My first exposure to the work of Philip K. Dick - like a lot of people's, I guess - was Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner, which was itself based on Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?While I occasionally dabble in writing sci-fi and spec-fic, I try to avoid the dystopianism inherent in such pastimes, mainly because I realize how draining they are to my psyche, which desperately wants to be happy despite what often seems like lengthening odds.
In fact, the same thing seems to have happened to PKD; born on this day in 1928, he seems to have driven himself at least to the brink of sanity (if not beyond it) by worrying about things over which he had no control... Namely a vast, all-controlling government, greedy corporate monopolies, environmental degradation, and the proliferation of artificial life forms.
Whereas these are all the things I love to mock... I don't want to mock them, understand, I have to mock them - for my own sanity's sake. So I don't end up like Philip K. Dick - a paranoid drug addict whose mind shorted out in March 1982, at the age of 53.
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I have never worried about proliferation of artificial life forms... As creatures of flesh, we will all die someday. If we can create intelligent life forms that will never feel the pain of death, it would be a beautiful thing... Even if we go the way of the dinosaurs.
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