally, though, what I'm saying is that we just aren't able to say, for sure, that he was schizophrenic, and it isn't the business of an encyclopedia to make assertions that aren't known to be true, though it is the business of an encyclopedia to present prominent theories, and that is one prominent theory. -Seth Mahoney 22:27, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

OK. It's clear to me that you know quite a bit more about PDK than I do, and I find it interesting that he spent time considering the possibility of his own schizophrenia. Unfortunately I haven't read the book you're referencing. I imagine that it would be illuminating to do so. I would however like to mention that the very nature of schizophrenia is the ability to convince one's self (and even others) of a version of reality that is not neccesarily in accordance with the facts. A purely 'logical' treatise on one's personal relationship with 'reality' is a bottomless excercise, especially for a schizophrenic genius like PDK. My own problem with this illness actually prohibits me from being able to accept that PDK was able to objectively address the questions he was raising in his philosophical themes. In other words I don't trust his conclusions about himself. In my own experience with this illness it's been striking to read about other sufferes of this illness in that the similarities of lifestyles, life affecting events and means of communication and percerption are practically identical. I've been convinced of the reality of this illness not just because of my own experiences, but because of reading of the experiences of other people suffering from schizophrenia as a veritable mirror of my own life. So in a way I'm very prejudicial of PDK in the sense that his behavior selects him perfectly for membership in the 'club' of people with schizophrenia.

No doubt you're right. Your experiences and maybe even your attitude toward schizophrenia and PKD (along with your obvious interest) would make you a perfect candidate to contribute (gentle nudge) some info to the article. No doubt plenty of people have written about PKD and schizophrenia, and plenty of them have probably diagnosed him post mortem. It shouldn't be too difficult to dig up some interesting stuff. -Seth Mahoney 03:54, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm at an impasse. Most of what follows is just loose rambling, but it's the theory I'm operating from:

Dick has intentionally covered his tracks. This was his personality, the motif of his life, and the nature of his storytelling.

As far as the diagnosis of schizophrenia being categorically 'proven'...I think it's impossible here. There are really only two ways to get a "definitive" medical diagnosis of schizophrenia:

• A) The individual is hospitalized or institutionalized because they are unable to function in society, and the professional diagnosis of that inability to function is deemed to be consistent with schizophrenia.
• B) The individual, observes or is convinced that they have a condition that is problematic enough to justify seeking medical (pharmacological or surgical) intervention.

Dick falls into neither of those categories, and that was entirely by his own design. I say this because according to what I've read(on the web) Dick had several problems(agoraphobia, etc) starting in his early teens. Apparently he saw one or several psychiatrists and the initial diagnosis was one of schizophrenia. What's even more interesting than the diagnosis is Dick's extremely fearful reaction to the diagnosis. As I mentioned earlier, his aunt was diagnosed with a very severe and debilitating case of catatonic schizophrenia, the social stigma of this, terror of the disease, and the cruel treatment of the mentally ill(see "One flew over the cuckoo's nest") would scare anyone, but for a paranoid person like PDK, it would have been terrifying. It was the beginning of Dick's survival mode, a mode that kept him well clear of psychiatry for the remainder of his life. His effectiveness at hiding his illness from friends and family makes it just as hard to learn the 'truth' of his condition now as it would have 20 or 30 years ago.

I'm frustrated because it seems that the only way to approach this subject is to list the characteristics of his behavior (as reported by friends, family, journals etc) and compare those with commonly accepted behavioral characteristics of schizophrenia. That would be trivial for me to do, but it would probably come across as baseless 'original' research. So the problem here is not necessarily whether Dick was schizophrenic or not, but what would constitute proof of his being schizophrenic. I'm sure he'd be delighted by the irony, and proud of his handiwork.

There are several books listed on the main page, biographies and such that I plan on checking out of the local library that may or may not contain more definative information about Dick's medical and psychiatric history. If anyone could suggest reading material(book->page->paragraph), video, audio interviews etc. that would shed more light on this subject I would be grateful for the information.

Sorry this has gone so long without a response. I can suggest two resources off the bat (but I can't remember the name of one of them): One is the introduction to The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (along with several of the later essays in that book where he seems to doubt his own sanity), and the other is a perusal of several speeches he gave (which can be found in the same book, or in "his" website, which a quick google will easily find), the most notable being the one he gave about Disneyland. I'll see if I can find any lit crit where his mental state is explicitely discussed, as well. -Seth Mahoney 18:17, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I heard it was somewhat beleived that Confessions of a Crap Artist was Dick's own look at his possible schizophrenia? -Alastairward 23:42, 6 April 2006 (GMT)

I want to humbly suggest that I'm the most qualified person in the world to address this question. While I didn't know Dick, I've known his literary executor (Paul Williams) and editor (David G. Hartwell) for years; gave the biographical solo talk at the Boston PKD Conference in the mid-90's; am invariably on the PKD panel (if there is one) at the World Science Fiction Convention with Hartwell et al, etc.. On the psych side, I've got 18 undergraduate and graduate psych and neuroscience classes at Harvard under my belt, taken 1998-2002.

I think I can state with utter certainty that Dick was not clinically schizophrenic. Yes, he fits some of the symptoms. There is a small problem, though: in the single most important symptom, that of ideational lability, Dick was literally as far removed from schizophrenia as it's possible to be. Clinical schizophrenics have delusions, beliefs that they cannot be dissauded of. Dick, as he loved to point out, could be persuaded or dissauded of anything. In a real sense, Dick didn't even have beliefs. He had ideas, ideas which he was willing to entertain passionately, but there was little or nothing that he was certain was true. Schizophrenics have almost no ability to rearrange the information in their brain to make a different pattern; that is the hallmark of the illness, that all information is forced into the existing pattern, which then becomes more and more baroque. In contrast, Dick may have had the greatest ability to re-arrange the information in his brain of anyone who ever lived. Even the most creative of his peers were in awe of his ability to construct a seemingly limitless number of explanations for any given set of facts.

It turns out, of course, that having way too much informational lability is as sure a path to paranoia as having too little. Yes, Dick was paranoid, but not because he was schozophrenic; it was because he was the least schizophrenic person alive. Where the schizophrenic is plagued by his or her rigid belief system, Dick was plagued by not having any firm sense of reality to fall back on. He might stay in bed for three weeks, terrified the FBI was after him, but in week four he'd be busy scribbling that that was ridiculous, and would concoct half a dozen new explanations for the evidence (until he got to one that was equally as ominous). That's anything but schizophrenic, even if the end results are similar.

In terms of his hallucinations, there is compelling evidence that schizophrenic auditory hallucinations are unwilled inner speech. In fact, there appears to be a sizeable population who "hear voices" but are perfectly functional and hence not clinically schizophrenic because they have insight into their auditory hallucinations and have learned to ignore them. Dick's hallucinations do not fit this pattern.

