Very much a case of a prophet without honor in his own country. Almost unheard of in the USA until his death, Dick was immensely popular and influential in Europe, but was practically a pauper.
Dick did not live long enough to financially benefit much from the vast sums of money derived from mostly terrible film and TV adaptations, the two laudable exceptions being A Scanner Darkly and Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep).
Dick’s body of work , while quite certainly uneven, and often highly drug-fueled and/or hallucinatory demonstrates that Science Fiction is an excellent vehicle to explore social and philosophical issues. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
Best examples of PKD novels are:
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- The Man in the High Castle
- UBIK
- Flow my Tears the Policeman Said
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