History Creator / PhilipKDick

Dick's characters typically spend much of his work wondering who they are, and whether their memories are real or fake. His stories often dealt with [[SchrodingersButterfly reality as illusion]], UsefulNotes/{{Gnosticism}}, [[CloudCuckoolander crazy people]], [[MushroomSamba drugged up people]], [[CuckooNest people who seem crazy but are in fact drugged up]], [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness people who seem drugged up who are in fact crazy]], {{Mad Oracle}}s, [[JunkieProphet drugged up oracles]], [[WorldOfChaos reality going crazy]], [[PhlebotinumPills reality going on drugs]], [[GovernmentConspiracy government conspiracies]], [[CorruptCorporateExecutive evil corporations]], [[ArtificialHuman simulacra]], [[CosmicEntity Cosmic Entities]], [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]], and enough combinations of the above that a permanent state of [[MindScrew Mind-Screwed-ness]] becomes an occupational hazard for his readers. Twist endings and world-shattering revelations are also characteristic of his work, reflecting what can only be described as his [[RealitySubtext rich inner life]]. Similarly a common theme in his works is a comparison between an objective "Real" reality and a subjective "Perceived" reality, debating the dividing line between the two and whether it is even worth contemplating the difference; a theme that reflected his own mental state.

* ArtificialHuman: ''Second Variety'' and many others

** Hilariously screwed with in ''We Can Remember It For You Wholesale''.

* BuxomBeautyStandard: All the time, to the point you could say breast were Dick's AuthorAppeal.

* CityNoir: ''Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said''.

* CocaPepsiInc: In ''The Divine Invasion'', the backstory includes a merger between the Catholic Church and the Soviet Union.

** "The Unreconstructed M".

** Also, Floys Jones considers his visions of the future this, as he's anticipating his own death.

** Felix Buckman in ''Flow My Tears''.
** In ''A Maze of Death'', you have the subverted dumb-blonde "Susie Smart", the lying hypochondriac "Dr. Babble", and the JerkAss bully "Ignatz Thugg". In a humorous moment, Ignatz Thugg makes a snarky comment about how fitting Dr. Babble's name is without ever noticing he has a MeaningfulName himself.

* MentalStory: ''Eye in the Sky'' takes place in a sort of shared mental world, with the current most-dominant personality warping it to their prejudices and worldview. Same with ''A Maze of Death'', only there is no dominant personality in that world.

* PrecrimeArrest: In "The Minority Report".

* RealityWarper: Emmanuel and Zina in ''The Divine Invasion''. Either that or everyone's crazy, which is equally possible. The two characters have a disagreement over how the world should be run, reflecting perennial mystical themes and Kabbalah. Actually, Manny and Zina are [[spoiler:(aspects of?) God]]. So reality warping comes naturally, kinda.

* RetroactivePreparation: The premise of "Paycheck".

* SapientShip: The spaceship in "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon". Inexplicably sentient transportation is actually dime-a-dozen in Dick's fiction.

* SuperReflexes: Appears in ''The Counter-Clock World''.

** Floyd Jones, the driving character (though almost never the viewpoint character) of ''The World Jones Made'', can see a year into the future. Too bad his future sight is actually made of memories broadcast by his future self to his past self, essentially [[YouCantFightFate stripping him of free will]].

* FateWorseThanDeath: In-universe: ''The Unreconstructed M'' has the "Banishment System", wherein perpetrators of heinous/violent crimes are stripped of all their assets and force-teleported to backwater colonies far, far away from Earth, as a replacement and equivalent for the death penalty. Its opponents, as well as the villain of the story who finds himself Banished, consider it this - he no longer has access to his substantial wealth, creature comforts, the hustle and bustle of city life, modern amenities, and relationships, and is surrounded by hardscrabble towns and uneducated hicks, doomed to keep hitchiking towards Sol. It'll take him the rest of his life to get back to the Solar System.

* FromNobodyToNightmare: Maximilian Fischer in "Stand-By" is a bloated non-entity who gets picked (against his will) to become the new back-up President, whose miserable job is to sit around the White House and wait in case the actual President, a super-computer, breaks down. Nobody actually expects this to ever happen, but.. it does, Fischer gets a taste of power and permanently sabotages the computer. In the sequel "What'll We Do With Ragland Park?", he's progressed to the point of having people killed.

* SuicideByCop: Jack Shuld, the guy who claims to be out to kill Carlton Lufteufel in ''Deus Irae'', purposefully provokes Tibor into killing him. [[spoiler: Just as Pete works out that Schuld actually ''is'' Carlton Lufteufel.]]

* BuxomBeautyStandard: In "The Turning Wheel" Sung-wu remembers his affair with a married woman who had "plump breasts" and "hips that undulated and beckoned."

* BlessedWithSuck:

** Manfred, a boy from ''Martian Time-Slip'', can see into the future. Which means he is almost perpetually stuck in a twisted vision of his future as a paralyzed, dying old man in a decaying hospital. His only, temporary escape is succumbing to his schizophrenia-induced hallucinations, which are just as nightmarish and tainted by his obsession with death.

* ChildSoldiers: Played with in ''Counter-Clock World'', where aging reversed decades ago, and there's a commando squad of elderly soldiers who are now the size of small children and infants.

