Philip K. Dick and his influences on Science Fiction

 Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago on December 16, 1928 and died in Santa Ana on March 2,  1982. His first short story was “Roog,” which was a science fiction story told from the perspective of a dog. His first novel was “Solar Lottery” another science fiction story in which the leader of the government is chosen by a computer-generated lottery. Another novel of his “Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said” won the Campbell Award. This novel is set in a futuristic dystopia after the second American Civil War. The main character and protagonist of this story, Jason Taverner is a genetically modified human. His novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” was the influence for the movie Blade Runner. This novel is set in a world that has been through a nuclear war. Like the movie, the novel included androids that were identical to humans and the main character, Rick Deckard, was tasked to kill them.  These are just a few of his writings, all together he has written 44 published novels and 121 short stories that embodied science fiction themes such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The ideas that he used to write his literature have been seen in many movies such as The Matrix andTerminator. Ideas such as life being a simulation run by highly-advanced computers or that there are alternate realities. Dick was also one of the first writers of his time to propose a different view of the future, in his writing Dick portrayed the future as very dark, somber, generally not something most people would not look forward to. One of the biggest contributions Philip Dick made to science fiction literature and cinema is artificial intelligence and the questions behind it. As seen in Blade Runner there were multiple references to the robots being just like humans, for example when Pris said “I think, therefore I am.” This concept of a negative relationship between robots and humans that Dick represented in much of his writing have been seen in shows such as Westworld.