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 31
If one proceeds to build the plausibility — the realness - of an individual life or a
society from ' observation ' of material things , of habits , traits , customs , then one
is perhaps assuming that all these things have a “ natural ' , positive substance ...
If one proceeds to build the plausibility — the realness - of an individual life or a
society from ' observation ' of material things , of habits , traits , customs , then one
is perhaps assuming that all these things have a “ natural ' , positive substance ...
Page 38
When the issue is put as starkly as this , and in a situation in which individuals
seem to be constructed by their ... It is also , however , hard to see whence the
impulse to kindness might come in the individual — a question which is also
faced in ...
When the issue is put as starkly as this , and in a situation in which individuals
seem to be constructed by their ... It is also , however , hard to see whence the
impulse to kindness might come in the individual — a question which is also
faced in ...
Page 135
This restless complexity reflects the difficulty of expressing power as process , as
something systemic , through conventional fictional agents in the form of
individual characters , even characters of a bizarrely variegated kind . It also
renders ...
This restless complexity reflects the difficulty of expressing power as process , as
something systemic , through conventional fictional agents in the form of
individual characters , even characters of a bizarrely variegated kind . It also
renders ...
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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 |