If we must make a posthumous armchair diagnosis, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy is a much stronger candidate. However, Dick's extraordinary informational lability suggests a brain wired very differently from the norm. It's reasonable to think that whatever was responsible for that was also responsible for everything else, making a TLE diagnosis superfluous. My own hypothesis is that Dick had a hugely irregular pattern of serotonin (5-HT) innervation (a miswiring, just as schizophrenia appears to be a miswiring of the dopamine system). Serotonin appears to control informational lability (my own hypothesis but one that neuroscience is slowly stumbling towards) and it's well established that aberrantly high levels can cause hallucinations (LSD does its thing by binding to 5-HT receptors). Meanwhile, a deficit of 5-HT in areas of cortex responsible for emotional processing would produce his agoraphobia and other anxiety symptoms (all of which respond clinically to 5-HT boosting drugs of the Prozac class).

At some point I may address this in the article (I can cite myself, since I've presented this hypothesis numerous times in public), but I first want to do a major expansion on his literary career, which is currently getting short shrift. Emvan 11:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

• Emvan, I'm the original thread author of the schizophrenic theory posted above, and I haven't revisited here in months. I deeply appreciate your explanation and insight into our discussion. I'm forced to agree with you, the 'rigidity' of thinking part of your explanation is what convinced me. I have been suffering from 'theories' that I've been unable to controvert for years. Your explanation of PKDs ability to permutate around a given set of facts was very interesting, and it's interesting to see that he 'commits' to a given explanation only temporarily as if he's experimenting with it. Schizophrenics like myself don't have the benefit of being able to rearrange the troublesome entrenched 'baroque' patterns. Again, thanks for your comments.

He was either diagnosed with it or not - do not say he was unless you can prove the diagnosis. You may suffer from the disorder but do not pin the disorder on others to make yourself feel better. Shame on you.

Stanislaw Lem?

I'm a little suspiscious of the statement in the opening paragraph that Dick was hailed by Stanislaw Lem. I don't know for certain, but the fact that Dick was writing to the FBI in the mid-seventies about how Lem was a communist mouth-piece seems like it would have put a dampner on whatever relationship they might have had. Does anyone have a source for the statement as it stands?
Zytsef 13:04, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Both are true, and a google search will demonstrate any number of citations. --Viriditas 13:22, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The only real critical work by Lem about PKD I could find is "Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans", however, and though Lem generally seems approving he tends to mitigate with with things like criticizing the use of stock, "pulp" sci-fi themes; something Lem has always hated. I also turned up some non-specific stuff about a corespondence between the two before PKD's paranoid breakdown about his fellow sci-fi authors. I was really wondering if you could point me to something a little more athoritative than what an average Google search will turn up. Perhaps the individual who inculded the bit about Lem could enlighten me with his or her source. --Zytsef 14:34, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

If you like, you can reference: Heer, Jeet. (2001). "Philip K. Dick Versus the Literary Critics". Lingua Franca. May/June. Lem also said: "An original and interesting mind was Philip Dick...science fiction is garbage with exceptions and Dick is one of them." [4] (See also "Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case - With Exceptions", Microworlds). And again from Science Fiction Studies: "His reputation among fellow SF authors was admittedly very high—Stanislaw Lem, Brian Aldiss, Ursula Le Guin, John Brunner, and Thomas Disch are a few examples of colleagues who were also admirers—and a small handful of others (mainly journalists and academics) were convinced that Dick's was a neglected major talent." [5] --Viriditas 21:12, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, sir. That's exactly what I wanted to know. --Zytsef 22:17, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Pre-people

"No one is sure"... "many suspect"... See WP:WEASEL for details.--SarekOfVulcan 00:10, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I was trying to be NPOV...No one is sure of anything (outside their own life of course) unless someone else tells them. Since he's dead you can't really ask him the full impact this had on the pre-people. I urge you to re-include it, by reverting your edits, unless you can give me a better explanation for its deletion. Thanks, Chooserr 00:17, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

The section on "Pre-persons" is not important enough (or interesting enough to the general audience) to merit its own section, nor does it integrate into any of the existing sections of this already over-long article. For these reasons I have deleted it. unfutz 12:03, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that what you have removed does not belong in the article (it read as speculation anyway) -- however, the Pre-persons was one of the few stories which had a mainstream impact for PKD during his lifetime on account of it's controversy, and so I think it deserves coverage in the article in some manner. -- Jon Dowland 10:30, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Possible Source To Verify 'Exegesis' Section

[6]

Confusion

Confusion: I'm just an anonymous reader looking at this article, but alot of the main article seems very outlandish, specifically the sections of Philip's "visions." VALIS? Rome? 3-2-74? I don't mean to be rude but this all sounds completely preposterous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.157.111.196 (talk) 22:49, 18 March 2006 (UTC) and edited by the same guy.

So, what do you propose? This talk page is for discussing how to improve the article. If you have a problem with PKD, there's not much we can do. —Viriditas | Talk 02:58, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, there is a focus in this article on PKD's breakdown. One can interpret the unknown commenter as complaining about that. If you look at the article, the things that make PKD worthy of a Wikipedia article – writing short stories and novels – is summarized as part of the Early Life section ... The breakdown is interesting, and it is related to his earlier works, but IMHO it should be a much smaller part of the article than it is now. Jgrahn 19:53, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Quotesidebar

Please don't add the Quotesidebar to the lead section. —Viriditas | Talk 11:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I dont get it

i really dont get the theory that i have been hearing of lately. i heard that philip k. dick get his ideas,for his novels, from his dreams. now i know that they might have something to do with his dreams, but i highly doubt that his entire novel was about dreams that he had. according to research, the dreams that you have have no reflect on how you act or how you intercept things in real life. its just another way of subconsiouslly thinking of ideas in your mind that you are not aware of. Stop lying! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.224.164.107 (talk) 15:26, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

...tell me, please, that English is not your first language, because Philip K. Dick does not "get" any ideas anymore, he's DEAD. "His entire novel" implies he only wrote one novel, which is not true. And so on.

Second: Actually, there are a LARGE number of theories regarding why we dream, and that is only one of them, and it's also entirely possible that ALL the theories of dreaming sleep are correct some of the time (for instance, there's the theory that it's a way of putting together stuff that your mind didn't have the time or energy to expend upon when you were awake - this being the reason apparently why "sleeping on" a problem sometimes helps to solve it - there's also a theory that we act out fantasies in our dreams that we cannot in real life, and also one that it's merely a "dump" cycle, a time where our brain goes through and weakens connections to things it finds irrelevant, including an uncountable number of minor subconscious observations such as what kind of sandwich your coworker ate at lunch across the cafeteria from you). HOWEVER, saying they have no effect is ridiculous. If you did not dream, most evidence points towards a person going crazy. Each theory I listed supports that - in the first, your problem-solving abilities would be hampered, in the second, you'd gradually become more frustrated without an outlet for your fantasies (such as stabbing that annoying coworker in your dreams every night, allowing you to get rid of pent up frustration towards them), and in the third one I listed, you'd eventually have informational overload of sorts. Merely resting apparently isn't enough; cognitive function is apparently severely hampered if one doesn't get a decent REM sleep cycle in about every day, as well. Hence, you cannot say it "does not [effect] how you act or how you intercept things in real life". Assuming you don't mean "interpret" instead of "intercept", but something closer to "interact with", it would be false, your statement; if the lack of something affects it, you can't say the non-lack of it doesn't.

