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In the short story, "Human Is" (publ. in Startling Stories, 1955) a woman prefers an alien, who poses as her husband, to her real husband because the impostor treats her with respect and kindness, whereas the real husband is, to put it mildly, an unfeeling, selfish, dominating workaholic, who has no respect for his wife's needs or longings; in fact, has no emotional understanding at all:
The husband, Lester, goes to another planet, called Rexor IV, in connection with his work. When he returns, he has changed into a loving, caring husband, who likes nothing more than playing with children, something he used to abhor. Later on the woman, Jill, discovers that the reason Lester is so changed is because an alien has supplanted Lester's body, and Lester - his "psychic contents", that is - is still on Rexor IV. We then find out that the aliens on the aforementioned planet do this regularly with humans, because the alien race can no longer live on their decaying planet, and their only chance of survival is to escape in this manner to earth. This is, of course, illegal, and when it is discovered, the aliens are killed and the original human "essence" is retrieved. Jill, realising that in turning the alien over to the authorities she will be getting her original husband back, decides to pretend that the alien is her real husband, and thus saves the alien's life. The reader feels that Jill has made the right choice, and the ending is a happy one:
What Dick is implying is that a human being may not necessarily be human, and, when he behaves more like a machine than a human being, he forfeits his right to belong to the human race.
Philip K. Dick's works have been grouped into three periods by most critics: the 50's, the 60's and the 70's. Patricia Warrick, in her article "Philip K. Dick's Answers to the Eternal Riddles," says: "The topics ... [Dick] treated in his fiction during those [first] two periods gained him a reputation as a writer of political and social science fiction" (108). On the surface, yes, but as Dick would have said himself: beware of surface illusions, they may not be authentic. In all his novels Dick is dealing with the topic of authenticity and religion, which include the eternal questions, "What is Human?" and "What is Real?" - two of his favourite subjects. In his last three novels, Valis (1981), The Divine Invasion (1981), and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) he has entered a slightly different playground. These novels are completely religious in their outlook. On top of that, Dick appears to be writing about himself. Valis presents a character called Phil, who is a science fiction writer. The Divine Invasion relates the second coming of Christ. Transmigration is, supposedly, about Dick's friend, bishop Jim Pike; it narrates the story of Timothy Archer, bishop of California, who loses his life in the Red Sea Desert, just as real life Jim Pike had.
At first it seems as if Dick has abruptly changed theme and setting for his fiction, so radically different are these three novels to the rest of his work. But, as Warrick says: "... a careful reader of Dick's extensive body of works can find seed for the ideas that emerge in Valis and The Divine Invasion scattered throughout his fiction, in both the first and second periods" (108). Here I absolutely agree, for in all of the novels I examine I find a religious motif: in Counter-Clock World (1967) it is the anarch Peak, a benevolent Christ figure; in Ubik (1969) Glen Runciter is analogous to God; in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) the title alone suggests a connection with Christ and Christianity; in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) Mercerism is presented as a future "religion".
Most critics tend to favour the first two periods above the third and many even claim the 60's to be Dick's best period. It is true that some of Dick's best work was written in that period, novels like The Man in the High Castle (1962), Ubik and The Three Stigmata. However, I have to agree with Aaron John Barlow in saying that in the seventies, Dick reaches his climax, not only as a writer but as an original thinker whose vision knew no limits. Barlow observes that "Dick's final fervent Christianity... is his final conclusion," and that "[i]ts reflection, in his last four novels, is not a dramatic shift in focus, but the culmination of the searches that went into the writing of his earlier books" ("Reality, Religion and Politics in Philip K. Dick's Fiction" in DAI). Even Dick himself said something to that effect: "I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist" (Dick, as cited in Sutin, 5). Most would disagree with him in claiming not to be a novelist, yet there is a grain of truth in this statement. Valis, for instance is really an extended, philosophical argument on the nature and identity of God.
