Philip K. Dick and AI
How “the man who remembered the future” still speaks to us from the grave.
Was it really a religious experience or a temporary psychotic break with reality?
When I was a post-doc at Harvard, I would often wonder through the many bookstores of Harvard Square when taking a much needed break from endless hours at the lab bench.
One day in early 1982, I happened upon a book with an image of a satellite in the shape of a crucifixion in orbit above our planet. It struck me as an odd mix of religion and science fiction. This was VALIS by Philip K. Dick (PKD), an author I had never heard of before, but the cover intrigued me.
Although VALIS is fiction, it is based on PKD’s “Pink Light” experience. This event took place in February and March of 1974 and defined much of PKD’s writing and life afterwards. During that time, Dick experienced many weird things including the sense that he was in contact with a non-human intelligence that he felt was originating from a satellite.
For a while he experienced a past life as a first century Christian. Dick never settled for an explanation. He wrote over a million words of speculation in his hand written journal, his exegesis. He wondered whether God or a god had contacted him. But why him? At times, he received messages from…
