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Philip K. Dick Samuel J. Umland

Philip K. Dick By Samuel J. Umland

Philip K. Dick by Samuel J. Umland


Summary

These essays examine the philosophical and religious foundations on which Dick's work rests, offering arguments which reveal both his philosophical depth and the extent to which he drew from esoteric and occult religions. They reveal how his ontological concerns are also political concerns.

Philip K. Dick Summary

Philip K. Dick: Contemporary Critical Interpretations by Samuel J. Umland

This book contains 11 essays and a comprehensive bibliography. The essays reveal the extent to which Philip K. Dick's personal obsessions pre-figured postmodernist concerns with humanity's self-alienation, cultural and personal paranoia, and the politics of simulation, deceit, and self-deception. The contributors reveal how Dick's ontological concerns, stated in his repeated questioning of What is real?, are also political concerns. Thus, they examine the philosophical and religious foundations on which his work rests, offering much-needed arguments which reveal both his philosophical depth and the extent to which he drew from esoteric and occult religions. His cultural critique also receives significant exposition, as the contributors reveal how Dick's fiction enacts the larger cultural struggles of cold war America, with its conflicting private visions and public realities, and its personal and political loyalties. The contributors argue for the significance of heretofore neglected or marginalized texts of Dick as well, including in their discussions many early short stories from the early 1950s and neglected novels of the mid-1960s, arguing that there is a need to understand how Dick shaped (or misshaped) his fictions so as to reimagine the life of his society.

About Samuel J. Umland

SAMUEL J. UMLAND is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He was educated at schools in Kansas and Nebraska, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. He is the author of numerous articles on film, film theory, and the teaching of literature, and has written four unproduced screenplays.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Samuel J. Umland Towards a Theory of Paranoia: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick by Carl Freedman Dianoia/Paranoia: Dick's Double Impostor by Neil Easterbrook Worlds of Chance and Counterfeit: Dick, Lem, and the Preestablished Cacophony by Karl Wessel Philip K. Dick and the Nuclear Family by Christopher Palmer To Flee from Dionysus: Enthousiasmos from Upon the Dull Earth to VALIS by Samuel J. Umland The Swiss Connection: Psychological Systems in the Novels of Philip K. Dick by Anthony Wolk Unrequited Love in We Can Build You by Rebecca A. Umland What is this sickness?: Schizophrenia and We Can Build You by Gregg Rickman Man Everywhere in Chains: Dick, Rousseau, and The Penultimate Truth by Merritt Abrash Two Cases of Conscience: Loyalty and Race in The Crack in Space and Counter-Clock World by Jake Jakaitis Chinese Finger-traps, or A Perturbation in the Reality Field: Paradox as Conversion in Philip K. Dick's Fictions by Michael Feehan Bibliography Index

Additional information

NPB9780313292958
9780313292958
0313292957
Philip K. Dick: Contemporary Critical Interpretations by Samuel J. Umland
New
Hardback
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
1995-01-24
238
N/A
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