I am alive and you are dead �
� so runs the title of a biography of Philip K Dick by Emmanuelle Carrere. The book reads as fascinatingly as any of Dick's novels and is a must for any 'Dickhead'. I first became aware of Dick when I watched an Arena programme on his life in the mid 90s and realised he was the author of the stories behind 'Bladerunner' and 'Total Recall', films that both dealt with the question of reality and ones identity. Since then, 'Minority Report' has also been turned into a film and the rights to his masterpiece 'Ubik' have also been bought up. There is no doubt that his stories, though nearly half a century old, are fresher than a lot of stuff that gets converted to celluloid today. It is an interesting fact that in the late 60s, Timothy Leary and John Lennon phoned Dick up and asked him for permission to make 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch' into a movie. With special effects as they were, it would have been interesting to see how they would have achieved that.
Dick was a strange young man who suffered from mild mental illness and who took so many prescribed drugs that he almost rattled. His father had walked out on him and his mother as a boy and his twin sister had died as a small child. He often wondered if it was he who had died and his sister was actually just dreaming of him. He suffered from bouts of paranoia, exasperated by the fact that he was on the FBI's hit-list because his second wife was a communist and he had once innocently written to a Russian scientist about his views on Einstein. But not many people know he was a professing Christian.
His conversion took place after he was haunted by a giant mechanical face that peered at him from the sky. He was then with his third wife who persuaded him to see a psychiatrist, but they told him he was plain nuts. It was only an Episcopalian priest who took him seriously. This terrifying image of the 'face of Satan' became the inspiration for the 'Three Stigmatas' book mentioned above, where the world is swamped by a drug that transports the user into a trip that cannot be stepped out of - hence you are forever in the realm of Palmer Eldritch. The story is a dark mirror of Dick's faith where one is united to Christ by the consuming of the Eucharist.
According to Carrere, it is the Eucharist that is referred to in 'Ubik', where a group of telepaths are translated into the realm of the 'half-life' after an assassination attempt on their boss. In this imagined realm the whole world is reverting back to 1939 and only a product called Ubik can stop the reversion. I have just finished reading Ubik and it struck me as the strangest novel that I have ever read.
Dick's life was not a happy one and he did not see in his life-time the financial rewards or recognition his work deserved. His faith was real to him, but it did not manifest itself in a changed life. His was one of drug abuse, womanising and loneliness. After I read the biography I realised that paranoia � Dick's greatest theme � is the opposite side of the coin to faith. This may shock some conspiracy-theory-mongers, but both faith and paranoia recognise a life affected by outside agents, but whereas faith says there's someone up there looking out for you, paranoia says they're just out to get you.
Dick was a strange young man who suffered from mild mental illness and who took so many prescribed drugs that he almost rattled. His father had walked out on him and his mother as a boy and his twin sister had died as a small child. He often wondered if it was he who had died and his sister was actually just dreaming of him. He suffered from bouts of paranoia, exasperated by the fact that he was on the FBI's hit-list because his second wife was a communist and he had once innocently written to a Russian scientist about his views on Einstein. But not many people know he was a professing Christian.
His conversion took place after he was haunted by a giant mechanical face that peered at him from the sky. He was then with his third wife who persuaded him to see a psychiatrist, but they told him he was plain nuts. It was only an Episcopalian priest who took him seriously. This terrifying image of the 'face of Satan' became the inspiration for the 'Three Stigmatas' book mentioned above, where the world is swamped by a drug that transports the user into a trip that cannot be stepped out of - hence you are forever in the realm of Palmer Eldritch. The story is a dark mirror of Dick's faith where one is united to Christ by the consuming of the Eucharist.
According to Carrere, it is the Eucharist that is referred to in 'Ubik', where a group of telepaths are translated into the realm of the 'half-life' after an assassination attempt on their boss. In this imagined realm the whole world is reverting back to 1939 and only a product called Ubik can stop the reversion. I have just finished reading Ubik and it struck me as the strangest novel that I have ever read.
Dick's life was not a happy one and he did not see in his life-time the financial rewards or recognition his work deserved. His faith was real to him, but it did not manifest itself in a changed life. His was one of drug abuse, womanising and loneliness. After I read the biography I realised that paranoia � Dick's greatest theme � is the opposite side of the coin to faith. This may shock some conspiracy-theory-mongers, but both faith and paranoia recognise a life affected by outside agents, but whereas faith says there's someone up there looking out for you, paranoia says they're just out to get you.