A Short Discussion of PKD and Frankenstein
Philip K. Dick lived the last ten years of his life in Orange County, closely associated with California State University, Fullerton. He wrote important works here, including A Scanner Darkly, VALIS and his long Exegesis. Eventually, he left his papers to CSUF’s Special Collections. They form a key part of our remarkable sf manuscript holdings, including work by Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, and others.
Dick won the 1962 Hugo Award for best novel for The Man in the High Castle. He also won a 1974 Campbell, a 1978 British Science Fiction Association award, and a 1979 French Graouilly d’Or. He was nominated for numerous other Hugo and Nebula awards. Philip K. Dick died on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California. Since his death, his influence has only grown until he has become simply one of America’s most influential writers. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
Dick’s most famous novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), appears in The Frankenstein Meme database. Adapted into the influential film Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott, the novel explores what Dick calls one of his “basic topics,” cutting across so many of his short stories and novels: “What constitutes the authentic human being?” His androids or “Andys,” like Mary Shelley’s unnamed Creature, yearn to be human like their creators even as they are more than human.
In Androids, Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter is hired to “retire” runaway androids, called “replicants” in Bladerunner. The six escaped Nexus-6 models look just like humans. To retire them means to kill, sometimes brutally. Before the end, Deckard begins to suspect that he is an android. As in Frankenstein, the lines between human and monstrous begin to blur.
Longer Looks at PKD
The 2016 Philip K. Dick Conference took place on the CSU, Fullerton campus. The Pollak Library Special Collections page on our Exhibit during the conference and SF at CSUF, the website in support of the conference, both give a longer look at his work. Our 2014 website Philip K. Dick in Orange County explores his themes and influence on Orange County. Philip K. Dick, Here and Now, a collection of essays that began with papers at the conference, is forthcoming from McFarland in 2019.
LINKS:
The 2016 Philip K. Dick Conference
The Pollak Library Special Collections page on our Philip K. Dick, Here and Now Exhibit