* DarkWorld: In ''Martian Time-Slip'', a powerful Martian colonist named Arnie Kott uses an autistic and/or schizophrenic boy and a Martian ritual to send him back a few weeks into his own past so he can make a business deal, but finds he is in a hallucinatory version of the past tainted by the boy's fearful fixations on entropy and death.

* GroundhogDayLoop: ''Martian Time Slip'' involves the protagonist reliving the same day over and over again, each time more bizarre than the last. After the day is over, he can't even remember it.

* LighterAndSofter: ''Galactic Pot-Healer'' isn't exactly a delightful feelgood comedy--its protagonist is still a bit of a shmoe--but it's definitely one of Dick's more straightforwardly comic novels.

* PsychicPowers: [[SpiderSense Precogs]] in "The Minority Report".

* SapientShip: The spaceship in "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon".

* SettlingTheFrontier:
** ''Martian Time-Slip''.
** ''The Unteleported Man'', aka ''Lies, Inc.''
** ''A Maze of Death''.

* SpaceJews: ''Martian Time Slip'' has Martian Bleekmen, who resemble and are thought to be genetically similar to Earth's African Aboriginals.

* {{Terraform}}: In one of Philip K. Dick's stories, Earth and Titan were in an uneasy peace because of a war that was held because humans terraformed Mars. There were already people of Titan on Mars, but they couldn't breathe oxygen. By the time the humans learned of the Titanians, the terraforming had already begun, and "you can't terraform just part of an atmosphere..."

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness:
** ''Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said''.
** ''The Game Players of Titan''.
** ''A Maze of Death''.

* TomesOfProphecyAndFate: ''The Galactic Pot-healer'' has the Book of Kalends, telling (in many languages) what shall be. Do Kalends make things happen in writing their book? is a [[MindScrew major question]] for the characters.

* NoNudityTaboo:
** In "War Veteran", all nudity taboos seem to be gone, at least women casually suntan naked in a public park. It's not that relevant to the plot other than helping to establish a futuristic setting.
** "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" describes a "bare-bosomed" receptionist at Rekal, the company that sells memories.

* BewareTheSuperman: Dick [[http://www.philipkdickfans.com/mirror/websites/pkdweb/short_stories/The%20Golden%20Man.htm suggested this]] from time to time, but rarely had the opportunity to write about it, as Creator/JohnWCampbell preferred to compare {{Mutants}} to PersecutedIntellectuals. Dick had [[GodwinsLaw a different opinion]], which resulted in ''[[Film/{{Next}} The Golden Man]]''.

Many of his stories have been adapted into movies. Some turned out good (''Literature/AScannerDarkly'', ''Film/BladeRunner'', ''Film/TotalRecall1990'', ''Film/MinorityReport'', ''Film/TheAdjustmentBureau'') and some received a more mixed reception (''Film/{{Next}}'', ''Film/{{Paycheck}}'', ''Film/{{Impostor}}'', as well as the TV series ''Series/TheManInTheHighCastle''). His largest work is to date unpublished [[http://www.amazon.com/The-Exegesis-Philip-K-Dick/dp/0547549253 save a few excerpts]] - over 7000 pages of notes speculating on Greek philosophy, early Christianity, theology, mental illness, and the implicate structure of the universe itself. This work, titled the "Exegesis," spans thousands of years of metaphysics and occult literature. Written during the final few years of his life, it is either his greatest triumph of skeptical empiricism or a deep descent into incomprehensible insanity.

Many of his stories have been adapted into movies. Some turned out good (''Film/AScannerDarkly'', ''Film/BladeRunner'', ''Film/TotalRecall1990'', ''Film/MinorityReport'', ''Film/TheAdjustmentBureau'') and some received a more mixed reception (''Film/{{Next}}'', ''Film/{{Paycheck}}'', ''Film/{{Impostor}}'', as well as the TV series ''Series/TheManInTheHighCastle''). His largest work is to date unpublished [[http://www.amazon.com/The-Exegesis-Philip-K-Dick/dp/0547549253 save a few excerpts]] - over 7000 pages of notes speculating on Greek philosophy, early Christianity, theology, mental illness, and the implicate structure of the universe itself. This work, titled the "Exegesis," spans thousands of years of metaphysics and occult literature. Written during the final few years of his life, it is either his greatest triumph of skeptical empiricism or a deep descent into incomprehensible insanity.

* AfterTheEnd:

* NoNudityTaboo: In "War Veteran", all nudity taboos seem to be gone, at least women casually suntan naked in a public park. It's not that relevant to the plot other than helping to establish a futuristic setting.

* AuthorTract: The short story "The Pre-Persons" is very blatantly his personal, heavily emotional response to Roe vs. Wade, set in a world where pro-choice activists have legalized "abortion" of children up to age 12. His mouthpiece characters claim abortion is all about powerful people deliberately picking on the helpless, or a certain kind of woman getting off on destroying men and children. He even depicts one woman wanting to get pregnant because she thinks an abortion would be fun and a turn-on.

* FlockOfWolves:
** In "The Eyes Have It" an InspectorJavert character who hunts aliens (indistinguishable from humans except for glow-in-the-dark eyes) and dissects them informs his superiors that there is an [[TheMole alien spy]] among them. It turns out they are all aliens except him.
** ''The Game-Players of Titan'', which involves aliens from Titan that can make themselves appear human, has a scene in which the protagonist discovers that he is the only member of the anti-alien resistance cell he's joined who isn't an alien sleeper agent.