FEATURES
Dead 20 years, Philip K. Dick
conquers Hollywood again
By Bobby Bryant
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
Twenty years after dying, sci
ence-fiction writer Philip K. Dick is
a big success. How very Dickian.
“Minority Report,” Steven Spiel
berg and Tom Cruise’s $100 million
summer blockbuster which opened
Friday, was teased from Dick’s
humble 1956 short story of the
same name. (The story was first
published in a 35-cent magazine
whose cover featured a man being
attacked by what looks like a giant
water flea. Eisenhower-era sci-fi
artists were not subtle.)
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1990
hit, “Total Recall,” was based on
another Dick story, this one from
1966. Ridley Scott’s endlessly imi
tated “Blade Runner” (1982) was
based on a Dick novel. Dick’s sto
ries also have inspired two other,
less successful, movies: “Scream
ers” (1995) and “Impostor” (2002).
And the five-times-married au
thor of 40 mind-bending novels
and 128 short stories was dead
from heart failure before any of
these hit the screen.
It’s a perfect Phil Dick tale: Cor
porate Hollywood’s hot new writer
is a dead man who, for a time in the
1970s, believed he was receiving
messages from higher intelligences,
either alien or heavenly.
Dick (1928-82) was a perfect
“concept illustrator” for movies,
Spielberg told Wired magazine. In
the case of “Minority Report,”
Spielberg and his screenwriters
took Dick’s idea — of future cops
who arrest people for murders they
haven’t yet committed — and ex
panded on it until they had a
Cruise-worthy thriller.
In the film, Cruise is the chief of
an experimental “Precrime” squad
that relies on mutant psychics to
foretell who’s going to kill who, and
when. (Think of it as a LaToya’s
Psychic Hotline that actually
works.) Then the system fingers
Cruise. He’s being set up — or is he?
That’s the Dickian edge — he’s in
nocent and guilty at the same time.
“Minority Report,” the story, is
considered fairly mild Phil Dick
Courtesy photo
Tom Cruise fights to prove his innocence in the Steven Spielberg directed movie version of
Philip K. Dick’s 1956 short story, “Minority Report.”
— the author could, and did, con
jure much weirder worlds. But al
ways with recognizably human
characters. “I love my characters,”
Dick once said. “They’re my
friends. When I finish a book, I go
into post-partum (depression), nev
er to hear them speak again, never
to see them struggling and trying.”
He’s best remembered for inject
ing a jolting tone of paranoia, even
schizophrenia, into the rational
world of late-1950s and early-1960s
science fiction. In many of Dick’s
tales, critic John Clute wrote, “Real
ity is a sham, a prop that can be
whipped from under one’s feet.”
And after the success of the
what’s-real? drama “A Beautiful
Mind,” that’s the kind of thing Hol
lywood is hungry for. Entertain
ment Weekly reports that Para
mount Pictures has optioned the
rights to one of Dick’s 1952 short
stories as part of a deal that could
earn the author’s estate $2 million.
(The story earned Dick only $195.)
Some of Dick’s major works:
“Time Out of Joint” (1959) — A
man discovers that his idyllic ’50s
world is a sham and that he is a
pawn in an interplanetary war.
“The Truman Show” owed Dick a
debt for this, his first hardback nov
el. (“’Time Out of Joint’ sold for
$750,” Dick told an interviewer in
1974. “That was a long time ago,
and we are still being paid about as
much money as if we were stand
ing on a street comer selling apples
in the Depression.”)
“The Man in the High, Castle”
(1962) — The father of all “alter
nate-history” novels. Dick creates a
world in which the Allies lost
World War II and the Axis divvied
up the United States.
“Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep?” (1968) — In a rotting fu
ture, a hired gun hunts androids
who are about as human as he is.
(Except for the idea and the tone,
little of the book survives in “Blade
Runner.”)
For more on Dick’s books, visit
philipkdick.com on the Web.
©2002, The State (Columbia, S.C.).
Distributed by Knight Ridder,Tribune
Information Services.
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