Third - speaking as a writer, I can verify that sometimes, you CAN get inspiration for a perfectly coherent plot from a dream, although usually it's easier in what I believe are called "lucid" dreams, e.g. dreams in which you actually have delibrate control, and know that you have control, and can choose your own path. Also, since dreams are frequently surreal, it's perhaps easier to draw from them if you're into writing science fiction and fantasy. And, as far as I can tell, the majority of writers that have drawn inspiration from one or more dreams have also done significant editing afterwards to it. Simply getting the idea or outline from a dream does not mean it wasn't edited for logic and coherency later on. Personally, I get more of my ideas when I'm conscious, but I have had some from when I'm asleep or partially asleep, especially in REM sleep cycles I had immediately before waking up. One time, I even woke up and hand-wrote three or four pages of coherent story (on a novel I had concieved of the idea for the night before). Of course, it was very slow, and not very well-written, but it had a coherent progression and made sense. :P Runa27 09:34, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

You sure told him. Troubleshooter 21:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

QuoteSidebar

I realize this might be a touchy subject just now, but is the QuoteSidebar template really necessary in this article? Its fairly distracting and unattractive (not to mention the fact that it doesn't easily allow for attributing the quote to a specific book, lecture, etc., which is really necessary). It seems like one of the other quotation templates could be used in a DIV or something if that quote-off-to-the-side magazine-style look is what the editors are really going for here. -Seth Mahoney 07:42, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I find the template distracting and don't see how it improves the article. —Viriditas | Talk 07:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Just so I'm clear, the quotes, though, are useful (I think), and do add to the article. -Seth Mahoney 07:56, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Again, I agree. At this point, I would prefer to see a few quotes in a quote section with a link to wikiquote, and/or indented plain text quotes at the start of some sections, below the heading. The former is quite common with the latter rarely used. —Viriditas | Talk 08:07, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Aliases

I'm having some difficulty seeing what benefit the added section "Aliases" brings to the article. Essentially, the only fact it presents that a general reader would be interested in is that Dick used several pen names, but this information can be slipped in elsehwere (where, indeed, it used to be) without difficulty. The remainder of the section, i.e. the details about Dowland, and the spoilers about the one short story, is too specific for a general reader and not quite interesting enough, and not detailed enough for a Dickhead or a Dick scholar. I would reccommend, therefore, that the section be deleted as unnecessary, and the one line about pen names be integrated back into the body of the article. unfutz 04:07, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I think that the information about Dick's use of pen-names, especially in the circular fashion in Orpheus, is a good illustration of the sense of humour that he injected into his work. I agree that the information would be better integrated into the article rather than an additional section at the end: Usually an author's use of pen-names is covered within the first few sentences, but I didn't think the material (as it stands) would fit nicely in the beginning section. I would suggest therefore that we work on getting the information into the rest of the article and then remove the section. -- Jon Dowland 09:35, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

PKD used a pen-name exactly twice in his career. Instance 1: "Jack Dowland", which was used as a pen-name on Orpheus WIth Clay Feet more for effect than anything else -- anyone who read the story to its conclusion would know it was written by Philip K. Dick, as it's explicitly mentioned in the text. Instance 2: "Richard Phillips" was used as a pen-name for the story Some Kinds Of Life, which was published in the same magazine issue (Fantasic Universe, Oct 1953) as "Planet For Transients", a story which was credited to Dick. Pulps of the time didn't want to credit the same author for more than one story in an issue, so the "Phillips" alias was applied to one of the stories. And that's it! ("Horeselover Fat" may be a sort of alter ego, but its not a pen name.) Basically its trivia, related to two very minor works of Dick's. I'd vote for getting rid of this section.

Southern California

I removed the quote that he placed or based many of his works around southern california and this was a basis for cyberpunk. The books you quoted as examples of works about this area "Time Out of Joint, A Scanner Darkly, Confessions of a Crap Artist" do not represent the bulk of his short stories and novels from the fifties and sixties. A scanner darkly in particular may have been relocated to southern california in the story as he fled there to live with Tim Powers by the time that he wrote it, but was based on his drug binge period in marin county as is credited in the back of the book in the dedications. There is no reason to imply that he based his books on southern california when it was only a few of the late and mildly non-fiction ones, fewer than he placed on mars.

As far as the assertion that it was these later books that influenced cyberpunk, I don't see it. Cyberpunk seems to utilize the gimmicks, flawed characters and surreal speculative plotting from his earlier body of novels and short stories. I never saw any major thematic connection between his post 70's introspective writings and the cyberpunk genre. Of course that could be a matter of opinion, but unless it can be cited it would be a POV statement either way and should be modified to more clearly state a fact.

Also if you check the page history, the original sentance was "Foreshadowing the cyberpunk sub-genre, Dick brought the anomic world of Northern California to many of his works", but it was altered to southern and apparently nobody noticed. Thunderlippps 22:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Please sign your contributions to talk pages by adding -~~~~ at the end. Dick did say on multiple occasions that many of his works were based on Southern California, even if the action didn't take place there. I think its a worthwhile bit of trivia in the appropriate context. -Smahoney 21:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Possibly based on his impression of Southern california as an outsider from the bay area. I have read quotes many times that he was terrified of Orange County and the republican base there, and likely did include these feelings in his versions of dictatorships and police states. But he did not live there until 1971 I believe, after the drug period and home invasion. How would he bring "the world of southern california" to any of his novels except the later ones written after 1971, if even then. I agree the statement should be modified if it must be included at all, but it seems a more appropriate place would be in regards to his valis novels and the final decade of his life. Thunderlippps 22:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

You don't need to include the nowiki tags around your signature - I just used them because if I hadn't, it would have added my signature there instead of the four tildes. You're probably right there. It has been a long while since I've read biographical material on Dick, so I don't know when he moved where, but your account sounds accurate enough. So we're in agreement: If the material is reincluded, it needs to be explained in more detail (and, of course, explicitely sourced)? -Smahoney 21:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the sentence is good now. Just placing his Anomic influence in california in general. This umbrella's the influence over first hand influence's he had in the bay area earlier during the 50's and 60's, and the initally distant but later also first hand influences of southern california in the 70's. Which both effected his work in different ways at different times. Thunderlippps 22:28, 18 April 2006 (UTC) - Okay, I got it :)

