Philip K. Dick was born in 1928 in Chicago, Illinois. He bounced around a lot as a child. Moved to San Francisco at five years old, then to Nevada where a custody battle for him ensued. Then he received a Quaker education with his mother in Washington DC until he was ten years old, until finally settling in California. He saw much of the world at a young age and that world in turn did not repay him kindly.
He was divorced three times, struggled with paranoia, was addicted to amphetamines, and died relatively poor despite his published works. He passed from complications of a stroke four months before the premiere of Blade Runner which was based on his novel, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sleep?. Despite all that, he wrote some of the best damn science fiction the world has ever seen.
Science fiction is built on the allure that humanity has no idea what the fuck is going on. We don’t know if there’s any true purpose, we don’t know what’s real, we don’t know if there’s anything or anyone out there, we don’t know if this is all a simulation, we don’t know if life is just one cruel, unjust, prank. And no one explored that quite like PKD.
Blade Runner wasn’t his only work adapted to the big screen. Philip K Dick was the mind behind some of the most beloved science fiction to date. Including Total Recall, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, and Amazon’s popular original series of Man In The High Castle. His best book in my opinion, Ubik, was named in TIME’s 100 Best Novels.
How did a boy who’s worst grade in school was for Written Composition create some of the most influential science fiction ever written? Drugs, and a shit ton of them. Dick was reported by friends to have a refrigerator full of milkshakes mixed with amphetamines. A practice I think McDonald’s adopted in the late 90’s with their McFlurry. Although amphetamine swirls we’re his drug of choice, PKD was also a known user of meth, LSD, mescaline, sodium pentothal, and PCP. His house became a den for twisted junkies looking to find their place in the world. Which was the inspiration behind his novel A Scanner Darkly.
But what if it was more than drugs? What if Philip K Dick unlocked a human reality that we aren’t privy to.
Following wisdom tooth surgery, Philip K Dick said he answered the door to a beautiful girl with dark hair, large eyes and a Christian fish necklace to deliver his medication. A necklace that he claims gave off a pink glimmer when the sun hit it. When the door shut, Dick claims he was blinded by a pink beam that triggered a series of visions. Visions of futuristic blueprints, ideological philosophy, and abstract images. It gave him otherworldly information in dead languages he couldn’t speak.
During the following months of the pink beam, the author submitted to his spirit guides that had him taking better care of his health and making good business decisions. He saw impossible things, living a parallel life. Ancient Roman scenes played out in his otherwise suburban neighborhood. Nixon responsible for the deaths of Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.. Flashes of Jesus Christ himself orchestrating a revolution of Rome in secret. Time traveling extra-terrestrials with three eyes. And the most bone-chilling of all, a warning to take his son to a doctor. Dick adhered to the beam’s advice and his son caught an early potentially dangerous diagnosis.
When the pink beam was cut off and stopped responding to Philip K. Dick, he attempted suicide. On the night he decided to overdose on pills, he added cutting his wrists while in his running car with the garage door closed for good measure. Triple play. His wrists coagulated, he threw up the medication, and the engine stalled.
Dick became obsessed with explaining his cosmic intervention. He himself was the first to admit that it may have been a psychotic break. Although he was still convinced that his home burglary where important documents were stolen was done by the FBI. Cops were convinced he did it to himself. He wrote 8,000 pages on the pink beam incident that he referred to as 2-3-74 in pursuit of an explanation. Besides a psychotic break, his theories included God, the KGB, the CIA, aliens, satellites, his deceased twin reaching him from a spiritual plane, himself from another universe or dimension, or a telepathic link to a first century Christian named Thomas.
Of course he could have imagined everything. His son’s diagnosis could have been a lucky guess in the midst of psychosis. Hallucinations triggered by a drug deteriorated brain of a genius who was being paid pennies on the dollar for his creativity. Maybe he was just dealt a bad hand and this is how his mind played it.
Philip K Dick’s life may or may not have become the stuff of one his novels. Straddling the line of an insane existence or a transcendent peak behind the curtain of the universe’s secrets. We’ll never know. That’s the problem with the edge, no one knows where it is. The only ones who knew have gone over.
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