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 49
15 What follows will look at movement through space and confinement in space
in Dick , noticing a particular , recurrent blockage , and offering a historical
comment on its occurrence . What we get is a broken or incomplete binary . This
is a ...
15 What follows will look at movement through space and confinement in space
in Dick , noticing a particular , recurrent blockage , and offering a historical
comment on its occurrence . What we get is a broken or incomplete binary . This
is a ...
Page 50
aloof — the closing of space in Dick then anticipates the ghastly conjuncture of
SF and horror in the last few years , most noticeable in films , and suggestive of
new reservations about technology and the body . 2 . Wide Angle : Nemesis of
the ...
aloof — the closing of space in Dick then anticipates the ghastly conjuncture of
SF and horror in the last few years , most noticeable in films , and suggestive of
new reservations about technology and the body . 2 . Wide Angle : Nemesis of
the ...
Page 212
27 , 187 – 89 ) , Dick underlines the incommensurability of the notion of space -
time that the drug implies and the notion of space - time that the novel has to
depend on in order to have a story . There is plenty of standard novelistic notation
of ...
27 , 187 – 89 ) , Dick underlines the incommensurability of the notion of space -
time that the drug implies and the notion of space - time that the novel has to
depend on in order to have a story . There is plenty of standard novelistic notation
of ...
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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