Philip K Dick

I’m gonna start some extensive development of my narrative. I like the idea of not sticking to some of the norms of story’s set in the future, conventions like utopian societies and technology solving all of the world’s problems. My research has shown that while this has been a common vision of the future it never seems to come true. So instead I’m going to try an create a narrative that is a more accurate and raw representation of the future.

To start with I’m reviewing a few science fiction novels and movies that depict this more truthful representation of the future. To start, a little about Philip K Dick;

From Wikipedia

Foreshadowing the cyberpunk sub-genre, Philip K. Dick brought the anomic world of California to many of his works, exploring sociological and political themes in novels which were often dominated by monopolistic corporations and authoritarian governments. In his later works, Dick addressed the nature of drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, religious experience and theology, drawing upon his own life experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.

His novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternative history and science fiction, earning a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is completely unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real." Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty.[3]
Dick's stories have been adapted into popular films such as Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Impostor and others. In 2007 Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series (#173).


Common themes

Dick's stories typically focus on the fragile nature of what is "real" and the construction of personal identity. His stories often become surreal fantasies as the main characters slowly discover that their everyday world is actually an illusion constructed by powerful external entities (such as in Ubik [4]), vast political conspiracies, or simply from the vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator.

"All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality," writes science fiction author Charles Platt. "Everything is a matter of perception. The ground is liable to shift under your feet. A protagonist may find himself living out another person's dream, or he may enter a drug-induced state that actually makes better sense than the real world, or he may cross into a different universe completely."

"I used to dig in the garden, and there is nothing fantastic or ultradimensional about crab grass... unless you are an sf (science fiction) writer, in which case you are viewing crab grass with suspicion. What are its real motives? And who sent it in the first place?" Philip K Dick, We can remember it for you wholesale, Notes, 1987, Orion.

Alternate universes and simulacra were common plot devices, with fictional worlds inhabited by common, working people, rather than galactic elites. "There are no heroes in Dick's books," Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, "but there are heroics. One is reminded of Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people."[4] Dick made no secret that much of his ideas and work were heavily influenced by the writings of C.G. Jung, the Swiss founder of the theory of the human psyche he called "Analytical Psychology" (to distinguish it from Freud's theory of psychoanalysis). Jung was a self-taught expert on the unconscious and mythological foundations of conscious experience and was open to the Reality underlying mystical experiences.

The Jungian constructs and models that most concerned Dick seem to be the archetypes of the collective unconscious, group projection/ hallucination, synchronicities, and personality theory. Many of Dick's protagonists overtly analyze reality and their perceptions in Jungian terms (see Lies Inc.), while other times, the themes are so obviously in reference to Jung their usage needs no explanation. Dick's self-named "Exegesis" also contained many notes on Jung in relation to theology and mysticism.