Film adaptation table

The film adaptation table was a good addition to the article, but it made little sense to order it by the date of publication of the source work. Ordering by the date of the film allows the reader to see how the pace of Dick adaptations picked up, and perhaps also see some trends over time in the kind of material that was chosen for adaptation, and the increasingly sophisticated treatment given to Dick's material. I've therefore re-arranged the chart so that the listings are sequential by the date of the film's release. unfutz 08:45, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, makes sense to me. MikeBriggs 12:18, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

short stories

Does anyone think there is a need to create an article on each of pkd's short stories, I'm willing to do this myself, but I thought I'd ask, as well, I'm a newb, and unused to wikipedia protocol and style (Johnny Copper 07:22, 21 April 2006 (UTC))

It sounds to me like a very laborious task, given the number of short stories PKD wrote, and I'm not sure how much it adds to the encyclopedia. Certainly, if you do it, each story should be a seperate article and not included in the main PKD article -- or perhaps the stories could be grouped together as in the 4-volume anthology (whether the US or UK version is up tot you). Perhaps you could begin with a few of the more significant stories, the ones that have made into films, for instance, and see what the response is. My gut feeling is that it's not a necessary task, but I'm pretty new around here too. unfutz 07:40, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I have a five volume collection, with differing names to those listed in the main articel, so grouping them by collection may casu some bother. I have checked and the collections listed in the articles are the most recent issued, however the versions I have are the most readily available in the U.K[7].(Johnny Copper 07:48, 21 April 2006 (UTC))

Unfortunately, there are differences between the American and British anthologies -- so you're probably right, organizing things that way would potentially be confusing. unfutz 00:13, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

You would have to choose to organize them by either date written, or date published. If I recall correctly date written is not always verified, whereas date published should be verifiable. But date written would be nicer because it would illustrate his creative process more. Either way it would definately need a page of its own and a short paragraph on this page as an overview and link. It would be a great addition if you did it. Hopefully one day wikipedia would eventually cover all these details anyway :) Thunderlippps 23:43, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually I just took another look at the article, and you would be doing a great service to this page to remove the list of short stories to another page and begin short descriptions there. Thunderlippps 01:43, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Female characters

The article needs a paragraph about the role of female characters in Dick's novels and stories. —Viriditas | Talk 04:34, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Why? unfutz 06:50, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

There is often a fair bit of correlation between his female characters and either his fantasy girl or his current wife. At least according to Carrère's biography. -- Jon Dowland 08:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point, but bear in mind that Carrere's book is something less than a true biography. I'd use Sutin for a reference in preference. However, your point is well made, that Dick's "Dark-haired girl" preferred archetype often appears in his novels as well as in his life. However, I'm not sure that Dick's handling of female characters in general is notable (or his handling of characters in general -- character development not being the primary reason one reads Dick). unfutz 20:02, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers seems to think it's notable. —Viriditas | Talk 01:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm unfamiilar with that work -- who wrote or edited it, and what does it have to say about Dick's handling of female characters? unfutz 06:49, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

"Some readers fault Dick for his female characters. Doubtless, Dick--married five times--had problems with women, as is shown in The Dark-Haired Girl, a posthumous collection of his nonfiction writings on the subject. This is also reflected in his fiction. With some exceptions, his females are seductive but mean, an attractive yet destructive other half: the many examples include Alys Buckman in Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said, Donna Hawthorne in A Scanner Darkly, and Fay Hume in Confessions of a Crap Artist. In his later works, Dick presented female saviors in Valis and The Divine Invasion; perhaps this helped prepare him for his best female character, Angel Archer in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer." —Viriditas | Talk 13:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm in general agreement with that assessment of Dick's handling of female characters, but I'm still not sure how it qualifies as being notable and worthy of inclusion. Many male writers -- most especially male science fiction writers -- present stereotypical or cardboard female characters (male characters, too, for that matter), and it doesn't seem to me that Dick's writing in that respect is different enough to be noted.

Now, the stuff about the dark-haired girl archetype relating to his personal life seems pertinent, and perhaps a mention of Angel Archer as being unique both in his writing and within the genre should also be worked in, but if that's the case, I think we're talking about a couple of sentences, not a whole new section. unfutz 07:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

We are really talking about subsections related to Jane, his twin sister, and his mother, Dorothy. —Viriditas | Talk 22:59, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

More to the point, who wrote the essay on Dick? unfutz 07:15, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

St. James Press. —Viriditas | Talk 13:59, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The narrators of the novels also usually consider the main female character highly important, though they usually figure in the plot less and his motivations more. Hyacinth 02:41, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I've Googled for some critical reaction to Dick's female characters:

Richard Ryan: [8] His female characters are especially ridiculous – wives and girlfriend with glossy black hair and tight sweaters, straight from the covers of the pulp novels and marquees of pinball machines. They either henpeck their menfolk or cower behind them, and Dick’s standard depiction of male/female relations verges on reactionary.

Bruce Gillepsie: [9] By Puttering About in a Small Land, written only four years later, the two characters who represent aspects of the author are in retreat before the demands of vivid, purposeful female characters.

James Schellenberg: [10] Angel Archer is entirely Dick's construction, and might be the first entirely sympathetic female character in Dick's novels.

Dan Schnieder: [11] He is especially bad at creating female characters- all who seem little beyond pre-Playboy-era calendar pinups. They are harpies or ditzes, bedmates or mannekins. Perhaps the worst example of this comes in the tale Adjustment Team, where the lead character discovers, in typical Twilight Zone fashion, that the real world is not real, but a sort of show under the gaze of eternal watchers. He then, to save his skin, promises silence, until it’s pointed out he already blabbed to his wife, who even the guardians deem in sexist fashion as untrustworthy to keep a secret.

Isisrael: [12] I noticed all the female characters come off very cold...

Lorenzo DiTommasso: [13] Dick rarely has unflawed female characters in his novels, which is neither here nor there, since most of his male protagonists are rarely stereotypical heroes, either. Juliana Frink is a bit of an exception to the rule. More interesting is the view that Dick’s male leads represent John Doe trying to understand and fit into a society that appears increasingly unfamiliar and hostile to him. Indeed, the question might be asked: Are Dick’s female protagonists Jane Does who struggle with the same problem, or are they a man’s idea of what a Jane Doe who is struggling with the world ought to be like?

Eidolon: [14] I've read a ton of PKD. His writing is occasionally entertaining, if repetitive. His superficial and usually trite philosophical ramblings are at least couched in interesting settings, even if he is completely unable to create realistic and sympathetic female characters.

