The Man, The Legend, The Rebooter

  In this post I want to take a step back from the goals of this blog and simply direct your attention toward Philip K. Dick for a second.  I just read this fascinating article that David Duffy wrote about him in 2007.  I encourage you to read it, but be warned! The font is white on a blue background and it is very difficult to read!... But anyway, regardless of the aesthetic problem, it was a tremendously insightful read.

  I can't say that I know much about Philip K. Dick.  I mean, I've read about him on the aforementioned blog and his Wikipedia page and perhaps a few other sites.  However, there is always a recurring feeling that I get when I read about his bio on any site.  It seems that Dick wrote science fiction in an attempt to understand the questions he held regarding the nature of the universe and life.  To me, his works of writing are more than just novels.  They are incredibly vicarious experiences.  You get unadulterated, complete VIP access to all of Philip's thoughts and fears he garners.

Honestly this intimate level of entanglement with Dick's mind is disturbing and frightening at times.  I'm confident that this unease is what is preventing me from picking up and reading VALIS or The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick.  But at the same time, this uncomfortable feeling can be considered something special.  I don't know many other writers, aside from maybe Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut, that can effectively ransack my mind and leave with me a mixed feeling of confusion and self-doubt.

You might be thinking if those are the symptoms, why the hell would you ever want to read one of his books?

 Well, I think it's necessary to have a "reboot"every once in a while.  It's too easy to accept reality for granted.  Of course if we didn't we would all be insane, but dipping our feet with Philip into the absurd and bizarre worlds that he takes us allows us to ask ourselves the same questions that Dick presumably asked himself as he wrote literature in search of the answers.

I might finish one of Dick's novels with fewer answers and more questions than I had originally started with.  But somehow I find that that's actually the beauty of his work, and I like to think that maybe he felt the same way.  After all, it's not so much the answers that I find but the questions that I raise, as I read something like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, that excites me.

 In questioning my own thoughts and principles, I am left a little distraught after I have put the book down.  However, this experience allows me to create new perspectives that I would never have created without this force.  Admittedly, it is challenging.  But it is both very rewarding and refreshing in its own way.

It is a philosophical reboot.

Thank you P.K.D.