In a discussion of Dick's fiction, it is impossible to exclude references to his personal life. Gregg Rickman, in Philip K. Dick: In His Own Words, says: "An author's personal life is irrelevant to his critics save where it affects his creative work. Dick's life over the past several years has been the explicit subject of his latest work, hence 'admissible evidence'" (16). Philip K. Dick led a remarkable life, and it is hard not to notice echoes from it in the novels. In an essay titled "Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction," Ursula K. Le Guin comments on the Jungian concept of the "collective unconscious." She says that Jung "reminds us that the region of the mind/body that lies beyond the narrow, brightly lit domain of consciousness is very much the same in all of us" (79), and a little earlier she notes that "[t]o reach the others, the artist goes into himself. Using reason, he deliberately enters the irrational. The farther he goes into himself, the closer he comes to the other" (78), because deep inside we are all the same, and a writer that reaches inside himself, will touch his readers. I find that this statement applies to Dick and his complicated, chaotic life. Le Guin comments further:
Dick's private life has been a distinguishing factor in his work, which may be part of the reason why his fiction is so readable: The understanding he shows his characters, the tolerance with which he portrays them, make them sympathetic and easily identified with. Dick once said in an interview with Paul Williams (Only Apparently Real), that his own painful experiences, like the four divorces, made him sympathetic towards his characters:
Therefore, an examination of Dick's life does undoubtedly shed a clarifying light on many aspects in Dick's novels. Although it is not imperative in order to understand their meaning, I have chosen to take that path as I find Dick's life to be just as interesting as his novels, and because this is one writer that is not easily segregated from his work
Gregg Rickman claims in "Dick, Deception, and Dissociations: A Comment on 'The Two Faces of Philip K. Dick',"
[1] that Philip K. Dick suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) as a result of child abuse. I do not pretend to know what the effects of child abuse are and therefore I will leave such speculations to those who are qualified to do so. Neither do I want to confirm Rickman's assertion, because I do not possess the knowledge required to decide on the truth of the suggestion. However, I have to comment on Rickman's statement about Dick being a case of MPD. The conclusion I have reached in my readings is that Dick was not schizophrenic and he did not have a multiple personality. He certainly suffered from phobias and anxiety, and, at time, from manic depression. This pervading fear made him paranoid to the point of believing the FBI or the CIA to be spying on him. It seems to me that when an individual suffers from depression or anxiety, the results may be extreme mood changes, extreme to the point of being violent, so the person may appear psychotic at times. This creates a disturbing behaviour in the individual so that he may seem to switch personalities even within the space of one minute. My experience tells me that a number of things may cause this: an alcoholic parent, divorce of parents, loss of a loved one, harassment in school. All these things may cause mental conflicts in a sensitive child. Dick's second wife, Kleo Mini, has an opinion on the issue. She believes that losing his father - when Dick's parents divorced, Dick nearly lost all contact with his father - affected him most deeply:My guess is that a combination of several incidents left in young Dick a seed of insecurity, and because it was not rooted out quickly enough, it grew into a massive tree, spreading its branches into every part of his life. What basically troubled Dick was fear of such magnitude that he had problems functioning "normally," i.e., like everybody else.
What saved Dick from going insane, was his sense of humour, and his work. Ursula K. Le Guin once said in a letter to Gregg Rickman: "I... [was] thinking about a line in a song ..., 'I've always been crazy, it kept me from going insane' -- that's the only kind of crazy Phil ever was!" (Le Guin, as cited in Rickman's Philip K. Dick: In His Own Words, 105). Some critics regard the Valis trilogy an anti-climax to Dick's career. They claim he has gone religious, or that he has finally gone insane. Valis is, after all, a biographical account of what happened to Dick himself in February-March of 1974
[2] , when he claims God contacted him through a beam of pink light. He maintains that the pink light was filled with information about the nature of the universe, about the second coming of Christ, about time not existing, and about his son's undetected birth defect. The ravings of a madman? Maybe, however, Dick never loses his ability to step back and laugh a little at his own "craziness".Dick always feared he might be insane or schizophrenic, and considering what his life must have been like, he could easily have become mad, had it not been for his sense of humour. Several times he was commited to a mental hospital - he even committed himself, once or twice, to mental treatment. All his life Dick had a psychiatrist whom he went to regularly, just so that the doctor could tell him he was not insane. Dick's fourth wife, Nancy, says: "It seemed like he had this terrible fear of being crazy, so the psychiatrist would say you're not crazy. All the doctors would always tell him he was okay .... He was never out of touch with reality" (Nancy, as cited in Sutin, 159). From reading Valis, or A Scanner Darkly (1977), it is easy to conclude that he was crazy. Only, the humour saves him. Sutin tells us that "[h]is sense of humour showed itself by deadpan assertions that left listeners wondering whether he was joking or revealing a strange new truth" (82). Which is really what Valis is partly about. He is trying, in earnest, to explain to us, and himself, his religious experiences, by discussing them back and forth. Yet, at the same time, he makes fun of himself. All his painful experiences - all our painful experiences - which make no sense to us, would drive us insane were we not able to laugh at them. Dick, in "Now Wait for This Year", an essay written in 1978, makes a few comments on the necessity of seeing the humour in the universe: "Our situation, the human situation, is in the final analysis neither grim nor meaningful, but funny. What else can you call it?" (218). And he goes on to tell about the time he was reading about Indian philosophy:
So, in the final analysis there is always the possibility that Dick's novels do not have any serious meaning at all; that he only intended his readers to have a good laugh at all the absurdity he could invent and write about. But as I have already said, there are many possible solutions to Dick's novels, and one of the solutions is to see them all as simply a big joke.