I'm not saying that these criticisms are necessarily true, or spot-on -- although in a lifetime (literally, almost 40 years) of reading practically everything Dick has written I've not noticed that his female characters are drawn any better than his male characters, which is to say thinly and without any depth at all (one reads Dick for entirely different reasons, I believe) -- but for such a semi-random assemblage of critical responses to Dick work to be so generally dismissive of his handling of women should, at the very least, encourage us to go carefully into that particular area, whatever a respected reference work might say about it.

If some mention of Dick's supposedly notable writing of female characters is going to be included, then I suggest it be supported with specific citations, and not from a single source. unfutz 07:15, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I've allways found PKD's female characters to be cold and unsympathetic, except the character in UBIK, a dead girl, something I allways took as some kind of representation of his sister, and hence the only sympathetic female character of his I've noticed. (Johnny Copper 10:42, 26 April 2006 (UTC))

I think the females in Dicks stories are attractive according to him, and usualy as flawed and sometimes exaggerated as every other character in his stories. I never noticed anything unusual about his treatment of female characters that wouldn't be equally applied to the men. If they were all Joan of arc's, now that would be strange. Sopposedly there is a relationship between guilt over his twin sister, his multiple wives and the women he would describe when writing. Duh, there's nothing noteworthy about that phenomena by itself. I've read about, but never actually read the darkhaired girl. I prefer his science fiction and biographies about him to his non fiction and valis books. But it seems like there are a lot of other things that could be brushed up and expanded on the page before delving into opinions on his relationships with women. There's isn't even a mention of his drug groupie phase and the break in and theft of his papers that sent his fleeing to southern california yet. If your really interested in writing an indepth article about it please go ahead, it could only be helpful. But I would suggest a link to a seperate page about the "dark haired girl". At least until this page is filled out enough that such an article wouldn't overwhelm and distract the still rather sparse main page. At a future point it could be remerged if needed. Thunderlippps 00:31, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

External links to be Arranged

It's a bit unwieldly of a list, and I thought that it would look a whole lot neater should the segments therein be divided into usual categories in pertinance thereto.. DrWho42 05:36, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Merge

I have proposed a merge between this page and Exegesis (book). Since the Exegesis is already mentioned here, and it is an unpublished journal rather than a novel, I don't think it needs its own page; I think a re-direct would be sufficient. What does everyone else think? Adasta 10:53, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I think his exegesis is notable on its own. Most PKD fans have heard about it. (I'll come back with a longer response later, busy ATM) // Nnp 12:03, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that the exegesis and VALIS sections of the PKD article should be radically downsized and the existing content moved/merged in Exegesis (book). The subject is big enough to warrant an article of its own, and therefore big enough to clutter up an article like PKD which has a lot of other material to cover. Also as it's presented, the VALIS/Exegesis material in the PKD article comes rather early given that chronologically this stuff occurs late on. -- Jon Dowland 14:36, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Nnp and Jon. We need to be splitting content off of this article, not merging into it. —Viriditas | Talk 22:29, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Agree with above. Don't merge. And it is incorrect to say it is an unpublished journal when large portions of it have been published.--Alabamaboy 00:45, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

This page is already OVERWHELMED by the "his visions" section. I hope you are not proposing to add more to whats already there. In fact I think what is already there should be trimmed down and redirected. This whole page is WAY to focused on the later shambling and apparently damaged PKD then his the rest of his life and what he achieved during his other 43 years on earth. Thunderlippps 01:36, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I also agree that Exegesis should be kept separate. unfutz 09:00, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Move novels/ short stories lists to other pages

I took a look at the article today and at first glance it seems like it would be very extensive. But half way down the page you discover that the rest of the page consists of lists, references and links. If the novel and short story lists were moved to another page I think it would help to concentrate efforts to develop those lists to include discriptions and written/published info, alternate titles, etc. It would also help to concentrate this page on PKD himself and eventually fill out the details of the rest of his life so the article isn't so focused on his behaviour after his visions. Thunderlippps 02:10, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this is a good idea. I'm always rather taken aback when I scroll down the page and hit the lists. Removing them to another page would, I think, help clarify the shape that the article is currently in. unfutz 09:01, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. -- Jon Dowland 09:21, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

"PKD" reference

For the second or third time someone has unilaterally decided to remove the reference to "PKD" in the lead section. I have restored it. That Dick is widely referred to as PKD is an important fact, and should have representation in the article, preferably in the opening, the first thing people will read, and the only part that casual readers will get to.

If there are arguments against having the PKD reference in the opening, please make those arguments here and convince others to accept your view before removing the reference again. Absent some discussion and general agreement, I'll continue to restore the reference, which I believe is appropriate. unfutz

Reference to PKD is being removed by Lentisco (talk · contribs) who refuses to use the talk page. Another account, Eric A. Warbuton (talk · contribs) has now begun reverting to Lentisco's version, however both accounts appear to be either the same user or friends of one another. —Viriditas | Talk 03:45, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Its is surely dull trivia, irrelevant and a waste of space that the use of the intial PKD be mentioned in opening paragraph. A general reader coming to the page would not be interested or find it of any use. This is an encyclopedia not a general list of everyones favourite trivia. What do you all think? Lentisco 03:45, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

As this page is far too long and groaning under the weight of mutiple editing producing too much tangential trivia. For that reason the mention of the initials in initial para. is a bad idea and I cant believe that some wants to retain it. Eric A. Warbuton 03:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Well 'unfutz' has merely asserted that the mention of 'PKD' is important. No evidence. No back up references. The letters are a mere convenient acronym to save typing. There is no mention of 'FDR' on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wikipedia page or 'LBJ' on Lyndon Baines Johnson's page. So why here? Im mean his favourite colour was green? His addresss in Berkley SF? Is 'unfutz' going to provide acronyms for every biography? And why would a general reader want to know this mere factoid? Its a dumb irrelevancy.Lentisco 04:15, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not irrelevant in the least, as the initials are used in a lot of secondary literature and reviews of Dick's work. However, whether the articles on Lyndon Baines Johnson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt mention the acronyms for their names really is irrelevant to this article. -- noosphere 04:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes its an acronym. The semi-literate amongst us can work it out. And it does not belong in the opening paragraph of this biography -maybe in a discussion of literary value. And the Roosevelt and Johnson pages are relevant as they provide a reasonable blue print for biographies. Lentisco 04:35, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

The argument for the removal of the PKD reference really seems to come down to whether you think it's trivial or not -- and perhaps to a question of taste as well. But the ancillary argument seems to me to be weak: "FDR" and "LBJ" and "JFK" are (or were once) well known initialisms (not acronyms, incidentally) for very well-known persons. Most people who know who Roosevelt, Johnson and Kennedy are have already heard them referred to by those shorthands, so not including them in those articles is not such a big deal. (Although I would think it merits inclusion in all of them.)

