Philip K. Dick

    Philip K. Dick was a prominent Science Fiction writer from around the 1950’s to the 1980’s. His importance to the Science Fiction literature and film field cannot be overstated. During his life, he published 44 novels and 121 short stories, all with great importance to the sci-fi world (Pierce-Bohen, 1). Many of these stories show alternate realities and/or artificial intelligence and are the basis for many popular books and films today. 

    One example of this is seen in his book-to-movie adaptation of Blade Runner. This movie shows the dangers of creating robots that are hyper realistic because it shows that robots may not be able to experience emotions in the same way as humans, therefore making them extremely dangerous because they are capable of almost anything, except guilt and remorse for their actions. This movie manages to highlight the dangers of futuristic technology with the inhumane humanistic robots, but it also shows the benefits of other technologies such as flying cars. Dick was able to show all sides to the benefits and dangers of technology in an interesting and attention grabbing way. 

    Another element of Dick’s writing that made him so prominent was that he did not always romanticize the future. He kept his writing very grounded, which evoked a stronger sense of fear for the audience because all of his stories could be possible. He managed to feed into people’s fear of the unknown without going too far and making his stories unrealistic. This style of writing is likely what drew his large following and allowed for multiple of his stories to be adapted into movies. 

    There have been many science fiction writers throughout history, but Philip K. Dick is without doubt one of the most influential. He managed to tell stories about many different views of the future, including time travel, machines taking over the world, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. His works have become a basis for which all science fiction and futuristic movies can be based. 


Pierce-Bohen, Kayleena. “Master of Sci-Fi: 10 Ways Philip K. Dick Influenced Sci-Fi Movies 

    & TV.” ScreenRant, 24 Nov. 2019, https://screenrant.com/philip-k-dick-sci-fi-movies- influence/. 


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