Dick is constantly afraid that what he conceives as reality may only be an illusion. In relation to that topic he delves into the nature of human beings and what distinguishes us from machines. The same motifs are prominent in all Dick's works: false realities, fake human beings, hallucogenics, psionic talents, God, demi-gods - all of these being encountered by a faltering, blundering protagonist; a knight in, not shining, but rusty armour, and with a hangover. As his career progresses, Dick becomes obsessed with analysing God; what he is and where he is. A close reading of Philip K. Dick's books will reveal that despite obvious differences, his earlier novels are thematically linked very closely with the Valis trilogy. Where the novels come together, and how they are connected with Dick's personal life, is in the faith they proclaim: a faith in people.
Throughout his novels Dick strives to understand the world, by exploring the questions that occupy his mind and trying out every possible answer to see whether it would complete the puzzle. Five marriage failures, fears and phobias, drug abuse, and lack of literary recognition - all these things combined lead to a pain, which again leads to the big question: why? In his quest for an answer, Dick writes novels; stories about ordinary, erratic people - little people - who do not comprehend the meaning of the cosmos; who find it baffling and often hostile; people who, despite the odds, refuse to give in to the controlling "system" because the system is the enemy. What do we do when reality turns out to be an imitation, created and controlled by the enemy - be it an illegal hallucogenic drug, an evil demi-god or the dark recesses of the subconscious? What do we do when a human being turns out to be a humanoid machine plotting against mankind? What is there to do when the creator has abandoned his post and left the work to a substitute who does not care? We do as Dick: look until we find the most real thing there is, put our trust and faith in it and, defying all entropic forces, save ourselves and each other. So, what is most real to us? Human kindness and understanding, and we have to believe in that or else reality will continue to disintegrate and the world malevolently continue to bushwhack us at every corner. Dick, in "Afterword" to Daniel J. H. Levack's PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography, concludes:
As Dick's reality continues to disintegrate and decay, he places his characters in positions where they have to reconsider their whole existence. Being unable to trust their basic surroundings, they have to find something they can trust, and, as Dick says, that something is "the friend who ultimately comes... in time".
In the Dickian world, chaos and decay are pushing reality further and further into a state of entropy, of which Ubik is the clearest example. Evil forces are steadily working against the characters, who do not stand a chance against an invisible, incomprehensible enemy, of which Palmer Eldritch is the ultimate embodiment. Carlo Pagetti, in an article called "Dick and Meta-SF," argues that Dick's novels disclose his "fundamentally tragic vision of life" (21), and that "[h]is pessimism is not only social, but concerns itself with all of man's existence" (19). In fact, the gist of his argument is that
Pagetti fails to note that protagonists like Joe Chip (Ubik), Mr. Tagomi (The Man in the High Castle), and Leo Bulero (The Three Stigmata) do triumph over their antagonists, who usually are representatives of some evil force which is pulling the world further towards chaos. Their triumph is not big: they do not save the world, nor do they defeat the evil force in all its entirety (and as consequence procure heavenly bliss on earth, where the lion sleeps with the lamb). They triumph by refusing to budge; by sticking together; by believing in themselves, their own importance, no matter how small they are; by trusting in each other, and by having faith in the basic kindness of mankind. In the "Afterword" Dick summarises the entire contents of his work, and his words support my argument:
Kindness, as the prevailing human characteristic, is a constant theme in Philip K. Dick's novels. Tagomi, in High Castle, without a preconceived notion as to what will happen, saves two human lives. The price he pays is enormous. But his actions are an epiphany for us who watch it happen: the quiet greatness of this man shows us what human compassion can do. Tagomi is the affirmative hero. Like Palmer Eldritch is the embodiment of evil, Tagomi is the embodiment of all that is positive and good. He is our most immediate reality and he will prevail. His are the redeeming characteristics. Empathy, kindness to and compassion for others, is what will sustain the human being and holding on to that premise, he will be delivered from evil, to use the Christian terminology. Little people, helping or saving other little people - this is salvation and salvation is what Dick believes in. As Dick would have phrased it himself: if we allow it, then empathy will save us - eventually.
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[1] This is a response to Robert Philmus's article "The Two Faces of Philip K. Dick" also in On Philip K. Dick: 40 Articles from Science Fiction Studies, p. 246-57. Back to text
[2] In March, 1975, Dick wrote a summary of his visions, in which it says: "March 16, 1974: It appeared - in vivid fire,with shining colors and balanced patterns - and released me from every thrall, inner and outer. March 18, 1974: It, from inside me, looked out and saw the world did not compute, that I - and it - had been lied to. It denied the reality, and power, and authenticity of the world, saying: 'This cannot exist; it cannot exist'" (in Sutin, Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, p. 6). Back to text