Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the PostmodernOnce the sole 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 analyses 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 chal |
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Page 99
... merely part of the aliens ' operating procedure , and merely helped Dick to tell the story ; his resistance to what happened to the rest of the community offers no hope . In the final paragraph another man who had been overlooked is ...
... merely part of the aliens ' operating procedure , and merely helped Dick to tell the story ; his resistance to what happened to the rest of the community offers no hope . In the final paragraph another man who had been overlooked is ...
Page 103
... merely that the family is often used to inculcate violence , but that the process is precari- ous . What if there is no alien , or no robot , on which to project the violence simmering between father and son , and yet needing to be ...
... merely that the family is often used to inculcate violence , but that the process is precari- ous . What if there is no alien , or no robot , on which to project the violence simmering between father and son , and yet needing to be ...
Page 224
... merely problematic but disturbing . If postmodern- ism typically subverts prevailing assumptions about the relations between texts and social reality , this postmodernist novel practises a very strange form of subversion . 1. Wide Angle ...
... merely problematic but disturbing . If postmodern- ism typically subverts prevailing assumptions about the relations between texts and social reality , this postmodernist novel practises a very strange form of subversion . 1. Wide Angle ...
Contents
Philip K Dick and the Postmodern | 3 |
Complications of Humanism and Postmodernism | 30 |
Static and Kinetic in Dicks Political Unconscious | 44 |
Copyright | |
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Philip K. Dick: Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern Christopher Palmer No preview available - 2003 |
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alien Alphane Moon androids Arnie Arnie's Autofac become Bleekmen Chapter Charley child Childan Chuck Clans condition consumption contemporary context culture death deity depiction Deus Irae Dick Dick's fiction Dick's novels Dick's SF Dickian discussion Divine Invasion dopers drug effect empathy entropy episode ethical fact fake fantasy feeling fifties Flow My Tears Galactic Pot-Healer genre Grasshopper Lies Heavy happens High Castle Horselover Fat human humanist images imagination individual instance Jack Japanese Kasoura kind late novels Lord Running Clam machines main character Manfred Manfred's Martian Time-Slip Maze of Death means megatext modern narrative Nazis ordinary Palmer Eldritch Penultimate Truth person Philip Philip K plot political postmodern postmodernist Radio Free Albemuth reader realism reality relations robot Runciter Scanner Darkly scene Science Fiction seen sense short stories Simulacra social society space suggests Tagomi things Timothy Archer tion Ubik Valis Walt