Declan Whitebloom, “Prophets of Science Fiction (Episode 2: Philip K Dick)” (2011)
Philip K Dick is one of my favourite writers, though more for the 1950s novels he wrote about little people living lives of quiet desperation and failed dreams in a stultifying and conformist 1950s world of Senator McCarthy, racial segregation and Hollywood-manufactured fantasies about progress and the good life than for the science fiction novels he wrote. I fondly if vaguely remember one science fiction novel of his, “The Man in the High Castle”, for its alternative history of a United States defeated in World War II by Germany and Japan who proceeded to carve up the country in zones. In the novel, a man living in this alternative world discovers that, contrary to what he has always known and taken for granted, there’s the possibility that in another alternative world the United States defeated Germany and Japan in the same war and that this history is true. This plot, reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” movie plot, derives from Dick’s concerns that run through nearly all his novels and which inspire the Hollywood movies based on them: concerns about darkness, disintegration or entropy, the nature of reality and humanity, technological change and its impact on human consciousness (especially its impact on memory and identity), and the relationship of individuals and humanity to the authoritarian state.
In this episode of the series “Prophets of Science Fiction”, Whitebloom uses a mix of interviews, dramatisations, archival film footage and excerpts of films based on Dick’s novels and short stories to explore scientific ideas and concepts that Dick foresaw and which have or are becoming close to realisation in our times. The pace moves at a steady clip and some of the concepts explored whiz by quickly; it may be necessary for some viewers to watch the episode again to understand what’s being explained. Ideas such as developing androids (robots resembling humans), technology that can implant artificial memories in our brains to override old memories, virtual reality, the use of surveillance technology to gather enormous amounts of information about people and construct profiles of them, technology that foresees and forestalls crime, the use of heuristic methods to write novels and other works of fiction, and the existence of parallel universes joined in a multiverse network … all these ideas and concepts foreseen by Dick are now becoming real, and not necessarily for the benefit of humankind and democracy.
For example, implanting artificial memories in our brains is becoming a real possibility with the intended idea being to relieve post-traumatic stress disorder in people affected by abuse or violence that occurs as part of their everyday work (as police officers, emergency workers or soldiers perhaps) but there is also the possibility that such memories can effectively wipe out a person’s entire memory and turn that person into someone else entirely different, thus “killing” the original person and “making” the person into an artificial one no different from an android. We may also wish to have artificial memories to avoid dealing with the messy problems of real life or, conversely, to help us cope with the messy problems of real life: education might no longer be necessary if all we need to know about something novel is to buy the memory and stick it into our heads. We might decide to be Napoleon Bonaparte for a day and instruct the memory to be wiped out of our heads after a certain time; on the other hand, we may wish to be Napoleon Bonaparte for several years to attain some other goal such as being a world leader long enough to reconstruct human societies to your psychopathic heart’s content.
There is some biographical information about Dick, usually of a sort relevant to the investigation of the ideas and notions that merit Dick being labelled a science fiction prophet. Narrator Jonathan Adams zips through the voice-over narration quickly and eloquently and the interviewees who include movie director Ridley Scott, physicist Michio Kaku and writer David Brin express their enthusiasm for many of Dick’s ideas, no matter how batty they might seem.
The discussion of what Dick foresaw is aimed at a general public so it doesn’t go into the topics very deeply. Many people interested in what Dick might have had to say about a police state that uses technology and technological methods to spy on people, create profiles of them, foresee what they do and say, and then hinder them from performing those actions and expressing those sayings, no matter whether they actually break the law or not, may be disappointed that the program simply mentions such technology and methods exist and goes no further.
Novels and short stories referenced in the film include “A Scanner Darkly”, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, “We Can Remember It For You”, “The Man in the High Castle” which was Dick’s break-through science fiction novel, earning him a Hugo Award, “The Minority Report” and “The Adjustment Bureau”: all of these have been made into films by Hollywood.
The film is just informative enough that many people will be satisfied by it and seek no further; others will be enthused or maddened enough to want to check out more about Philip K Dick’s work and read it for themselves. As for what Dick might think of the film and the fame he now enjoys, he may well be in two minds about it: on the one hand, he would be very pleased that at last people take his work seriously; on the other hand, he might be alarmed that people are interested in his work precisely because so much of what he predicted has not only come to pass but is what he has always feared, yet people seem quite happy living in a panopticon society that gathers and stores information about us, information that might be put to sinister uses against us.