Philip K. Dick: Contemporary Critical InterpretationsSamuel J. Umland This book contains 11 essays and a comprehensive bibliography. The essays reveal the extent to which Philip K. Dick's personal obsessions pre-figured postmodernist concerns with humanity's self-alienation, cultural and personal paranoia, and the politics of simulation, deceit, and self-deception. The contributors reveal how Dick's ontological concerns, stated in his repeated questioning of What is real?, are also political concerns. Thus, they examine the philosophical and religious foundations on which his work rests, offering much-needed arguments which reveal both his philosophical depth and the extent to which he drew from esoteric and occult religions. His cultural critique also receives significant exposition, as the contributors reveal how Dick's fiction enacts the larger cultural struggles of cold war America, with its conflicting private visions and public realities, and its personal and political loyalties. The contributors argue for the significance of heretofore neglected or marginalized texts of Dick as well, including in their discussions many early short stories from the early 1950s and neglected novels of the mid-1960s, arguing that there is a need to understand how Dick shaped (or misshaped) his fictions so as to reimagine the life of his society. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Dicks Double Impostor | 19 |
Dick Lem and the | 43 |
Copyright | |
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African-American alien Androids Dream Angel Barrows become Bill Laws Binswanger Briskin Build Chapter characters commodity conspiracy Counter-Clock World courtly Crack in Space critical critique cultural death Dick's fiction Dick's novels discussion Divine Invasion double Dream of Electric Dull Earth Electric Sheep elite Ellen West essay Exegesis existential experience fact fantasy Fragments West/The Valentine Freud Gregg Rickman Hermes High Castle Horselover Fat human identity imagination Impostor interpretation interview Kasanin Kongrosian later Lincoln Louis's Martian Time-Slip Merleau-Ponty metaphor moral Mullen narrative Novels of Philip obsession Palmer Eldritch paradox paranoia Penfield Penultimate Truth person Phil Dick Philip Dick Philip K political Pris racial Ragle reading reality relationship Rick robot Rousseau says Scanner Darkly schizophrenia Science Fiction Science-Fiction Studies Shell Game Silvia Simulacra simulacrum social society Solar Lottery Spence Spence2 Sutin tankers theme theory thing Timothy Archer Trans twin Ubik Underwood-Miller VALIS vision writing