Philip K. Dick: Alucinante infringement of reality

To say that the problems are inherent to human existence is incurring a tautology. Beyond the will of individuals, are the facts, and sometimes they are traumatic, leaving stigmata in the mind and soul of people considered "hypersensitive". Thus, the optimal interaction of humans with their environment depends largely on the way in which the human being perceives the environment from their particular belief system. Since some epistemological theories are supported by force from a "phenomenological" perspective, people can learn a very close away from the march of events vera actually the true flow of events, but also can perceive and distally.

It is these assumptions that best fit when it comes to approaching life and work of a man who brought his experience beyond the established, heralding the consequences that technological progress and parallel universes could in the context dehumanized and post- apocalyptic. We refer to Philip K. Dick, author famous for writing the novel in the masterful film Blade Runner (1982), who led Ridley Scott is based.

TWIN GHOST

Philip Kindred Dick and his twin sister Jane born prematurely on December 16, 1928, in Chicago (USA). Kindred Kindred Dorothy and Joseph Edgar Dick, Jane dies weeks later tragically. Due to painful death, feelings of loss and guilt greatly influenced psychological development, troubled relationships and personal spirituality of Philip.This event becomes dramatic, between lines, the central theme of all his literary work.

Dick attends elementary studies at John Eaton Elementary School, continuing his education at the Secondary School of Berkeley (California). It should be noted that Ursula K. Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series, was in the same promotion (though they did not come to be known). Later, Dick spends a brief stint at the University of Berkeley, majoring in German. However, he soon abandoned these studies.

In 1940, Dick begins to read and write science fiction. In his teens, in addition to regularly publish stories in the Young Authors Club (A column of the Berkeley Gazette), read avidly all science fiction magazines that reach your hands (soon begins to be influenced by feathers as Heinlein and Van Vogt). In recent years, his health is not good, have frequent asthma attacks and agoraphobia periods. Teen interest in literature prior decreases when high school ends and becomes independent, at age 18. Meanwhile, Dick maintains contact with the intellectual community of Berkeley while working as an employee. During this period, his literary tastes become more refined and exquisite.

After selling several stories in major magazines pulp science fiction, our character-making in 1951 - the decision to pursue the office of full-time writer. Write several sci-fi novels and many of sublimating his personal obsessions, as absurd extraterrestrial beings, the evil deities disguised androids, and psychic or parallel worlds. They join these personal activities several attempts to publish non-fiction novels that were dismal failures. His first success was therefore a volume registered in the category that best overlooked - Solar Lottery (1954), thus beginning a prolific career as a writer of science fiction. A highlight was represented obtaining Hugo Award for his novel The Man in the High Castle (1962).

Dick was married five times and had three children: Laura, Isa and Christopher. All his marriages ended in divorce. As a result of heart failure, Dick passed away in March 1982 at age 53, leaving an unfinished book and many ideas undeveloped.Unfortunately, death overtook him at only a few months to see the premiere of the first adaptation of his work to film, Blade Runner, based on one of his most famousnovels: Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968)?. Interestingly enough, when his twin died, his tomb was inscribed with the names of the two, with an empty space reserved for the date of death of the future writer. Currently, both brothers rest in peace next to each other.

Since Dick departed from this world, has greatly increased the academic and broader public interest in his work-a point that instituted the Philip K. Dick Society and the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award for best original novel edition pocket. Two years later, was posthumously awarded the Gilgamesh Award for his novel The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer (1982).

TOXIC A PATH TO THE TRUTH

The 50s proved to be a difficult time for Dick, so that, as he once said: "We could not even pay the penalties for overdue library." Related to the pre-counterculture '60s California and sympathized with the beat poets and leftist ideologies. After a suicide attempt and a short stay in a rehabilitation center, he returned to find himself. It is a commonplace to say that Dick was schizophrenic, among other things, because he "recognized" on many occasions and "confess" in A Scanner Darkly (1977). This text savagely hebephrenic, recounts the efforts of a faultless narcotics officer to discover the identity of a macro-marketer drugs ... which is none other than himself. In 2006, Richard Linklater took him to ecran remarkable animated using the technique of rotoscoping (which had already given to the world in the film Waking Life, 2001). "Act" in A Scanner Darkly Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr.

Sometimes literature written by Dick seems paranoid. Their harrowing environments such as Ubik (1969) and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), seem pure schizoid visions, but probably has more to do with the use of hallucinogens with marked mental illness. Philip experimented with psychoactive drugs, although always denied that they had influenced his work. However, drug use was an important theme in many of his works. Dick became addicted to amphetamines, and also briefly experimented with psychedelics, yes, but wrote The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch -1965 proclaimed "LSD quintessential novel of all time" by Rolling Stone - before they tested the "goodness" of the acid. Moreover, according to an interview published in 1975 by the same magazine, Dick admitted having written all his books published before 1970 and anfetaminizated.

In written for one of his stories introduction, Dick said: "What a science fiction story really requires is the initial premise that start of our present world. This break must be made in writing and reading of all good fiction (...), a world recreated due. Consequently, there is much more pressure for a writer of science fiction, because the break is much larger than in traditional fiction. "

In his early novels, Dick dealt with subjects such as sociology, politics and metaphysics, which dominated monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. In the mid 70s, suffered several religious experiences they intellectually and spiritually enough to invade. For several years, he devoted himself to developing explanations and interpretations of these experiences, activity that occupied most of his life and influenced greatly in his later writings (as stated in the story descojonante Faith of Our Fathers). Most of them are in California and have ideas of Buddhism, Gnosticism, Taoism and the Kabbalah. "Ficciono philosophy, I'm not a novelist. The core of my writing is not art but the truth, "he said once.

