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Philip Kindred Dick
Life Time
16 December 1928 - 2 March 1982
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Philip Dick began making a name for himself in the world of science fiction in the 1950s. He wrote short stories for cheap magazines and developed his own unique style, which differed significantly from that of other science fiction writers of the time. His first novel, The Solar Lottery, was published in 1954. The most productive period of Dick’s work was the sixties, in 1962 he won the highest award in the world of science fiction, the Hugo Award, for the novel The Man in the High Castle. In the
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Philip Dick began making a name for himself in the world of science fiction in the 1950s. He wrote short stories for cheap magazines and developed his own unique style, which differed significantly from that of other science fiction writers of the time. His first novel, The Solar Lottery, was published in 1954. The most productive period of Dick’s work was the sixties, in 1962 he won the highest award in the world of science fiction, the Hugo Award, for the novel The Man in the High Castle. In the late 1960s and early 70s, he wrote such famous books as “Do androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and “Fly, Tears,” the policeman said.
Philip Dick had a rather complicated personal life, and some of the events of his life were reflected in his works. He was married five times, his last marriage breaking up in 1976.
It is known that in his youth he suffered from agoraphobia. In the mid-seventies he began to see visions. Some of these visions later appeared in his works. It is very likely that he suffered from schizophrenia, but there is no medical evidence for this. It is believed that all his life he was unable to recover from the trauma inflicted on him by the death of his sister from an accident at the age of five weeks.
There are two diametrically opposed views on his relationship to drugs. Since there has been no dramatic change in his style for a quarter of a century, it is unlikely that drugs have seriously affected his work. Rather, it evolved naturally. Some, however, claim he abused drugs. However, it should be noted that in the martyrology of his close friends, cited in the author's afterword to "Obscurrence", he does not blame drugs for their misfortunes. Instead, he unambiguously cites a “game error” as the cause.
Dick's work is largely autobiographical. The novel “Albemut Radio Free” is written on behalf of a young science fiction writer living in Berkeley named Philip. The WALIS trilogy blurs the line between Dick’s work and biography and is considered the most complex of all his works. Philip Dick died of a heart attack on March 2, 1982.