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 6
Dick ' s writing situates itself on territory contested between politics and religion :
politics , wherein a certain cultural practice or way of explaining the world can be
seen as ideological , that is , an invention or production helpful to those in power
...
Dick ' s writing situates itself on territory contested between politics and religion :
politics , wherein a certain cultural practice or way of explaining the world can be
seen as ideological , that is , an invention or production helpful to those in power
...
Page 64
Fantasy itself is seen to be subject to the forces that structure and deform society
as a whole , but society is seen as the product of organized forces of fantasy . In
Chapter 11 I try a different tactic , again ranging over the scope of Dick ' s novels
...
Fantasy itself is seen to be subject to the forces that structure and deform society
as a whole , but society is seen as the product of organized forces of fantasy . In
Chapter 11 I try a different tactic , again ranging over the scope of Dick ' s novels
...
Page 213
Donna recalls an addict she once knew who had a glimpse of some other world ,
a wonderful place seen through a doorway ; but he could not move through the
doorway , or recover the image of the doorway . What he had seen through the ...
Donna recalls an addict she once knew who had a glimpse of some other world ,
a wonderful place seen through a doorway ; but he could not move through the
doorway , or recover the image of the doorway . What he had seen through the ...
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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 |