On the other hand, Philip K. Dick is only a somewhat well known person who's getting to be better known all the time -- but a large portion of people who have slightly heard of Dick and want to learn more have almost certainly never heard of him referred to as "PKD", which is why the fact ought to be there to educate them, to let them know that when they run across an obscure reference to "PKD" it's Dick who's being referred to. Burying it in the body of the article is silly, since many people only take in the lead section to get a quick overview and then move on -- that's where this pertinent fact ought to be.

Also, may I add that referring to a Wikipedia page as "groaning under the weight of mutiple editing" seems a very odd argument to make, since multiple editing of pages would seem to me to be the sine qua non of Wikipedia. unfutz 09:14, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

PKD is an oft-used abbreviation for the author, and clarifying that up-front makes sense to me. Someone unfamiliar with PKD may have read different factoids in connection with the acronym and his name, and the opening para serves to unite the two. I find the article-length argument rather hard to apply to 3 characters. Roosevelt and Johnson are not relevant: you've picked two biographies which do not state an abbreviation, proponents could counter with two articles which do, ad infinitum. -- Jon Dowland 09:20, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Although I still believe it would better serve the article in the opening paragraph, I have inserted the "PKD" reference in the "Trivia" section as a compromise. unfutz 09:30, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree it definately deserves mention, as it seems to be widely used to the point of a nickname. If you go to the official site, philipkdick.com it is used repeatedly. And in fact there is an icon next to his picture on the front page that spells out "PKD". It could go in the title paragraph, but it looks fine in the trivia section. Thunderlippps 23:12, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I certainly believe that it should be included in the article. I have been involved in numerous conversations in which he was refered to repeatedly as PKD, and nothing else. Just because two people don't seem to feel that the use of this abbreviation is important does not mean it should not be included in the article. It deserves a place---somewhere. --Charles 03:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I am not entirely convinced they are two different users as their contribution history has many similarities. Hopefully, a checkuser request will resolve this issue. —Viriditas | Talk 04:04, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I have a feeling that you are correct. However, until it is proven one way or another, I am going to assume, in good faith, that it is two different people. Hopefully, we will know soon. --Charles 18:49, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Excellent point. I'll put in a request, shortly.—Viriditas | Talk 05:28, 5 May 2006 (UTC) I've decided to let this go, for now. If it becomes a problem in the future, I may reconsider. —Viriditas | Talk 10:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Charles makes a valid point. I too have read and heard stuff where he was referred to only as PKD. It should be mentioned. // Nnp 14:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

List of works by Philip K. Dick

I've posted a query on Talk:List of works by Philip K. Dick. —Viriditas | Talk 07:04, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Short/Long stories

I started an article on Vulcan's Hammer, it was categorised (incorrectly) as being one of PKD's short stories with a bit of coding that brought up a list of short stories different to the list at the end of the main article. Which is to be used? Alastairward 09:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Nick has been adding those. I changed the target.Too late. I should have checked the timestamp. Nick already changed it. —Viriditas | Talk 12:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, sorted, thanks Nick Alastairward 14:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

--71.28.45.150 09:10, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Now for "What's he doing in there?" and "Bomb in the Bathtub"? :) Chris 23:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

A Scanner Darkly dedication

At the end of the film version of Scanner, there is a dedication apparently in Dick's hand to several of his friends lost to "psychosis" and/or death. Psychosis is pretty rare, even among hard drug users. It seems unlikely Dick had that many psychotic friends... Overdose is also pretty rare -- were these deaths caused by drug use? --CKL

The end credits you refer to are here. I could post a link to the entire author's note online, but I don't think it's legal to do so. Anecdotally, amphetamine psychosis doesn't appear to be very rare, and according to Lawrence Sutin, Phil's friend "Daniel" suffered from delusional parasitosis like the character of Jerry Fabin. This period of time, 1970-1972, was filled with many of these types of people, with PKD at the top of the list ("I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at the time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally." --PKD). I don't think we will ever know the answer to your question, but drugs may have had a role to play in some of their deaths. —Viriditas | Talk 10:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Verification Category removed

I have removed a "Category:Wikipedia article needing verification..." thing from the bottom of this article. I'm not sure how it got there in the first place, but I suspect that whoever put it there would have gotten better results by posting a query to this talk page, which appears to be pretty active. Having a tag like that at the end of a very long article is kind of meaningless without a specific question to answer... --Brianyoumans 08:58, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Good job. It appears to have been added here originally as a {{not verified}} tag by User:FCYTravis on 26 Dec. 2005, but he subsequently subst'ed the tag, at which point the category remained even though the tag info was later removed. —Viriditas | Talk 09:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Utopia picks up three of works.

According to this one article from Variety, Utopia Pictures & Television has acquired the rights to make Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, VALIS and Radio Free Albemuth. I think it should be noted in the corresponding articles. DrWho42 16:06, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Ubik

As one of Dick's most important novels, Ubik deserves considerably more mention than the one short paragraph given here: perhaps some of the text from its main article could be adapted to expand this subsection? -- The Anome 10:18, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Death

I feel that the part about him dying of "heart failure" after life support was turned off is kind of misleading. "Heart failure" implies a medical condition where the heart becomes increasingly unable to optimally perform. When the heart stops after cessation of life support, this is usually called cardiopulmonary arrest. As this is the final common pathway to almost all deaths, it is usually not mentioned as a "cause of death". My point here is that is should say that he died of a stroke, not heart failure. I'm going to change it, but feel free to alter it back. 13:19, 6 September 2006.

Magnum Opus

A recent (possibly vandalistic) infobox edit names Ubik as PKD's "magnum opus." I say, "not." I wonder, though, if there's a clear consensus about what would belong here - I'm tempted to say the VALIS trilogy, but I suspect this would horrify and alienate a good majority of his readers. Any thoughts about what would be appropriate? - Corporal Tunnel 15:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree and changed it to VALIS. A quick google search on Dick "magnum opus" VALIS reveals some sites, including a fan site that shows agreement. The same search with Ubik doesn't reveal much save for the Time article. *Sparkhead 15:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Schizophrenia...

Schizophrenics (or anyone else for that matter) do not and can not diagnose themselves. And chances are that if Philip K. Dick (NOT PKD) was Schizophrenic that he too could not/would not "diagnose himself." Excuse me... but that's the whole point... schizophrenia is a personality disorder which distorts one's "reality." What a Schizophrenic perceives as "real," as begin non-"real" to the "normal-functioning" person makes a double point... They think that what they see/hear/smell/feel/think is real when, according to the physical and medical science, it is NOT. Therefore, if Philip K. Dick (NOT PKD) had been Schizophrenic he would not have been able to "diagnose himself" because he would have thought himself normal and/or sane (like anyone else).

