Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American science fiction novelist and short story writer, who foreshadowed the cyberpunk sub-genre and brought the anomic world of California to his works. Dick also explored sociological and political themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations and authoritarian governments. In his later works, Dick drew upon his own life experiences and addressed the nature of drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, and religious experience and theology in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.
The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternative history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real."
In addition to his novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, many of which appeared in science fiction magazines. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, nine of his stories have been adapted into popular films since his death, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly and Minority Report. In 2005, Time Magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America
