The original book was published in 1993. Translated by Timothy Bent.
From the master
chronicler of psychological extremes, an unforgettable portrait of the
“Shakespeare of science fiction” whose work has influenced millions
For his many devoted readers, Philip K. Dick is not only one of the “most valiant psychological explorers of the 20th century” (The New York Times) but a source of divine revelation. Dick, whose work inspired such films as Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report, dedicated his life to solving one ultimately unanswerable question: What is real?
In the riveting style that won accolades for The Adversary, Emmanuel Carrère follows Dick’s strange odyssey from his traumatic
beginnings in 1928, when his twin sister died in infancy, to his lonely
end in 1982, beset by mystical visions of swirling pink lights,
three-eyed invaders, and messages from the Roman Empire. Drawing on
interviews as well as unpublished sources, Carrère traces Dick’s
multiple marriages, paranoid fantasies, and vertiginous encounters with
the drug culture of sixties California. He vividly conjures the spirit
of this restless observer of American postwar malaise whose more than
fifty novels subverted the materials of science fiction — parallel
universes, intricate time loops, collective delusions — to create classic
works of contemporary anxiety.
As disturbing and engrossing as a
book by its subject, Carrère’s unconventional work interweaves life and
art to reveal the maddening genius whose writing foresaw — from cloning to reality TV — a world that looks ever more like one of his inventions.
