History Creator / PhilipKDick

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: Constantly and repeatedly, starting with his second published novel, ''The World Jones Made''. It's about a seemingly-prophetic tyrant who starts a race war against harmless alien jellyfish as a means to unify the world, both for him ''and'' against him. His subsequent books would routinely invoke Nazism, whether it be actual Nazis (the Reich taking over the United States in ''The Man in the High Castle''), clear analogues (the android-executioners of ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?''), or just cautionary tales about human society regressing towards Nazi policy (mentions of [=UN=] eugenics programs in ''Martian Time-Slip'').

* AmbiguousDisorder: Both Jack Isidore from ''Confessions Of A Crap Artist'' and J.R. Isidore from ''Literature/DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep'' fall under this. J.R. is a ShrinkingViolet, insecure, lonely and quite convinced that he's stupid and everyone knows what's going on but him. Jack's a ConspiracyTheorist (he often sounds like ''Series/AncientAliens'', explaining other peoples' lack of interest or belief as them being "unscientific"), collects and categorises everything, is good with kids and animals, but has trouble understanding grown-ups' emotions. To sum it up, J.R. is sort-of-anxious-avoidant, while Jack is kind-of-autistic.

* ChildSoldiers: Played with in ''The 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.

* DoAnythingRobot: ''Sales Pitch'' is about a DoAnythingRobot that serves as its own salesman and touts its ability to do absolutely anything, so you don't have to do anything at all.

** 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.

* GenreSavvy: In ''Cosmic Puppets'' the male protagonist returns to his home town to find that what he remembered never existed and the ''first'' thing he thinks of is the possibility that someone implanted false memories into his mind in order to manipulate him for nefarious causes... unfortunately he isn't GenreSavvy ''enough'' to listen to his first instinct that he should leave the town before he gets stuck there.

-->"I'm not married. I've got no wife. Nothing. Just my damn job at the record store. All those damn German songs and those bubblegum rock lyrics; they go through my head night and day, constantly, mixtures of Goethe and Heine and Neil Diamond. ... So why should I live on? Call that living? It's existence, not living."

* MindScrew: At the end of Radio Free Albemuth, Philip K Dick's self-insert (by the same name) is told that [[spoiler: the government]] will be releasing [[spoiler: pro-government propaganda]] science-fiction under his name. The first working title was to be ''The Mind Screwers''.
* MissingEpisode: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick_bibliography In his bibliography]], A Time for George Stavros, Pilgrim on the Hill, Nicholas and the Higgs, etc. were (the manuscripts) lost before publishing.

** ''Second Variety'' with human looking robots. As well as many stories with artificial human-looking robots or aliens, some who have no idea that they are not human - and [[ParanoiaFuel some who are terrified that they are]].

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The unambiguously optimistic ending of ''Eye in the Sky''. Dick's clear-cut idealism and faith in the power of people working collectively would soon desert him, majorly.

** "Colony", in which a group of human colonists on a new planet discover that it's inhabited by a lifeform which can perfectly mimic inanimate objects, and which can kill and absorb the colonists by e.g. towels and clothing and even vehicles, and enveloping its victims. Eventually they call for a rescue ship, and gather in a group to wait for it, having discarded anything that might be anything that could kill them, including all their clothes. The rescue ship arrives ahead of schedule and the naked colonists go up the ramp inside; the mission commander fears that something is wrong, but she's persuaded by the others that it's fine, so they enter and the ramp closes behind them. [[spoiler: Some time later, the ''actual'' rescue ship arrives, and its crew wonders where everyone is.]]

** "Sales Pitch".

** ''Second Variety'' ends with the main character bleeding out as [[spoiler:the first of many homicidal robots exits the Earth's atmosphere towards humanity's final holdout on the moon, using a rocket and coordinates which he unwittingly provided to it. His only solace comes from noticing that the robot carried an EMP grenade--once they wipe out humankind, they just might avenge our race by killing each other]].
** ''Sales Pitch''.
** ''The Unreconstructed M''.

Dick has said his writings revolve around two questions:\\
1) What is reality?\\
2) What does it mean to be human?

* AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent: ''The Golden Man'' contains several {{magic realism}} stories (such as a man obsessed with the model town in his basement having it change the town he lives in itself), an [[AuthorTract anti-abortion story]] (where a scientist challenges the abortion requirement that a fetus who cannot do simple math is eligible for abortion, demanding to be aborted because he claims he's forgotten simple math) and, surprisingly, a humorous (somewhat darkly) war against... alien midgets.
** "King of the Elves" is an UrbanFantasy short story.

* {{Dystopia}}: ''Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said''.

Despite being a contemporary of the NewWaveScienceFiction cohort, he is not generally considered one of the authors associated with that trend during TheSixties and TheSeventies. They were not generally associated with "weird" as much as they were associated with new literary sensibilities. And PKD works regarded more for the raw ideas than they are for their literary style and polish.

* Despite being a contemporary of the NewWaveScienceFiction cohort, he is not generally considered one of the authors associated with that trend during TheSixties and TheSeventies. They were not generally associated with "weird" as much as they were associated with new literary sensibilities. And PKD works regarded more for the raw ideas than they are for their literary style and polish.

** Also: The Black Iron Fortress

Years of drug abuse (which inspired ''Literature/AScannerDarkly'', where he lists himself as a victim of this, and possibly fed into those weird thoughts detailed above) led to his death in 1982 of heart failure at age 53. However, Dick saw ''Film/BladeRunner'', the first adaptation of his work, prior to his death, reportedly enjoying it and [[ApprovalOfGod approving]].

* DeadArtistsAreBetter: While he was a respected science fiction author during his lifetime, he only became recognized as a geek icon after his death in 1982.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Both Jack Isidore from ''Confessions Of A Crap Artist'' and J.R. Isidore from ''Literature/DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep'' fall under this. J.R. might be a descendant of Jack, given their similarities.

* ''Literature/DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep''
* "Faith of Our Fathers" in ''Literature/DangerousVisions''
* ''Literature/TheGanymedeTakeover''
* ''Literature/TheManInTheHighCastle''
* ''Literature/AScannerDarkly''
* ''Literature/TheThreeStigmataOfPalmerEldritch''
* ''Literature/TimeOutOfJoint''
* ''Literature/{{Ubik}}''
* ''Literature/{{VALIS}}''

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis: Played with in "Waterspider". The protagonists decide to fix a technological problem of their era by time-travelling into the past, the golden age of precognatives, and consulting with the precog whose paper "Night Flight" foresaw their very predicament: Creator/PoulAnderson. The reader eventually realizes that the "precog society meeting" is actually a science fiction convention--it turns out that all the major SF authors were precogs without realizing it, and were accurately predicting the future in their writings.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Plenty of his writings involve ArtificialHumans or robots who can think, imagine and feel, and raise questions about whether their lives are just as valuable as "real" humans.