"The electric things have their lives, too. Paltry as those lives are." This admission by Rick Deckard at the end of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep still resonates for me and, in a way, begins to frame my appreciation for Philip K. Dick's work. It is at once a small and large movement for a novel which still seems to encompass expansive ideas about society. While I cannot claim to have grown-up on PKD (it wasn't until my early 20's after watching Blade Runner for the nth time that I first read DADES), I have since explored many of Dick's works as well as other texts written about them. In joining the Speculative Fiction class, I decided that it would be unfortunate if I did not use this opportunity to contribute my own ideas to a growing body of discourse on PKD.
With this in mind, I have decided to address a couple of Dick's short stories in addition to a conference paper I delivered on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
- Commentary on PKD's short ficiton:
- Paper delivered at the Fourth Annual Graduate Student Conference in the English Disciplines at Old Dominion University:
As part of a larger semester project, I am also planning a hypertext exploration of Dick's novel, The Game-Players of Titan. The precis for this project is available on-line. Comments about this page or any of my texts should be mailed to wub.