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What is real? What is human? These two core topics of Philip K. Dick´s permeate his work. This book asks why they were so important to him and digs further into his deeper subthemes such as: illusions, hallucinations, paranoia and schizophrenia. They are core elements of Dick s novels and short stories, often coupled with the use of drugs of all sorts. Dick tries to find out how real reality is and whether our concept of reality may be just an illusion. He contrasts the warmongering and the arms race of his day with values like humaneness, compassion and community. He asks what it ts that makes us human by heralding a looming conflict with androids who eventually threaten to supplant us. Dick s influences and views are also discussed in this book, such as Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, presocratic philosophy, quantum physics, General Semantics and Constructivism. Despite of his unconventional genre of Science Fiction I think that Dick can be seen as a postmodernist writer who compares favorably with even Barth or Pynchon. His themes are timeless, topical, political, ethical, religious and show philosophical and literary depth.

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Born in 1977 in Linz he studied English, Psychology and Philosophy at Karl-Franzens University, Graz. He now works as a teacher.

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