
Paranoid Android: The Divine Madness of Philip K Dick - samclemens
https://literaryreview.co.uk/paranoid-android
======
dcw303
Being a child of the 80s, I was first introduced to PKD through Total Recall -
the original, good one with Schwarzenegger in it. The mix of sci-fi, paranoia,
and reality bending was mesmerising. Verhoeven is the only director who really
got to the essence of what Philip K Dick was about.

With the exception of the occasional episode of Star Trek TNG, I didn't have
much access to much mindfuck sci-fi, so whatever I could get would leave
pretty deep impression on me. I didn't immediately read through his stuff,
though. I wouldn't really be reminded of it until I got into Sonic Youth in my
late teens and found out that the Sister LP was a loose biography. Sonic
Youth's guitar rock/pop mixed with discordant feedback was basically the
musical equivalent of PKD's paranoia.

After that I spent years going through a big chunk of his catalog. Obviously,
a classic like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is worth your time. The Man
in the High Castle is alternate history, and features what I still consider to
be the best execution of a things-are-not-what-you-think-they-are ever. I've
also been thinking of The Game Players of Titan recently, but that's probably
because of the talking self driving car. Ubik is also really, really good, but
I can't explain it to you at all.

If you want some fiction that will make you question your grip on reality, I
highly recommend reading through his stuff. Just don't wait until you're too
old - once your ideals are firmly set in place it gets a lot harder to get
into it.

~~~
wiredfool
I read a lot of PKD when I was in my 20's. It all started with Ubik. Then
Androids. A Scanner Darkly. And about 10 other novels. The early Total Recall
is one of the better movie adaptations wrt covering the core concepts of the
story. Waves and Waves of revelations about the nature of reality. Minority
Report, not so much. And of course, Blade Runner is tangentially related to
the book. (It's a masterpiece, but it's not Androids)

Once I started getting into the short stories, I started getting pretty
paranoid. There's one theme that repeats throughout that reality is not your
perception of it, to your eventual downfall. Repeated over and over, across
post apocalyptic wastelands, it leads to a somewhat bleak view of the future.
(One in particular, I think it's The Fifth Variety, seems to be tailor made to
describe computer security from here on out. Spoiler: _Everything_ is a
trojan)

~~~
eivarv
I think you mean Second Variety [1], which is really great in my opinion as
well. It, like many of PKD's works, was also made into a movie (Screamers).

Second Variety is freely available [2] on the Internet Archive, via Project
Gutenberg.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety)

[2]:
[https://archive.org/details/secondvariety32032gut](https://archive.org/details/secondvariety32032gut)

~~~
wiredfool
Yep. Lost track of the number of Varieties.

~~~
maffydub
Yes, there were more than 2 varieties - it's kind of key to the story! ;)

I think (or at least hope) that's not a spoiler for anyone who hasn't read it
yet - it's worth reading!

------
Avianka
Made me remember "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow. The book described
Paranoid Linux in this way: “Paranoid Linux is an operating system that
assumes that its operator is under assault from the government (it was
intended for use by Chinese and Syrian dissidents), and it does everything it
can to keep your communications and documents a secret. It even throws up a
bunch of “chaff” communications that are supposed to disguise the fact that
you’re doing anything covert. So while you’re receiving a political message
one character at a time, Paranoid Linux is pretending to surf the Web and fill
in questionnaires and flirt in chat-rooms. Meanwhile, one in every five
hundred characters you receive is your real message, a needle buried in a huge
haystack."

~~~
ekianjo
That approach may be easier to defeat nowadays with DNNs - they would be
extremely good at getting the noise out of the signal, so I am not sure it's
enough to counter any nation state capabilities who really want to know what
you are doing.

~~~
gambiting
What's DNN? Google says it's DotNetNuke, but I don't think you mean that.

~~~
laksjd
Probably 'Deep Neural Network'

------
scandox
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away" \- PKD

Which always suggested to me, that despite his paranoia he actually was quite
a critical thinker. It's easy to let his extreme vision and his life
experience after 2-3-74 and his mysticism, obscure the sharpness of his
observations about life.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
You could read that quote the opposite way, to suggest that schizophrenic
hallucinations or other unwanted mental disturbances are "reality" (which in a
way of course they are, for the person experiencing them).

From the stuff of his I've read he seems a smart cookie, and the more obvious
interpretation of that remark seems somewhat beneath him.

