Drugs, visions and parallel universes: this is how Philip K. Dick changed science fiction and inspired Blade Runner
One of the most visionary and influential authors of the 20th century. Many of the most illustrious science fiction films are inspired by his works. Above all, obviously, Blade Runner. We’re talking about Philip K. Dick. Brilliant, tormented, hallucinating and hallucinating. Brilliant in writing, innovative in form and content. Tormented in life, full of obsessions, disorders, suicide attempts and complex relationships with women. Hallucinated by the uncontrolled use of drugs to the point that he himself, during a science fiction conference, said he believed his life was a simulation and that he saw himself in different realities. Hallucinating (and brilliant), within his works, in questioning the true and the false: what is real? The answer is left to the reader.
Ubik: «I am alive, you are dead»
Let’s start with what is probably his literary masterpiece in the absolute sense. Ubikpublished in 1969, represents Dick’s creative and humorous peak. The main course is the numerous alternate realities or universes, one inside the other. More precisely, theinterference between two levels of reality, one of which is constantly changing. As an outline, some thoughts on life after death (a “semi-life”, in the case of the novel) in which the experiences that seem real to the characters are fictitious. Famous, in this sense, is the quote from one of the protagonists, who apparently remained in the world as we know it, while the others are stuck in what is transformed (more precisely, regresses, rots): “I am alive, you are dead”.
We gave you a headache, huh? Yes, the plot of Ubik it is particularly complex, with the reader finding himself absorbed in the novel, feeling himself participating in the changing reality. Precisely because of the complexity, presumably, it was never made into a filmdespite this being, right from the start, one of Dick’s most popular novels. And although the author himself had written a screenplay for a possible film adaptation, it was never made.
The Android Hunter, aka Blade Runner
Let’s clarify one concept: the film is different from the book, even if it takes up the plot in broad terms and the main themes. Above all, the difficulty in distinguishing an android from a human being. In the novel, however, androids are inhuman machinessentient, but lacking the empathy necessary to qualify them as men. They can only limit themselves to simulating human nature. No, it is humans who get closer to androids, losing their humanity, their empathy. They even end up modulating their mood using a «modulator Penfield», which makes them machines in turn. To return to feeling human, superior to androids, empathetic, men use a device with which they share their suffering. In the film, however, no, the androids are empathetichuman in the deepest sense, indeed more human than humans.
