Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the PostmodernOnce solely the possession of fans and buffs, the SF author Philip K Dick is now finding a much wider audience, as the success of the films Blade Runner and Minority Report shows. The kind of world he predicted in his funny and frightening novels and stories is coming closer to most of us: shifting realities, unstable relations, uncertain moralities. Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern examines a wide range of Dick's work, including his short stories and posthumously published realist novels. Christopher Palmer analyzes the puzzling and dazzling effects of Dick's fiction, and argues that at its heart is a clash between exhilarating possibilities of transformation, and a frightening lack of ethical certainties. Dick's work is seen as the inscription of his own historical predicament, the clash between humanism and postmodernism being played out in the complex forms of the fiction. The problem is never resolved, but Dick's ways of imagining it become steadily more ingenious and challenging. |
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Page 16
This last happens to the participants in the ' Perky Pat ' game in Palmer Eldritch ,
who , taking a certain drug , become ... trying to crawl across a pile of logs , or
trying to climb a staircase , while your body becomes heavy like a dead weight .
This last happens to the participants in the ' Perky Pat ' game in Palmer Eldritch ,
who , taking a certain drug , become ... trying to crawl across a pile of logs , or
trying to climb a staircase , while your body becomes heavy like a dead weight .
Page 113
It becomes impossible to establish cause and effect and the sense of human
beings as experiencing movement ... The authority that was constructed after the
historical break has stagnated and become degraded , it is now no more than a.
It becomes impossible to establish cause and effect and the sense of human
beings as experiencing movement ... The authority that was constructed after the
historical break has stagnated and become degraded , it is now no more than a.
Page 212
This puzzling paratextual ending can be connected to the ending of Dick ' s next
novel , A Scanner Darkly ( 1977 ) . The story , as we have seen , is extremely
bleak : the predominant figure is that of a closed loop ; the main character
becomes ...
This puzzling paratextual ending can be connected to the ending of Dick ' s next
novel , A Scanner Darkly ( 1977 ) . The story , as we have seen , is extremely
bleak : the predominant figure is that of a closed loop ; the main character
becomes ...
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Contents
Philip K Dick and the Postmodern | 23 |
Complications of Humanism and Postmodernism | 35 |
Static and Kinetic in Dicks Political Unconscious | 44 |
Copyright | |
9 other sections not shown
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actions actually alien American androids Arnie attempts become begins called Chapter characters child comes concerned condition context culture death define deity depiction Deus Irae Dick Dick's Dick's novels discussion drug effect Eldritch existence experience expresses fact fantasy feelings fiction fifties forces further future given gives going half-life happens High Castle human images imagination important individual instance interesting involves Jack kill kind late later live machines main character Manfred material matter means merely narrative nature novel objects offers ordinary perhaps person Philip political possible postmodern present problem production reader realism reality reason relations Scanner Darkly scene seems seen sense simply situation social society space story suggests Tagomi things Time-Slip tion true turn Ubik usually Valis whole writing
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern Liverpool University Press Series Liverpool science fiction texts and studies |
| Author | Christopher Palmer |
| Edition | reprint |
| Publisher | Liverpool University Press, 2003 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | 6 Mar 2008 |
| ISBN | 0853236186, 9780853236184 |
| Length | 259 pages |
| Subjects | › Literary Criticism / Science Fiction & Fantasy |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |