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 34
The context of this move can be rapidly sketched . ' SF is a literature of ideas , not
character ' : this has been a common defence mounted by SF fans against
criticism from the mainstream ' , whether the mainstream be represented by the ...
The context of this move can be rapidly sketched . ' SF is a literature of ideas , not
character ' : this has been a common defence mounted by SF fans against
criticism from the mainstream ' , whether the mainstream be represented by the ...
Page 42
Dick ' s fiction really is a context in which the fluidity and heterogeneity that are
often idealized by contemporary thought come back to haunt aspirations to that
rigour also often vaunted by contemporary thought . For this reason the project of
...
Dick ' s fiction really is a context in which the fluidity and heterogeneity that are
often idealized by contemporary thought come back to haunt aspirations to that
rigour also often vaunted by contemporary thought . For this reason the project of
...
Page 87
The historical context has been sympathetically examined in Barbara Ehrenreich
' s The Hearts of Men ( 1983 ) : the multiple , unexpected forms taken by the
withdrawal of men from the values supposed to underpin capitalist , patriarchal ...
The historical context has been sympathetically examined in Barbara Ehrenreich
' s The Hearts of Men ( 1983 ) : the multiple , unexpected forms taken by the
withdrawal of men from the values supposed to underpin capitalist , patriarchal ...
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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 | |
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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 |