The Life of Philip K. Dick

1. The Life of Philip K. Dick Steve Wood TCCC

2. Birth • PKD was born on December 16, 1928, in Chicago. • He and his twin sister Jane were born six weeks early.

3. Birth • His mother Dorothy couldn’t care for the infants. • Jane was badly burned by an electric blanket. • When his father Joseph attempted to buy an insurance policy for the infants, a nurse who visited the home rushed the malnourished Philip and injured Jane to the hospital. • Jane died on the way to the hospital (on January 26, 1929).

4. The family moved to San Francisco.

5. 1931 • PKD’s father scares the crap out of him with a gas mask from WWI. • PKD’s mother despises his father; she believes that anyone who does not spend their time in creative pursuits is worthless.

6. 1933-34 • Joseph is transferred to Reno, but Dorothy refuses to go. She is assured by a psychiatrist that a separation will not hurt PKD. They divorce. • Joseph tries to get custody of Philip. • Dorothy moves herself and Philip to Washington DC to get work.

7. 1936-1938 • PKD is in school in Washington. His worst subject is composition. • He spends a lot of time alone and becomes fascinated with the Quo Vadis story. • In June 1938 he and his mom move back to California.

8. 1941 • PKD has two main hobbies: listening to music and reading. • The reading eventually turns into an interest in writing.

9. 1942 • PKD has a recurring dream; he dreams he is in a bookstore, looking for an issue of Astounding Magazine. This issue contained a story called “The Empire Never Ended,” which would reveal the secrets of the universe to him. • The stack of magazines he was looking through gets smaller and smaller, but he can never find the issue. • Eventually, he comes to believe that finding the magazine will drive him insane. (He is a fan of the work of H.P. Lovecraft.)

10. PKD attends high school in Berkeley, CA. • His mother is a hypochondriac who tries all of the tranquilizers that are hitting the market. • PKD sees his father occasionally. • Because of PKD’s bad grades, introversion, anxiety attacks, and lack of social skills, he is taken to a psychiatrist by his mom.

11. PKD is fascinated by psychology and soon learns which answers to give on the personality tests to suit his purposes.

12. PKD plays up the loss of his sister, and his therapist convinces him that, with a castrating mother, an absent father, and an interest in the arts, he is a closet homosexual.

13. 1947 • He graduates from high school in the same class as Ursula K. LeGuin, although they do not know one another.

14. 1948 • PKD works in a record store, University Radio. • He eventually moves out. • After losing his virginity to her, PKD marries Jeanette Marlin; their marriage lasts for six months. • She eventually threatens to smash his records, and they divorce.

15. 1949 • PKD briefly attends the University of California at Berkeley.

16. 1950 • PKD marries Kleo Apostolides; they divorce in 1958. • She is a political activist who “loves feeling indignant.” • PKD meets Anthony Boucher at the record store. After Kleo gives him one of PKD’s stories, Boucher encourages PKD.

17. 1952 • PKD sells his first short story “Roog” to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (edited by Boucher). • He becomes a full time writer. • He sells 4 stories in 1952, 30 in 1953 (including “Paycheck”), 28 in 1954, and then publishes his first novel as well as a short story collection in 1955.

18. 1955 • PKD sells his first novel Solar Lottery. • PKD is visited by the FBI. They believe it is because of the political activities of his wife Kleo, but it is because of a letter he had written to a Soviet scientist, hoping to get a scientific scoop to inspire a story. • PKD tries to act cool, but just ends up making the agents suspicious. • They visit the couple (and PKD by himself) several times.

19. 1956 • Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers is made into a movie. • PKD wonders if the story is a rip-off of one of his, but eventually decides that there was something in the social climate of the time. • PKD’s The World Jones Made, The Man Who Japed and “The Minority Report” are published.

20. 1957 • PKD becomes interested in the ideas of: • Koinos kosmos – what people think of as objective reality • Idios kosmos – the idealized version of the universe that each of us carries around in our heads

21. 1957 • This inspires a novel -- Eye in the Sky -- in which eight characters are drawn into the universe of one of their own idios kosmos. • One of the character’s wives may or may not be a Communist.

22. 1957 • PKD gives a copy to one of the FBI agents. • The Cosmic Puppets is published.

23. PKD experience the “incident of the light cord.” • The scene will eventually typify the kind of sci-fi known as “phildickian” – one small detail out of place that causes the hero to question reality. • The novel based on that experience is Time Out of Joint, which is published in 1958.

24. The novel based on that experience is Time Out of Joint, which is published in 1958.

25. 1958 • PKD and Kleo move to the country. • PKD and Kleo meet Anne Williams Rubinstein, a widow with three girls; she and PKD eventually start an affair. • PKD divorces Kleo. • PKD and Anne marry later that year; they have one daughter and divorce in 1964. • Anne gives PKD two years to “make it” as a writer.

26. 1960 • PKD and Anne have a daughter Laura. PKD checks into the hospital as they are leaving because of “chest pains.” • Later on that year, Anne gets pregnant again but has an abortion. • Oddly enough, PKD’s novel from this time The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike seems to predict this situation.

27. 1960 • Dr. Futurity and Vulcan’s Hammer are published.