Article lacking

Article is seriously lacking in detail. There are many things brought up about P. K. Dick in the "Scanner Darkly" article that aren't mentioned at all in P. K. Dick's article. Anyone up for some research and a rewrite?

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

In regards to the edit made on January 22nd, 2007: The line reads:

Being this his first published novel after years of silence, during which time his critical reputation had grown, this novel was awarded the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and is the only Philip K. Dick novel nominated both for a Hugo and for a Nebula Award.

The first half of this sentence (everything up to "this novel was awarded") implies a direct effect on the second half of the sentence. In other words, it sounds like the novel was given these awards and nominations as a result of it being his first novel in years. One of four things is going on and I would like verification which:

1. The novel got so much attention and prestige due to Dick's long silence.
2. The novel was so well-written because Dick took some time off and thus worthy of such presitge.
3. The novel was given so many accolades as a result of the critical reputation Dick had earned while he was silent.
4. The sentence does not mean to imply causality at all and merely is trying to tell us that the novel came out after Dick had been silent, that his reputation had grown during this silence, and that the novel was given many awards.

If there is causality, I think this sentence needs to be re-written to make it more clear what caused what. Was it the years of silence which caused the attention and awards, or the growing reputation?

If the causality implied is unintentional, the sentence needs to be broken up into two. One that says that this was his first novel after a long silence (perhaps mentioning that it was eargerly recieved due to the long silence) and a second sentence that mentions the awards and nominations it got. I'm inclined to think that the causality is either unintentional or false. It may be true that people noticed the book more because of the silence, it may even be true that they were eager to award him due to his reputation, but I'm almost sure that the novel recieved the awards it did based on its own merits, not simply due to the anticipation of its release. But if that is the case, this should be cited as it's highly unlikely. Even actors and directors who finally recieve Oscars for their least impressive performance still earned those awards for doing something worthy and great. If Dick's novel was awful, the critical response would have been one of great dissapointment, not of charity. Crazytonyi 16:50, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Dick and the CIA

I have been told numerous times that while Dick was attending UC Berkeley he discovered the location of a CIA recruiting house near campus. This being illegal, Dick wrote an article for a local paper which outed them, resulting is a small fiasco. This is supposedly the reason why he later had such an obsession about the CIA being out to get him... anyone got cites on this? Captain Barrett 19:45, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Dick Android Found?

Please give a citation for the Philip Dick android being recovered. It was news to me, and I can't find a mention of it on the web. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) 07:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The android has definitely not been found. All the authentic sources for the android, including Hanson robotics, the Fedex Institute, etc., still say the android is missing. If it ever turns up, we'll hear about it.Carbon cat 19:21, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) 07:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Mermaid story

I have to use TWINKLE more so I remember what those links actually do. In any case, I undid the deletion because it was of a note under "Trivia" that gave a mild chuckle, and I disagreed with the "totally uninteresting" edit summary.--SarekOfVulcan 16:29, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

It's about a coincidence which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Dick. Characters in Dick's novels have done all sorts of things, do we plan on indicating every time an actor who played in the increasingly large number of movies based on Dick's works does that same thing in another movie? Will we note every time that Harrison Ford shoots a futuristic gun, like in Blade Runner? Any any time that he play a hard-boiled detective? It would be different if Dick had been involved somehow in the casting of Hannah for "Blade Runner" and was drawn to her because she had perviously played a mermaid, that would at least me a tentative connection to Dick, but what you've got now is totally and completely an uninteresting coincidence that tell us nothing about Dick or his work, which all the other "Trivia" entries do. As such, it's not material that's appropriate for an encyclopedia entry. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 16:45, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I see your reasoning now. Thanks.--SarekOfVulcan 15:14, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

"Trivia" tag

I've removed the "toomuchtrivia" tag for several reasons. First, there is not "too much trivia", there are only a small number of items, and they're all interesting and relevant -- there's not a single instance of "I saw Penn Jillette mention Phil Dick on the Letterman show" variety of entry. They are, in fact, not "trivia" at all but miscellaneous facts which don't fit easily into the general format of the article. It is a fallacy to believe that every fact of interest about a particular subject will automatically be easily submerged into the body of an article, and it is not out of line to put such facts into a section of their own. It is also a fallacy to believe that WP:AVTRIV forbids trivia sections in articles, because it clearly and explicitly does not. It gives some advice about trivia sections, that they should be avoided, and that they should be kept under control (which is why I've recently deleted some entries which really were trivial and uninteresting), but it also recognizes the existence and the worth of trivia sections. There may well be examples of articles in which "trivia" sections are out of control, in which case they should be edited back, or are full of uninteresting and irrelevant entries, but this is not one of them. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 06:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Overview

Ed, why did you split the lead into an overview section? For the most part, overview sections aren't needed or recommended unless the scope is large (Top-level topics, not sci-fi authors) and the page is exceptionally big (this one isn't - only 37 KB). —Viriditas | Talk 00:36, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Primarily because the lead was much too long, but contained useful information that I didn't want to delete. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 09:31, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Ed, could you (and anyone else) join the discussion over at Wikipedia_talk:Lead_section#Request_for_rewrite_of_WP:Lead. Thanks. —Viriditas | Talk 08:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Content to merge

The following content comes from Philip K. Dick in popular culture (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), which was merged-and-redirected per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philip K. Dick in popular culture. It was agreed that the following content was all that was worth saving:

Since his death, Dick has featured as a character in a number of novels and stories, most notably Michael Bishop's The Secret Ascension (1987; published in the UK under the author's preferred title Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas), which is set in a Gnostic alternative universe where his non-genre work is published but his science fiction is banned by a totalitarian USA in thrall with a demonically possessed Richard Nixon. Other fictional post-mortem appearances by Dick include the short play Kindred Blood in Kensington Gore (1992) by Brian W. Aldiss and the Faction Paradox novel Of the City of the Saved... (2004) by Philip Purser-Hallard.

