Philip K. Dick Essay

During his lifetime, Philip K. Dick was able to achieve some success in the publication of his science fiction short stories and even published 16 novels in the course of just seven years in the early 1960s, but the author was always frustrated with his lack of mainstream success. The problem, of course, was that Dick was a man ahead of his time. Since his death, seven of his works have been made into motion pictures—a number surpassed only by Stephen King (Sutin 1). But the reasons for the change may have as much to do with a changing society as it did with the man himself. Arguably, Dick may not have been easy to work with. During the initial work on â€Å"Blade Runner†, Dick who was not directly involved in the project gave an interview criticizing the film adaptation. He was later shown a preview of some of the special effects and the working script before his death and is said to have been pleased with it (Sutin 1). Regardless of his later reaction to the script, Dick was a troubled man. He was first diagnosed as a schizophrenic when he was in seventh grade and later mental evaluations both differed and verified the diagnosis. Regardless of the specifics, it is clear that Dick suffered from a severe form of mental illness in addition to a drug problem (Sutin 1). And, in 1974, he had what most people would have classified as an encounter with extraterrestrials. Though he never called it such and openly discussed the possibility that the visions and auditory events may have been hallucinations brought on by his mental illness, the reports of the incident did nothing to make him appear more stable. Since his death, the rights to his work have been handled by a trust comprised of his three children who seek to maintain his work as he envisioned it (â€Å"Philip K. Dick† 1). But it is also more likely that the sudden interest in Dick’s work has more to do with the work itself than the loss of the man that created it.   Most of his science fiction deals with a dark future, much more bleak than the greed is good 1980s would have found appropriate. Indeed, science fiction films before â€Å"Blade Runner† and especially before â€Å"Star Wars† were more fantastical voyages beyond the stars than the complex moral and ethical dilemmas set forth in Dick’s work. â€Å"Blade Runner† forces the viewer/reader to contemplate issues of humanity and the questions of genetic research and to some extent the definition of life and the soul. â€Å"Minority Report† asks questions about free will and â€Å"Total Recall† makes us evaluate greed when it applies to things we have always taken for granted, like air. ‘Paycheck† leads to the question of whether a person would be willing to sacrifice all his memories for money and if, having said yes, he should be able to change his mind. Like Fitzgerald needed the Jazz Age, Dick needed the modern word. â€Å"Total Recall’ fit perfectly into the end of the decade of greed when people were beginning to rethink their priorities. After the cloning of Dolly the sheep and seemingly endless technological advances, the ethical dilemmas of â€Å"Minority Report†, â€Å"Blade Runner† and â€Å"paycheck† no longer seem like such outlandish ideas. These are true horror stories of real life ethics. And, Dick needed George Lucas to pave the way. Until the 1970s, science fiction was still a small branch of mainstream fiction. There had been Lost in Space and Star Trek, to try to bring the genre to the masses, but it was still a fringe culture until â€Å"Star Wars† made science fiction a real movie genre with real viewers. By taking a classic plot line and superimposing it on a background of outer space with special effects and a love story and an action movie, Lucas changed the face of science fiction. More readers were attracted to the genre and more viewers were attracted to science fiction movies. Then, studios could approach the body of work already completed by â€Å"Dick and not have to deal with any of the original writer’s foibles or personality defects and have a readymade supply for their newest hit genre. So, they did. Works Cited â€Å"Philip K. Dick†, , Accessed December 16, 2007. Sutin,   Lawrence. â€Å"Philip K. Dick, 1928-1982†, 2003, Accessed December 16, 2007.