~~~
scandox
I didn't actually intend a definitive statement on what he meant by that
remark. The context is interesting:
[http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm](http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm)

My point, if there as one, was just that I enjoy the balance. I like his
mysticism because I know just how powerfully logical he could also be. I don't
like to see him boxed-in, or presented as one thing or the other.

------
icebraining
Related: Stanislaw Lem's essay about PKD, _" A Visionary Among the
Charlatans"_:

[http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm](http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm)

~~~
tnecniv
Coincidentally, PKD thought that Lem was a construct of the KGB and refused to
accept a reward he was offered by him.

------
glaberficken
Sorry for the off topic but just wanted to say that I get the best book
recommendations ever from HN.

Every single time there's a thread about an author/theme I end up reading some
of the books mentioned and all of them are gems I wouldn't have found
otherwise.

Thank you all for this!

~~~
okwhatthe2
<3 <3

------
soufron
Actually, one of my friend and the co-author of a documentary on the cyberpunk
side of the Silicon Valley we're working on, had done a very interesting film
on PDK in 2005:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3G4Q6UqMPU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3G4Q6UqMPU)

~~~
armitron
Would be great to have english subtitles for this.

------
cyberpunk
I've read a few of his works, and I pretty much enjoyed them; but I really
have no idea what 'The Man in the High Castle' was all about. I got friendly
with a few characters, reasonably adapted to the alternate reality and so on,
but I have no idea what it was trying to say...

Not that every book _has_ to say anything to be enjoyable, but I hear many
people rave about it and I feel like I must have missed something. Well read
people don't rave about empty books when they got not much out of it but a
read through that provoked little thought.

I left it just confused. What was he trying to make us understand? The nazi's
won, and in that reality things were pretty grim, so was the point about how
people feel when they're forced to live subservient to a totalitarian regime?
I doubt that's new to anyone, and you don't need the alternate reality to
express that -- it happens today -- and he wasn't even particularly striking
in his visualizations of it so I don't do think that was it... I was pretty
deflated by it really, but I suppose it left a bigger mark on me because I
spent so long afterwards trying to figure out the point :P

If anyone feels differently, I'd really love to hear your views -- I just
didn't 'get' it..

~~~
scandox
I think it is a way off from being his best book. It has, conventionally
speaking, the most striking premise (for its day). Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep is much superior.

What I found really interesting is to read his short fiction and then go back
to the novels. In the stories you see his controlled, precise side and that
kind changes how you feel about his longer work. I cannot recommend these
enough:

Faith of Our Fathers

Upon The Dull Earth

The Electric Ant

I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

I think reading the novels one is only seeing one side of the writer.

------
kagamine
The pink beam of light PKD wrote about a lot in published works. I read that
he claimed it told him his son had a brain tumor and when taken to hospital
that turned out to be true. Thus, PKD believed that the divine intervention of
the pink light saved his son's life.

Is there any evidence of his son being treated for such an illness or this
just more grapevine twaddle?

I had also read, I think in the introduction to one of his novels (I could try
to find it but I have _many_ of his books on my shelf and I'm not home right
now) that he claimed not to take drugs! That would be contradictory to what is
written in this article, to say the least.

It seems like PKD is much more than the man.

~~~
jackfrodo
re: his son's brain tumor, let's say this is true. Could it be explained by
him noticing symptoms of it and subconsciously being suspicious, which led to
the pink beam "telling" him?

~~~
okwhatthe2
Look, there is a really sinister interpretation of Philip K. Dick which one
could engage in, if one were so inclined.

I don't actually believe this, but it has occurred to me before. Here goes.

Phil (whose stories I love) claimed at one point that the FBI - or some
outside agent - had broken into his apartment and detonated explosives in his
filing cabinet. This could've very well been Dick himself.

Regarding his son, it was not a brain tumor, but a testicular hernia, or
related, that his son had. Simply put, perhaps Dick was feeling up his son and
decided to blame the finding on the light?

I believe what happened is that he likely found the hernia and then, in a fit
of paranoia, decided to find another context for its discovery. You need to
remember that Dick claimed to have seen a giant Teuton warrior in the clouds,
looking down on him, as if a demiurge was making its presence known to him.
This was likely a very paranoia-inducing event.

