Philip Kindred Dick was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1928. His twin sister died eight weeks later. When Dick was five his parents separated and he moved from California to Washington, DC with his mother. Later, he attended Berkeley High School, and then the University of California, Berkeley from which he dropped out.

Dick worked in a record store for six years, then sold his first short story in 1952 and his first novel, Solar Lottery, in 1955. He wrote numerous novels (forty-four of which have been published), over a hundred short stories and many essays and articles. He won a Hugo in 1963 for The Man in the High Castle and a John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1975 for Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.

Dick's use of amphetamine influenced his fiction, sometimes becoming its subject matter as in A Scanner Darkly. From 1974, Dick claimed that he had come into contact with a divine presence and this is a theme which is present throughout his Valis trilogy.

In addition to themes of theology and drug use, Dick's fiction frequently invokes questions of identity confusion and illusion-reality blurs.

His protagonists are often low key and uncharismatic, whereas Hollywood leads are rarely of that ilk. Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall. How much justice Hollywood has done and can do to Dick's work is often the subject of hot debate. Though he died before any of the film adaptations were released he saw a selection of pre-release scenes for Blade Runner and was reportedly impressed.

Dick married five times and had three children (one child from each of the last three marriages).

He died in 1982 in California having suffered a heart attack.

 

Further information can be found at:

philipkdick.com The Official Site

philipkdickfans.com - Fan Site

 

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