What Do I Read Next?
Last Updated August 22, 2024.
- In his essay "Man, Android, and Machine," included in the anthology Science Fiction at Large (1976) edited by Peter Nicholls, Dick offers insights into his fictional cosmology. He describes a complex dream universe inhabited by beings aware of humanity's struggles but who offer no assistance, alongside entities outside human dreams that do provide help.
- Dick's Hugo Award-winning novel The Man in the High Castle (1962) delves into themes of authority and political oligarchy by imagining a scenario where the United States lost World War II. Japan and Germany divide the U.S., and Dick illustrates how quickly Americans adapt to their new rulers.
- Paul Williams, a close friend and literary executor of Philip K. Dick, provides perhaps the best insight into this enigmatic figure. With access to all of Dick's papers and tapes, along with his personal experiences, Williams' book Only Apparently Real: The World of Philip K. Dick (1997) is essential reading for any fan.
- Scientific and technological advances have always been accompanied by the fear that a creation might turn against its creator—a concept as ancient as the story of Adam. However, this narrative wasn't classically defined in English until Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus (1818) while vacationing with friends in Switzerland. Since then, "Frankenstein" has become synonymous with any scenario where a created being (android, computer, or clone) rebels against its master. In Dick's terminology, such a being must be "retired."
- Arthur C. Clarke, although quite different, was a contemporary of Dick. Clarke is credited with bringing a great deal of respectability to the science fiction genre. One of his significant contributions is 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which evolved from his short story "The Sentinel" (1951). In the realm of computer fiction, the story's main computer, HAL 9000, has earned the "Frankenstein" label.
- Isaac Asimov, a giant in science fiction, first introduced the laws of robotics in his story collection I, Robot (1950). In these stories, Asimov creates the archetype of the helpful robot, to which Dick responds. The most notable aspect of Asimov's robots is their basic programming, particularly the foremost law that a robot cannot harm a human.
- Isaac Asimov's early novel The Caves of Steel (1954) addresses many of the same issues faced by Rick Deckard. In this crime story, detective Lije Baley, a New York cop, must overcome his hatred for robots when an android is assigned to help him investigate the murder of a colonist on Earth.
- Philip Kerr's A Philosophical Investigation (1992) shares many similarities with Dick's work. Instead of testing and retiring androids, Jake Jakowicz works for Scotland Yard in a world where a small minority of men are "VMN-negatives"—lacking a specific brain structure and thus unable to control their murderous urges. In Kerr's story, the testing is for this condition rather than for being an android. Someone is using the confidential test results as a list of victims, and Jakowicz must stop the killer targeting these men.
- The cyberpunk movement, inspired by William Gibson's novels, especially Neuromancer (1984), focuses on the struggle for control over information rather than planets or systems. Gibson's world of high intrigue relies heavily on virtual reality and cyberspace as the battleground. Instead of killing real androids, space cowboys must infiltrate security systems or eliminate virtual characters. Much like Dick's detectives who administer tests, the fate of the universe in Gibson's stories hinges on the cowboys' ability to hack into secure systems and retrieve crucial information.
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