I am now reminded of the Anime Berserk.

Anyway, I do not believe that Dick was a child molester or false-flag operator
against his own filing cabinet (although I am unsure about the cabinet one).
We don't really know.

I think maybe he took a lot of amphetamines, and maybe he also had a mystical
experience. Who knows? I have my own ideas but they may do more harm than
good.

Here be dragons:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXqHJYz8NXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXqHJYz8NXo)

* This is your friendly reminder that human rights and a cessation of killing and torture globally serve as the bedrock for all modern law and that violent tendencies must be culled from our collective consciousness. _

------
brakmic
PKD in 1977. Talking about the Matrix.

[https://youtu.be/jXeVgEs4sOo](https://youtu.be/jXeVgEs4sOo)

------
cmsefton
One of my favorite books on Philip K. Dick is "I Am Alive and You Are Dead" by
Emmanuel Carrère, a 'biography' written as a novel. A really great read.

~~~
Finnucane
However, definitely, 'biography' in quotes, because not biography in actual
fact. The English-language translator was a work colleague of mine, and I lent
him a lot of PKD material out of my own collection. I ended up getting the odd
job of looking up the original English for the translations of excerpts from
the French editions of Dick's work (a very PKD task, like The Game from
Galactic Pot Healer) quoted in the book. Carrere was clearly cribbing heavily
from Sutin, when he was wasn't just making it up.

------
okwhatthe2
Okay, imagine being a Kennedy.

Imagine that the path your life takes, every iota of it, including the big
"key-frames", are vitally important to you: You join the Peace Corps. You run
for congress after obsessing over every minor detail, to make your campaign
appear flawless, accessible, and imbued with a subdued, worthy sense of
popularly-directed power. You consider what to eat, in public and in private.

And why not?: Your /every/ decision is bound-up in the Path to Power And
Glory: you are a rat, forever hitting a switch in your brain over all else,
that says, "Yes! Yes to the Path to Power!"

I will not disguise that "addiction" plays a part in what I write here. I have
experience with amphetamines myself.

Now, imagine that you are Philip K. Dick. You take amphetamines, think on
SciFi terms -- not unusual, Hubbard being an example -- and read Greek poetry.
/Why not you?/ Why not... Become a hero comparable to Aeneas, but within the
confines of your past? Why not rewrite your own history to make yourself like
a demigod?

Enter Philip K Dick. A mild man with big ambitions. Done.

------
zer0gravity
My impression about the universe:

It's finite. "Infinity" is an abstraction, it cannot exist in reality.

It's 100% deterministic, based on some fundamental rules.

Those rules are imposed and enforced by computation and they can only exist in
a computer simulation.

Space is actually an N dimensional matrix where all cells are the same,
minicomputers running the same program enforcing those rules.

Don't know how it all really exists...

~~~
chronolitus
That's just pushing the problem further away.

Is the universe that computer is in also finite? deterministic?

Even if it's computers all the way down, doesn't answer much.

~~~
notduncansmith
One way this might be useful is in trying to communicate with whatever world
is simulating us. I think in some circles this behavior is called "prayer". Of
course, it could be that explicit communication (in a way we'd understand) is
strictly forbidden, such that we would never receive objective confirmation or
rejection of this theory. At best, we could prove the plausibility of the
claim by doing our own simulation. How each chooses to spend their time is up
to them.

------
soufron
I tend to prefer his earlier books, those written because he was full-speed
crazy. They get the same special thing, but they're more subtle. And as they
look like classical sci-fi a little bit more, they're more accessible.

------
sleighboy
For those who prefer an audiobook, the reading of A Scanner Darkly by Paul
Giamatti is excellent.

------
tnecniv
He was a really fantastic and unique writer with a very unique brand of
science fiction. His visions of the future are often haunting in their own
right before his paranoia and gnosticism gets layered on top.

------
simplemath
Ubik

------
dschiptsov
I would not attempt to "review" the man who wrote Scanner Darkly or Do
Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, or The Game-Players of Titan. It is jus as
if a PHP or Java EE coder would try to review the Common Lisp code from AIMA
or PAIP.

One has to reach a comparable level of intelligence first, and hopefully
reaching that level will realize the futility to reviewing a "social genius".

Aside from the biographic details the whole article is quite meaningless.

