Philip K. Dick and the World We Live In

We live in a world that looks increasingly familiar to the worlds described by Philip K. Dick a half century ago. In this book, Lampe explores the multiple ways in which the global capitalist society—liquid and uncertain—was foreshadowed in Dick’s novels and stories. Analyzing most of Dick’s works, including the often underappreciated stories and early novels, Lampe establishes the outline of a general interpretation of Philip K. Dick for our age. This book also goes beyond Dick’s mystical, philosophical, and metaphysical questions and documents his economic, political, and social vision. With chapters on the rise of the surveillance state, technological unemployment, global governance, family, mental illness, new religious movements, consumerism, and urban geography this book presents new ways to read the most important American science fiction writer of the twentieth century.