Philip K Dick Jokes
What has been simultaneously the longest and shortest year of my life remains connected by a thin tether: the writings of Philip K Dick. Although, my journey with this author began long before I knew his name, or any of his mind-bending proposals about reality. It started in a sci-fi film class in which I wrote a research paper about Blade Runner, and after viewing it 10 times I was compelled to dig deeper.
Now, having completed every mainline sci-fi novel of his (I attempted to read his “straight” literary fiction and let’s just say it didn’t go well) I throw around the term “mind-bending” pretty casually. Yet, each plot twist wrapped around the fundamentally same five characters never ceases to somehow bend my mind into a different angle.
Perhaps it’s not necessarily the plot twist, but the character’s reaction to it. The usual twist is “hey, this thing you think is reality? It’s actually not reality. It’s all fake, a lie.” Not exactly new territory after the first few books, and I’m not trying to sell short his work in any way because it wouldn’t be a stretch to call him my favorite author.
When a character encounters this “truth” the initial response is disbelief. In some cases it’s outright revulsion and denial. And in the more common cases, we find characters in such a bleak place, mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, that they…
