Philip K Dick,Pohl And Kornbluth The Men Who Saw The Future .

During the 1960s and 1970s Philip Dicks out put of science fiction novels was considerable.At the time they were naturally enough only known of and read by readers of science fiction which was still a vast literary field  which had been going for decades.This is pretty much over now as anyone can see who walks into a bookstore and looks at the section devoted to science fiction and fantasy.This is mostly devoted now to modern fantasy novels.The writers who dominated the science fiction field in the mid and late 20th century have largely disappeared and those under 50 are unlikely to have even heard of them.The one exception to this rule seems to be Philip K Dick whose work is still in print and readily available.This to someone who was a reader of science fiction and to whom Philip Dick was only one author among many has always struck me as rather strange.Why Philip K Dick of all people ? ,an author who was so poor at one time he was reduced to eating pet food.

Philip K Dick ,Pohl And Kornbluth The Men Who Saw The Future

Philip K Dick first started publishing science fiction short stories in the science fiction magazines of the early 1950s.His first published science fiction novel was Solar Lottery published in 1955.His novel a future dystopia in which life chances for the population are decided by lottery was quite prescient .At that time the notion that the state would actively promote the vice of gambling would have seemed far fetched yet it has now come to pass and is taken for granted.However at this time despite his small success as a fairly minor science fiction author Philip Dick was actually trying to become an author of mainstream literary fiction.The novels he wrote in the 1950s such as Confessions of A Crap Artist,The Broken Bubble of Thisbe Holt and In Milton Lumky Territory among others  are tales of suburban Californian life.It seems Philip Dick was following the same groove as Richard Yates with stories of post war America with its affluence combined with conformism.It seems probable if these books had been actually published Philip Dick would have dropping the science fiction in favor of  social realism.Like Richard Yates he would no doubt be largely forgotten now.Instead the literary novels loss turned out to be science fictions gain.It is hard to imagine Riddley Scott directing a block buster based on In Milton Lumky Territory.The key text which bridges the two worlds is The Man In The High Castle   set in California in 1961.The characters are similar to the suburbans who feature in his unpublished 50s novels.However the California they inhabit is occupied by the Japanese as a result of Americas defeat by the Axis powers in World War II who have partitioned the country in the same manner that Germany was.Philip Dick won a Hugo Award for the novel and after this largely stuck to writing science fiction.

Philip K Dick,Pohl And Kornbluth The men who the saw future .

Pohl and Kornbluth's next collaboration Gladiator At Law continued the vision of The Space Merchants with corporate lawyers instead of advertising executives as the protagonists.The book was published in 1955 at the height of Americas post war boom .However the future depicted is far from optimistic with the post war  housing developments turned into slums dominated by gangs of feral children. The population is  divided into corporate serfs or  welfare drones  with entertainment laid on in the form of gladiatorial games a prophecy which looks all too likely to come true. This vision was one in direct opposition to that for example being turned out for Americans by Walt Disney's Tomorrow Land  for example.In fact the world of the early 21st century has turned out to resemble that of Pohl and Kornbluth rather than Disney.