Can someone please add it to the relevant spots - I couldn't find it. Cheers, Daniel 08:50, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

My mistake in reverting to delete this material -- I misunderstaood the situation. Apologies. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 16:56, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:PhilipDick.jpg

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Short stories

Any frequent editors of the works of Philip K. Dick interested in joining the Short Stories Task Force? There's quite a few articles on Dick's short stories, and they're all stubs in serious need of some help. Anyway, just thought I'd drop the invitation: Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Short story task force. --Midnightdreary 20:16, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I thought about that just today, working my way through "A Handful of Darkness." Is there much you can do to take many stories past stubs? Can't think of any off hand, but I'm sure I should contribute in tribute to the man, seeing as how I've read most of this work Alastairward 13:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response, but there is definitely much you can do to get a short story article beyond stub. A quick example is the B-Class rated "The Fall of the House of Usher." I'm sure there are more. :) --Midnightdreary 03:33, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention the formerly featured Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. - Jmabel | Talk 08:21, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I would think that many of Dick's short stories have article potential, because he is much more notable for his ideas than for his prose. However, writing these without doing OR is going to require someone's willingness to do some scholarly research: looking for reviews of his work, academic articles about him, etc. - Jmabel | Talk 08:24, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

br tags

This is a minor thing, but there was a comment saying not to do it, and I did it, so I'm posting it here. There were some BR tags before the TOC with the comment, "please don't delete, it keeps the TOC away from the lede". (I presume the editor meant "lead", i.e., the opening paragraph.) My comment: that's a job for CSS, not for br tags. If the TOC were supposed to be further down, the CSS would put the TOC further down. There's nothing that makes the issue different for this article. If you really hate it when the TOC immediately follows the lead, it should be possible to make a simple customization to your CSS file to fix it. If you don't know how to do it yourself, I'm sure someone would be willing to help if you asked in the right place. - furrykef (Talk at me) 16:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

(As a very minor aside, "lede" is the proper spelling used in many forms of professional writing such as journalism. I believe it's meant to avoid confusion with that metal that Superman can't see through.) --Midnightdreary 15:38, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I use "lede" (as I did in the comment being referred to above) for just the reasons stated, because journalists have started to use it as the preferred spelling of the lead sentence or paragraph of an article. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 08:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, so it wasn't a typo. Doesn't matter. I noticed you did undo my edit without explanation, though. Would you care to counter my point that you're using HTML in a single article for a job that should be done system-wide with CSS? - furrykef (Talk at me) 11:03, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Gopnik piece

There is an apparently excellent piece on Dick by Adam Gopnik, Blows Against the Empire: The return of Philip K. Dick, The New Yorker, August 20, 2007. I suspect that it should at least be linked as an external link, and probably mined for citations. I leave those decisions to those who have been working on this article (and who presumably know Dick's work far better than I do). - Jmabel | Talk 18:14, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Best Known Novels

The selection seems quite arbitrary to me - SF - The Illustrated Encyclopedia by John Clute names The Man in the High Castle, Martian Time-Slip Three Stigmata, Do Androids Dream and A Maze of Death especially, for instance. I added Three Stigmata and Ubik that both have received quite a lot of critical attention. I also put the list into chronological order, which seems the most indicative. I also put in the useless-special-powers theme that occurs quite a lot in Dick's works and is an aspect of his opposition to the optimism of Golden Age SF. --Marinus 07:14, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd also suggest Flow My Tears unfutz 13:35, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I revised the Best-Known Novels section. To me, it seemed more like a "favorite novels of people who contributed to this page" section. Please use some varifiable criteria, awards, adaptations, sales, polls ect. to place one of the dozens of novels PKD wrote on the list Rorschach567 00:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

The summery for "A Scanner Darkly" is somewhat off. The drug taken is not experimental- it's use is epidemic. Also the main character is foremost an addict who's status as a narcotics agent is merely the means to supply his habbit.

experimental -- you are quite correct.

the main character is foremost an addict -- on recall, I don't think you are correct here: I believe it is ambiguous which role is 'dominant' in the narrator's life.

-- Jon Dowland 09:42, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I suppose the point (in the novel) is that Arctor's two lives are isolated from each other, even before he goes nuts. However, the story clearly sympathizes with the addicts, and most of it takes place in that setting ... Jgrahn 20:03, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

"Martian Time-Slip" and "Three Stigmata" completely belong on the list, which would then be pretty much accurate. They are invariably the focus of critical attention in critical studies, and have been championed by his best-known supporters. Meanwhile, I've added a caveat to Flow, My Tears. -- Emvan 11:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The line "also known as replicants" in the "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep" section is incorrect, since replicants is how they are referred to in the film. In the book they are nicknamed 'andys'. Minor point but have changed it anyway -- User:AlexMagd 22:58, 14 May 2007

Well I put the most famous on top. Why should a selected list be chronological??? --Amedeo Felix 09:30, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Because "best known" or "most famous" is inherently a subjective judgement, unless it's backed up with some kind of data, like a poll or survey. Absent such evidence, a chronological listing is preferable, so I've reverted your edit. Please do not revert back unless you have some objective support for the order you wish to impose. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 20:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Ha! Please give me an objective reason for the selection given. Now fame, while technically subjective on the surface, is pretty well definable. Do Androids... became the most well known film version, and frankly each book filmed immediately becomes better known than any not... --Amedeo Felix 23:41, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no objective reason for the selections made, however there has been a cumulative group selection process which ended up with these particular books. If you disagree with the inclusion or exclusion of one book or another, you can make that argument here, or simply make a change to the list and be prepared to defend you actions.

However, selecting a group of "best" or "best known" novels is quite different from determining an order for their presentation, because there is a large number of potential orders, and objective evidence for which is "best" or "best known" is lacking. (For instance, I think your argument for "Androids" being best known is flawed -- what people know is "Blade Runner", but not necessarily the underlying novel.) This being the case, the chronological presentation remains the best, least subjective one unless and until you can present some objective evidence to support another order. 09:31, 15 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ed Fitzgerald (talk • contribs) {Apologies, I thought I *had* signed it. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 09:36, 15 October 2007 (UTC))

The salient fact is that it is a selected list. Now a complete list of works would logically be listed chronologically by publication date. However there is no logical necessity to do so where a selection is involved. What was the basis of selection? I put forward that the reason of selection is always subjective, and so the order is more logically also subjective. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Amedeofelix (talk • contribs) 15:16, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

A more resonable order may be alphabetical for a selected list if an objective order... --Amedeo Felix 15:23, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I would have no problem with alphabetical. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 20:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

VALIS vs Valis

Did PKD write it as all caps? That, to me, would be the determining factor, because otherwise it's not a slam dunk. Yes, "VALIS" is an acronym, but many stylebooks call for acronyms over a certain length to be written without all caps. For instance, the NY Times will refer to the World Trade Organization as the "WTO", but calls North American Free Trade Agreement "Nafta". If you check out the cover of various editions of Dick's novel, it's about half and half all caps. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 10:14, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Google NAFTA (Nafta) and you'll only see all caps...--Amedeo Felix 19:11, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

NY Times search for "NAFTA". Oh, and Google "valis" and you get about half and half, VALIS/Valis. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 06:41, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Reverts to my edits: Why?

Hi User:Ed Fitzgerald.
I recently Wikified a few items in Philip K. Dick (no change to content), added a commented note on an apparent problem with the reference to KSMO Radio, and added two "fact" tags (requests for cites). http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philip_K._Dick&oldid=177757092

- You reverted these edits. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philip_K._Dick&oldid=177822260
Why? -- Writtenonsand (talk) 15:48, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Because the facts you questioned are well known to anyone who's familiar with the basic facts of Dick's life. Further, I oppose slapping tags on articles instead of actually editing them. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk/cont) 19:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)