Voices from the Street
Stuart Hadley is a radio electronics salesman in early 1950s Oakland, California. He has what many would consider the ideal life; a nice house, a pretty wife, a decent job with prospects for advancement, but he still feels unfulfilled. Something is missing from his life. Hadley is a restless young man – an artist, a dreamer, a screw-up. He reacts to the love of his wife and the kindness of his employer with anxiety and fear. He tries to fill his void first with drinking, and then with an affair, and finally with religious fanaticism, but nothing seems to be working, and it is driving him crazy.
Voices from the Street is the story of Hadley’s descent into depression and madness, and his emergence out the other side.
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick (1928–1982) was an American novelist and short story writer whose published work during his lifetime was almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works, Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences and addressed the nature of drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly.