Dick, Philip K. - Philip K. Dick (essay date 1978)

Philip K. Dick (essay date 1978)

SOURCE: Dick, Philip K. “Now Wait for This Year.”1 In Philip K. Dick, edited by Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, pp. 215-27. New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1983.

[In the following essay, which was written in 1978, Dick discusses rereading his early stories, the autobiographical elements of his fiction, and his professional role and personal life as an outcast science fiction writer.]

When I look at my stories, written over three decades, I think of the Lucky Dog Pet Store. There's a good reason for that. It has to do with an aspect of not just my life but of the lives of most freelance writers. It's called poverty.

I laugh about it now, and even feel a little nostalgia, because in many ways those were the happiest goddam days of my life, especially back in the early fifties when my writing career began. But we were poor; in fact we—my wife Kleo and I—were...

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