Today, society has a large emphasis on the equality of every human being. For most people, all races, religious beliefs, and nationalities are viewed as being equal. In times past, people were killed because they were different and war was waged. In the crusades, there were massacres because of difference in religious beliefs. The American Civil War was fought largely because the Confederates believed in slavery while the Union was against it. Today, we realize this is ridiculous. Using the comparison between the reality of today and the reality of the past, we realize that other people have the right to choose their religion and everyone has the same rights and should not be treated poorly. Philip K. Dick harnesses this difference in realities perfectly. By using alternate reality, Philip K. Dick goes beyond the reality surrounding us to show that everyone is equal.

Dick was born December 16, 1928 along with his twin sister Jane Charlotte Dick. They were born six weeks prematurely. About a month after birth, Jane died. The death of his sister affects almost all of his work and was the most influential event of his entire life. He was deeply affected psychologically by her death in many ways. Her death may have brought him to believe that everyone is (or should be treated) equal. He very much would have liked her to have the same opportunity of life as he did.

        When Dick was only six years old, his parents got divorced. He spent a while moving about the country before settling in Berkeley, California with his mother. During his childhood, Dick had many problems partially because of the separation of his parents and lack of attention from his mother. He had two severe problems as a child which contributed later on in life to his writings and style. One was a swallowing disorder that prevented him from eating in public and the other was a severe vertigo which made him feel as if he wasn’t in real life. He confessed to attacks where “he doubted his own existence and felt that the world around him was a thin façade over some unnameable reality.” (Behrens/Ruch)

        During his teen years, Dick shared an apartment with a group of artists that included the poet Robert Duncan. Being around a group of serious writers inspired him and gave him a start in his desire to write novels. This may have been the most important point in Dick’s life as it led to the beginning of his career and catalyzed his interest in writing.

        Dick’s early stories are short and simple but show some of the beliefs and style of the mature Philip K. Dick to come. One example is “The Defenders,” which Dick later expanded into his 1964 novel The Penultimate Truth. In the story, mankind lives underground while machines fight over the cities of the earth. An accidental discovery leads to a human expedition tunneling to the surface. There they find that the robots they’ve dispatched to fight the wars have been living a peaceful existence, working to heal the ravaged planet while keeping humans underground to prevent further destruction (Behrens/Ruch). This story is an early example of how he portrays people and robots as being more “human” than humans themselves. More than just being more “human” than the actual humans, Dick somewhat uses robots as a symbol of equality. When you think of robots, you usually wouldn’t think of one being superior to another. Robots are usually thought of as being nothing more than machines which are all on an equal level. They are usually nothing more than just clones without any human traits like personality or physical ability. Differences in human traits are what make people believe they are superior to others. For example, Hitler believed that people with blue eyes and blonde hair were superior. Thus by using robots, Dick implied that they were all equal and he showed that the equal, more “human” race of robots was superior and managed better in the world than the actual humans. “The Defenders” also contains an early appearance of Dick’s use of alternate reality (which was instead used by the robots as opposed to him through his writing): the underground humans are fed false television broadcasts of nuclear war, created by the robots to discourage them from returning to the surface (Behrens/Ruch). Again, in this case the robots are made to seem more human than the “humans” themselves. They are more humane and don’t comply with the human desire for war. Instead, they keep peace and try to heal the earth by creating an illusion and portraying an alternate reality to the humans. To Dick, they are all equal. They all are just as human to him.

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        After becoming an established writer, Dick attempted to write mainstream fiction, but nobody would buy his stories. In 1955, Solar Lottery was published. It was his first published novel. However, he was rather depressed about it and embarrassed that his first published novel was an Ace Paperback original, and sci-fi on top of that. (Behrens/Ruch)

        Dick devoted the next few years to trying to enter mainstream fiction, finishing almost ten novels by 1960. With the exception of Confessions of a Crap Artist, which wasn’t published until 1975, none of these novels were published in his lifetime. The best of this period were ...

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