TRANSPASSING THE THRESHOLD OF FICTION

The works of Philip K. Dick is characterized by a feeling of constant erosion of Reality, exploring its enigmatic nature systematically and creating environments and decadent postmodern, anticipating the cyberpunk subgenre. Often, the characters discover that their loved ones-or even themselves-are unwittingly robots, aliens, supernatural beings, spies subjected to brainwashing, hallucinations, or any combination of these options. This feature of dickiana work reflects the author's obsession about the fragile nature-he thought-characterizes the perceptible reality.Their stories become surreal fantasies as the characters are discovering that their daily life is actually an illusion constructed by powerful external entities by major political conspiracies, or simply by the adventures of a narrator not credible.

Regarding Dick, the science fiction author Charles Platt says: "All of his work from the basic assumption that there can be no single objective reality, it is all a matter of perception. The earth can shake under your feet. A protagonist can be seen as living someone else's dream, or enter into a drug-induced state that actually makes more sense that the world real, or appear in a completely different "universe. On a spiritual level, Dick's novels are as relevant today as when they were published. They portray the unique individual attempts to move past states of consciousness, capture glimpses and come to some understanding of the interpersonal nature of humanity. Often, these stories confront the dehumanization that occurs in the face of realities that disintegrate, through reliance on machinery. In stories like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the writer does not fail to point out the cruelty of creator inducing creatures have their appetites and aspirations impossible to satisfy.

With a prose poorly polished and a fertile imagination, Dick has conjured some of the most vivid and strange worlds of contemporary science fiction, without ceasing to be committed to the psychology of his characters-in their antiheroes majority must fight, like all of us and from its essential fragility against the unpredictable designs of a universal plan that they never reveal finishes. Alternate universes and simulacra were common plot devices, presenting fictional worlds inhabited by ordinary people, rather than galactic elites. As indicated by Ursula K. Le Guin: "There are no heroes in Dick's books, but there are heroics. One is reminded of Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people. "

For Dick, the fundamental question is whether human creations will turn against us.He believed that the existence of nuclear weapons testing that they have done. Many of his novels take place in worlds that emerged from the ashes of nuclear war. His main fascination was the possibility that technology would lead to the disappearance of the boundary between humankind creates and what she actually is.

Ahead of the XXI Century

The more we move into our new world (real?) Cybernetics and artificial intelligence, the literary works of Philip K. Dick becomes more philosophical and artistic relevance. One would ask "in the worlds outlined by this fountain, which is what makes us human be one plot device in science fiction, and a line of lukewarm defined life as we explore the deployment of our overwhelming technology? ".

Dick literature remains among the most visionary and creative post-war. In addition to thirty-six novels, Dick wrote 121 short stories. Many of these were published in the pulp magazines of the time. Hailed in life by contemporaries as Robert A. Heinlein and Stanisław Lem (author of Solaris), Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, and recently achieved some recognition shortly before his death. After this, however, the film adaptation of several of his novels introduced him to the mass audience. His work is currently one of the most popular science fiction, earning-afternoon, as often happens, the public recognition and critical respect. Indeed, numerous works have been carried Dick to the big screen, as Hollywood seems to have found a vein in her packed futuristic stories of actors not entirely heroic (but full of determination) and the magnetism that exudes the aura of suffering and self-destruction of his autobiography.

Blade Runner, an extraordinary film that has had great influence on later science fiction film, in addition to many as disparate as urban architecture and cultural strata cyberpunk literature, was the first of these adaptations. Excluding the aforementioned A Scanner Darkly, have gone through the celluloid we Remembering All For You (1964) and Total Recall (1990) ...
Variety ... The Second (1953) and Screamers (1995) ...
The Impostor ... (1953) and The Impostor (2002) ...
From ... The Minority Report (1956) and Minority Report (2002) ...
... And finally, the replicator La Paga (1956) and Paycheck (2003) ...

(Note, by comparing the dates of the stories with the movies, it was Dick advanced for its time, and its portentous prophetic legacy.)

Dick offers a unique blend wonderfully creative and science fiction, mysticism, religion, personal experience, metaphysics and drama. His book is written in clear language, with a dazzling sense of honesty. Even under his direct style and the trappings of traditional science fiction, lies a deeper world of intense emotions, metaphysical speculation and shocking ideas. One of its greatest virtues is that developed serious science fiction and especially affordable for the general public.

It was a consistent and brilliant, the most original writer of the genre. Interestingly, there is an author much more appreciated in Europe than in the United States itself-having countries is THE science fiction writer par excellence, to the detriment of other illustrious as Bradbury, Clarke or Asimov. Anyway, Dick is a controversial author. Having specialized in Irrationality, within such a radically away from it as science fiction literature, surprisingly today enjoys such widespread recognition and reverential.

It is a matter of discussion-something Byzantine, was worth truths-whether to consider Dick a great writer of literature in advance, or if it should be considered a Classic Paradigm, whose work makes a significant and outstanding contribution to world literature in all genres. In any case, the perpetual legacy of Philip K. Dick continues to haunt several generations of readers with the same open-ended question: "What was most vital, dream or delusion?".

Jorge Antonio Buckingham

(And to a lesser extent, Hakim of Merv)