Philip K. Dick Essay

During his lifetime, Philip K. whoreson was able to achieve roughly advantage in the publication of his science lying short stories and even make 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 make into motion picturesa number surpassed only by Stephen King (Sutin 1). barely 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 stain base runner, Dick who was not directly involved in the working class 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 state 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 kind evaluations both differed and substantiate 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 flirt with extraterrestrials. Though he never called it such and openly discussed the possibility that the visions and audile events may have been hallucinations brought on by his mental illness, the reports of the incident did naught 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 (Philip K. Dick 1).But it is also more likely that the choppy interest in Dicks work has more to do with the work itself than the loss of the man that created it. Most of his science allegory deals with a dark future, much more bleak than the greed is good eighties would have found appropriate. Indeed, science fiction films before Blade Runner and especially before Star Wars were more fantastical voyages beyond the stars than the convoluted moral and estimable dilemmas set forth in Dicks work.Blade Runner forces the viewer/reader to contemplate issues of humanity and the doubtfulnesss of inheritable research and to some extent the definition of life and the soul. Minority state asks questions about free will and Total Recall makes us esteem 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 notes and if, having said yes, he should be able to change his mind.Like Fitzgerald compulsory the Jazz Age, Dick needed the modern word. Total Recall scoff perfectly into the end of the decade of greed when people were beginning to afterthought their prio rities. After the cloning of Dolly the sheep and seemingly endless technological advances, the ethical dilemmas of Minority Report, Blade Runner and paycheck no long-life seem like such outlandish ideas. These are true curse stories of real life ethics. And, Dick needed George Lucas to pave the way. Until the 1970s, science fiction was quiesce 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 Star Wars made science fiction a real movie genre with real viewing audience.By pickings a classic plot line and superimposing it on a scene of outer space with special effects and a love fiction 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 finished by Dick and not have to deal with any of the airplane pil ot writers foibles or personality defects and have a readymade confer for their newest hit genre. So, they did.Works CitedPhilip K. Dick, , Accessed December 16, 2007.Sutin, Lawrence. Philip K. Dick, 1928-1982, 2003, Accessed December 16, 2007.