Philip K Dick; a Documentary review

Philip K Dick was a literary force, that is just a fact. He is my favorite author in the sense that I feel at home when reading his stories even though they sometimes feel very unsettling and uncomfortable.

I have just finished viewing a wonderful documentary produced by Deutsche Welle called “The World According to Philip K Dick” and hosted all around the place; I watched on YouTube.

He led the field in so many ways, specifically the notion of other-worlds and the idea that in ours is not all is as it seems. He was the Father of so many ideas that made their way into Hollywood hits throughout the 1980’s, 1990’s, 2000’s and beyond.

His life was one fraught with mental illness and depression, but perhaps that was the place where he wrote his best, trying to escape from that mind-set into another world, one where we can thankfully read about in his vast library of Novels and Novella’s.

In my opinion, one of the most memorable lines of the Documentary was a description of his writing style, given by David Brin (a brilliant Science Fiction writer in his own right) is as follows:

Science Fiction was badly named; it should have been “Speculative History” because we are constantly obsessed with how history might have been different.

This Documentary is a short 45 minutes or so long; but is filled to the brim with all you could want to know about the brilliant Philip K Dick. 5/5