Philip Kindred Dick

Author, Gnostic Visionary, Precog

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Born December 16, 1928 in Chicago (Dick had a twin sister who died six weeks after birth)
- Grew up in Berkeley and and spent his life in the Bay Area
His parents divorced when he was young and he lived with his mother
- His mother was into psychotherapy and prescription drugs and so Phil was in psychotherapy for most of his life. He was also a heavy user of prescription drugs, and from references in his stories, appears to be an expert on the topic.He used amphetamines regularly to keep up his intense writing pace.

Briefly attended University of California, but this didn't work out
His only non-writing job was working in a record store
- Big into classical music, not really a rock and roller
- Glen Runciter character (and others like him in other novels) is based on his boss at the record shop

Drug use
- Touted as a psychedelic writer who wrote his stories on LSD (though it may seem that way!) by fellow science fiction author Harlan Ellison, in fact PKD only tried LSD twice
- However, for a time, his home became a flop house for drug users and this was the basis for the story/movie - A Scanner Darkly

Married 5 times and has 3 children
- His last wife, Tessa, was only 18 when they wed
- PKD remained on good terms with all of his wives
Died of a stroke, March 2 , 1982
- a bit of a precog himself, Phil had a vision of his own death which he detailed in a letter to a friend

Published 44 Novels and 121 Short Stories
Won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Man in the High Castle
First published story:Beyond Lies The Wub, Planet Stories,July 1952
Wanted to be a writer of mainstream literary fiction, writing roughly 8 novels in this genre only one of which was published in his lifetime - Confessions of a Crap Artist

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PKDs many books focus on the nature of reality and what is means to be human (Using artificial intelligences, robots and simulacra to make his points)
Of what can we be certain? Are your memories really yours?
This reality is an illusion!

A big reader of philosophy and theology (mainly Christian), PKD adopted a Gnostic viewpoint
What is gnosticism for PKD?
- On March 3, 1974 PKD believed that gnosis was transferred to him from a beam of light emanating from a vesica pisces worn around a delivery girl's neck
- PKD spend the rest of his life trying to unravel this knowledge transfer, resulting in approximately 10,000 pages of written material that he referred to as his Exegesis (He made a study of his earlier stories, believing that they written memories of his future self)

He wrote the VALIS trilogy as a fictional attempt to explain/understand the 2-3-74 event
PKD believed that the Roman Empire Never Ended and that the time between 70AD and 1974AD was all an illusion which he referred to as the Black Iron Prison

PKD discloses his ideas on reality at a sci-fi convention in France. People were quite shocked and he had to pass it all off as a joke!

The talking android head of PKD was lost on an airplane:

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