The purpose of this dissertation is to study the value and importance of Philip K. Dick's science fiction. It is true that science fiction has always been marginalized in mainstream literature. Although science fiction is widely popular and has achiev...
The purpose of this dissertation is to study the value and importance of Philip K. Dick's science fiction. It is true that science fiction has always been marginalized in mainstream literature. Although science fiction is widely popular and has achieved considerable success, it is still treated as an inferior genre. This study aims to find literary value in science fiction. For this purpose, Dick's novels should be studied not only because of their occasional excellence, but also because of their significance in the history of science fiction.
In this study, I will explore the culture, history, and reality in Dick's science fiction. Dick began publishing science fiction in 1952, and immediately became one of the most important writers who ventured beyond the limits of conventional science fiction. His early stories metaphorically reflected the American society and culture in the 1950s. He vividly described the despair, anxiety, and fear arising from the suppressed social system that was prevalent during that period, like the Cold War ideology and the development of technology. Thus Dick's works commented on the society in which they were written.
The Man in the High Castle published in 1962 is an alternative history novel, wherein Dick postulated an "alternate history" in which the United States capitulates to the German and Japan in the Second World War. Through its complex narrative style, The Man in the High Castle explores not only historical contingency, but also the nature of reality. Dick's narrative style is not a mere artifice, but an expression of his own view of the world. In this novel, he warns that fixed history and reality are another illusion.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, one of Dick's most important and beautifully patterned novels published in 1968, addresses an important question. Central to this novel is the question of what it means to be human. Despite the need to posit empathy as the defining characteristic of human beings in order to distinguish humans from androids in the novel, the actions of most humans in the novel suggest subjectivities are still dominated by the rational, calculating logic of the cogito. Further, androids are portrayed as ambiguous and unstable beings. They are associated with the unstable boundaries between the self and the world. In this novel, Dick defines the human being not as the privileged existence of organic, but as any form of communication with the world.
Dick's novels deal with philosophical and metaphysical subjects, but at the same time they reveal social repression through a unique narrative form and satire. In addition, they effectively reflect the spirit of the age and historical vision by integrating scientific and literary imagination. Therefore, I believe that Dick is indeed as an important writer of science fiction, a dominant genre of literature in the second half of the twentieth century.