Before I talk about how great (and terrible) Philip K. Dick was, I just have to say today is my birthday. As I ask every year, please go to your favorite Social Media site and share your favorite image of mine with the hash tag #JAWBDay15
I'll make it easy for you, here is a new one of Philip K. Dick.
Like I keep saying, science fiction's discussion of society is what makes it great. Yes, I also like explosions, aliens attacking, and the entertaining trappings of the genre.
Philip K. Dick is an interesting writer. Yes, there is rampant sexism in books like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," yes, some of his prose lacks the elegance of some of his compatriots, but he has still written some great stories.
I have yet to read "Man in the High Castle" (Which is being adapted as a TV series.), but my favorite book is "A Scanner Darkly." He ignores his female characters and I have no clue if Charles Freck in his suicide attempt placing "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand in his bed was satire or not, but it's amazing how it is an indictment of Nixon's War on Drugs.
He wrote this in 1977.
This is from an obscure 1955 novel "Solar Lottery ," telling a story which has a plot eerily similar to "The Hunger Games." A lottery with a televised assassination of someone who is pulled from the lottery. To be fair I have not read this book, but it seems that in the 1950s he was writing about the libertarian paradise that Ferguson has become by asking the question, "But what are you supposed to do in a society that’s corrupt? Are you supposed to obey corrupt laws? Is it a crime to break a law that’s a rotten law, or an oath that’s rotten?"
In the 1950s, America was dealing with segregation, Jim Crow and what my youngest calls "The time of the unfair laws." This could just be me projecting my values into Dick's work, but it seems to me like a push back on Jim Crow south. Lynching was a town celebration. People would celebrate seeing a black body swinging from a tree. Why not having a future where a lottery to see someone killed on television?
Philip K Dick's novels have been some of the best movies that have been out there over the years, from "Blade Runner" to "Total Recall" to the "Minority Report," his work has inspired us and made us think, and will do so for generations to come.
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