Philip K. Dick

He was born a twin. Jane Charlotte Dick arrived six weeks early beside him in Chicago on December 16, 1928, and was dead by January 26, 1929, five weeks later. He spent the rest of his life circling her, and the phantom twin recurs all through the fiction — the missing double, the other self who should have been there. His parents divorced when he was five, and his mother took him to Washington and then back to Berkeley, where he graduated in the class of 1947 alongside Ursula K. Le Guin without either of them knowing it, lasted two months at the University of California, and sold records on Telegraph Avenue from 1948 to 1952.

He wrote 45 novels and about 121 short stories, most set in a future that is beside the point. Asimov engineered robots, Bradbury wrote elegies, Le Guin built societies. Dick asked two questions and kept asking them: is the world in front of you actually there, and is the thing sitting across the table a person or something wearing a person? The Man in the High Castle won the Hugo in 1963. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? came in 1968, Ubik in 1969, A Scanner Darkly in 1977.

The money never came. Ace Books paid pulp rates and he wrote at pulp speed to match, 21 novels between 1960 and 1970. Every book he published before 1970, he told Rolling Stone in 1975, was written on amphetamines. He said that in the Berkeley years he and his second wife bought ground horse meat at a pet shop for 35 cents a pound and ate it themselves — a story Kleo Apostolides later called invention. Then came February and March 1974, the months he referred to as 2-3-74: a pink beam of light, geometric visions, a first-century Roman persecution running alongside his own life. He spent the next eight years writing an explanation, roughly a million words of it, and never settled on one. Divine contact, alien transmission, mental illness: he argued all of them, against himself.

He died in Santa Ana on March 2, 1982, after a second stroke. Blade Runner opened that June. He had been shown a few sequences and said the city on screen was exactly as he had imagined it. It was the closest he came to a film of his own. His father took the ashes to Riverside Cemetery in Fort Morgan, Colorado, and buried them beside Jane, under a headstone that had carried both their names for 53 years. Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly and a dozen more followed. Films from his work had grossed more than 1 billion dollars by 2009. In 2007 the Library of America published him, the first science fiction writer it took.

Philip K. Dick's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Man in the High Castle book
  Won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963 — the only Hugo he ever won 1962
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? book
  The source of Blade Runner, which opened four months after he died 1968
• Ubik book
  Named by Time in 2005 among the 100 best English-language novels since 1923 1969
• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said book
  John W. Campbell Memorial Award — his only novel nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula 1974
• A Scanner Darkly book
  The drug years, fictionalised — and the first novel he wrote without speed 1977
• VALIS book
  His attempt to put 2-3-74 into a novel 1981

• December 16, 1928 aged 0 Born in Chicago six weeks premature, with a twin sister Jane Charlotte Dick, born beside him.
• January 26, 1929 aged 0 Jane dies at five weeks old Her headstone was cut with both their names.
• 1947 aged ~19 Graduates from Berkeley High School in the class of 1947 Ursula K. Le Guin was in the same class. Neither knew the other at the time.
• November 11, 1949 aged 20 Leaves the University of California after about two months He never declared a major and took an honorable dismissal dated January 1, 1950.
• 1951 aged ~23 Sells his first story, Roog, at 22 and starts writing full-time He was clerking at a record shop on Telegraph Avenue.
• 1962 aged ~34 The Man in the High Castle is published and wins the Hugo the next year It did not end the money trouble. He kept publishing through low-paying houses like Ace.
• February 20, 1974 aged 45 A delivery at his door begins the months he called 2-3-74 He described a pink beam of light, then weeks of visions he could never explain to his own satisfaction.
• September 24, 1977 aged 48 Guest of honour at the Metz science fiction festival in France His speech argued the universe was a computer-programmed reality. Attendees recalled the hall emptying as he talked.
• March 2, 1982 aged 53 Taken off life support in Santa Ana after two strokes Blade Runner opened that June.

• Ursula K. Le Guin 1929–2018
  Writer who used speculative fiction to examine gender, power, culture, and alternative social arrangements. high school classmate
• Ray Bradbury 1920–2012
  Science fiction writer whose Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles became American classics. genre contemporary
• Isaac Asimov 1920–1992
  Writer whose science fiction and popular science helped shape public imagination about robots, technology, and the future. genre contemporary