28. 1961 • PKD becomes obsessed with the I Ching. • He dabbles in jewelry artistry and then buys a shack where he can work undisturbed. • The I Ching, he believes, tells him that he will either write a truly great novel or die trying. • He begins to work on The Man in the High Castle, which will be published in 1962.

29. The novel has several inspirations: • The I Ching • The incident of the light cord

30. The novel has several inspirations: • Stanley Milgram’s “small world study” • Solomon Asch’s study of social conformity

31. 1963 • PKD wins the Hugo Award for The Man in the High Castle. • It is the first major success of his life. • It is dedicated to his wife; “To Anne, my wife, without whose silence, this book would never have been written.” • Several weeks later, he receives a box of his “mainstream” manuscripts from his agent, who explains that he can’t sell them. • The Game Players of Titan is published.

32. 1964 • PKD publishes Martian Time-Slip. • This novel deals with the question of what it must feel like to be psychotic. • The novel is not a resounding success. • The Penultimate Truth and The Simulacra are published.

33. 1964 • PKD publishes Clans of the Alphane Moon. • This novel presents a picture of a society with a caste system based on mental illnesses. • PKD is fascinated by psychology, as well as the theories of Huxley and others on the mind-altering properties of certain drugs.

34. Anne and PKD are using their therapist to snipe at one another. • PKD convinces the therapist to have Anne committed. • After she returns, he tries to ensure that she takes her meds. • He also strikes up a friendship with Maren Hackett, a religious lady who inspires him to read the epistles of Paul. • Maren has a daughter, Nancy.

35. November 1963 • PKD sees a giant robotic face in the sky. • He considers the possibility that he has seen God. • He talks to the priest at Maren’s church, who tells him he must have seen Satan. • Glad that someone believes him, PKD decides to join the church and be baptized. • He meets James Pike, the Episcopal bishop of California (who would eventually become Maren’s lover).

36. 1964 • Anne and the girls join him, although the girls are confused by many aspects of Christianity. • He explains the Holy Sacrament to them as an agent of mutation. • While waiting for the baptism, he writes The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. • After the baptism, his relationship with Anne deteriorates, and they separate. He moves back to Berkeley.

37. 1965 • PKD publishes The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. • A fan of H.P. Lovecraft, for PKD, “eldritch” is Freud’s “uncanny” mixed with a notion of panic.

38. 1965 • Influenced by Timothy Leary and the cultural climate at Berkeley, PKD drops acid for the first and only time. • He claims that Leary and John Lennon called him one night after reading the book and asked about making the book into a movie.

39. 1966 • PKD marries Nancy Hackett; they have a daughter Isolde (Isa) and are divorced in 1970. • James Pike’s son kills himself; Pike and Maren begin to seek out psychics to find out about his son. • This is also about the time that a great interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls was in the public. • Also, a theory about hallucinogenic mushrooms and the early church appears.

40. 1966 • PKD runs across an essay written by Alan Turing, detailing the Turing Test. • This, and his relationship with Nancy, inspires him to write Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which is set in 1992). • Now Wait for Last Year, The Crack in Space, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (the inspiration for Total Recall), and The Unteleported Man are published.

41. 1967 • Maren commits suicide. • PKD and Nancy have a daughter, Isa, but Nancy begins to exert her independence. • PKD is addicted to a number of legal and illegal drugs at this point. • PKD becomes convinced that Nancy is crazy. • The Zap Gun and Counter-Clock World are published.

42. 1967 • Harlan Ellison’s groundbreaking Dangerous Visions is published. It includes the PKD story “Faith of Our Fathers.” • Set in a society where everyone is watched by the Leader, this story is about a hero who takes a drug that happens to counteract the drugs that society has been taking in their water. He sees the Leader for the monster that he truly is. At the end of the story, however, he comes to realize that the monster is God.

43. 1968 • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is published. • It adds “caritas” to the Turing Test.

44. 1968 • PKD is audited by the IRS, shortly after a leftist magazine Ramparts published a petition that he had signed, calling on Americans to refuse to pay their taxes to protest the Vietnam War.

45. 1969 • Ubik is published. • Inspired by PKD’s paranoia and some recent readings about cyrogenics, Ubik was voted by Time magazine in 2005 as one of the hundred best English language novels. • Galactic Pot-Healer is published.

46. 1970 • PKD and Nancy get a divorce. • An overdose of amphetamines sends PKD to the hospital. • He begins Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, but abandons it in despair. • Our Friends From Frolix 8 and A Maze of Death are published.

47. PKD lives in “Stonerville” for awhile. • His place is burglarized, and he becomes convinced that someone (the church, the CIA) was behind it. • The police ask him if he broke into his own house.

48. 1972 • PKD gets lost for a month in Vancouver. • When he comes to his senses, he tries to kill himself. • He is institutionalized for a month or so. • PKD donates his manuscripts and papers to the Special Collections Library at Cal-State Fullerton, after a professor there responds to one of his numerous letters for help. • We Can Build You is published.

49. 1973 • PKD marries Tessa Busby (she’s 18; he’s not); they have a son Christopher and get divorced in 1976. • That fall, he begins to work on A Scanner, Darkly.

50. 1974 • Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is published.