Happy birthday, Philip K. Dick!

Happy birthday, Philip K. Dick!

Call him mad, praise him as a genius- Philip K. Dick will never fail to mesmerize and entice. It is now twenty five years since his passing, and there is still talk of this author. Compelled by the eternal duality between real and fake, human and android, he continually asked an essential question: What is real? What is Human? Complex questions dealing with human-ness abound in his works. In "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", beings may only appear human when they lack a soul or compassion.

What most (understantably) love about his work is the recurring notion of the impossibility of one reality. “All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality”, wrote Charles Pratt, science fiction author. When he was attending university, Dick proclaimed himself a “acosmic pan-entheist”, perceiving the world as an extension of God. After investigating Plato’s works, he came to the conclusion that the world is not really real and that, moreover, we are incapable of ever telling if it is real or not.

Look for blatant Jungian references and beautifully twisted plots.