Philip K. Dick and the World We Live In

by Evan Lampe

We live in a world that looks increasingly familiar to the worlds described by Philip K. Dick a half century ago. In this book, Lampe explores the multiple ways in which the global capitalist society—liquid and uncertain—was foreshadowed in Dick’s novels and stories. Analyzing most of Dick’s works, including the often underappreciated stories and early novels, Lampe establishes the outline of a general interpretation of Philip K. Dick for our age. This book also goes beyond Dick’s mystical, philosophical, and metaphysical questions and documents his economic, political, and social vision. With chapters on the rise of the surveillance state, technological unemployment, global governance, family, mental illness, new religious movements, consumerism, and urban geography this book presents new ways to read the most important American science fiction writer of the twentieth century.

396 pages, Paperback

First published March 13, 2015

Reviews

[Terence Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

CAPITALIST REALISM AND VISIONARY MOVEMENT: the social and political vision of Philip K. Dick

This is an excellent resource for readers of Philip K. Dick's stories and novels.The title of Lampe's book expresses the essence of his approach. He does not indulge in starry-eyed adulation of an oracle or in pseudo-mystical escapism. Evan Lampe gives us a social and political reading of Dick's stories and novels. For him they are about the modern world of global capitalism and consumerism and our lives within it.

Of course, this is a one-sided reading, for example Lampe does not give much shrift to Dick's Gnosticism or to his ontological speculations, but I do not think that he rejects other approaches, such as epistemological, ontological, religious, or meta-linguistic readings of P. K. Dick. Lampe simply pursues with tenacity his own interpretative hypothesis, reading Dick in materialist and sociological terms.

This is a difference of approach that I have with Evan Lampe. I find that Dick's Gnosticism can often illuminate even the earlier pre-gnostic works. Nonetheless, Lampe sticks to his materialist hypothesis and offers us the completest reading and interpretation of Dick's works to date. His readings are very often illuminating, even if one-sided. However, I do not think he is being reductive or exclusionary of other approaches.

I myself read P.K. Dick through contemporary Continental philosophers: Deleuze, Laruelle, Stiegler, Latour, and many others. These thinkers are all materialists, but they also give us the means to take Dick's gnosticism seriously. I see no incompatibility with Lampe's basic hypothesis. No one person can do everything, but Evan Lampe's readings are very useful.

I use Evan Lampe's book (he also has a blog, The Philip K. Dick Review, and a podcast (American Writers, featuring a Philip K. Dick Book Club) not as a definitive summa of P.K. Dick's thought, but as a rich source of hermeneutic catalysts for reading Dick. If ever I feel stuck or stumped, with no (or only incomplete) insight into a story, I can turn to this book and generally find a useful way in.

For those interested in Philip K. Dick's work I can recommend they read Evan Lampe''s book and read his blog, and listen to his podcast). If you have another reading of Dick you cannot decide in advance that a materialist reading is all no good. Treat it as a reference book, look up a particular story and you will be rewarded each time by insightful commentary.

Lampe's approach is comprehensive but inevitably partisan. It compensates for other readings that are themselves one-sided, but in the opposite direction, overlooking the social and political context and themes in order to highlight more mystical, psychedelic, or psychopathological aspects (Lampe's book takes all these into account, but does not make them primary) . His approach is no doubt "incomplete", in the sense that other approaches can illuminate other aspects of Dick's work, but one can always draw insight from it.

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

While Lapojade's World's built to Fall Apart is the "it" book of the moment in PKD studies (for good reason) this very political book (written in the late Obama years) is one of the best most through look at the political implications of PKD's canon. Lampe doesn't miss a detail from any of the SF novels, and 100 plus short stories. If there is a weakness he doesn't touch on the realist novels much. (I know why but still). Full review coming.