Philip K. Dick

Before being assigned this blog post, I had no idea who the hell Philip K. Dick was and what he has done. Not being a big reader of scientific novels, I was not surprised that I have not even heard of this guy's name before. What did surprise me was his influence on the film industry. As you may know, I am a huge fan of film, not particularly science fiction, but I know enough about a lot of movies. I had no idea the basis of Blade Runner, one of the more astounding movies I've recently seen, came from Dick's head. Not only Blade Runner, but another of his books was used to help one of the greatest directors to this day. Yup that's right, Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest directors, cry about it. Anyways, Minority Report came straight out of Dick's brain. The influence in the movie industry was not the only thing this man did that intrigued me. His life was very, how do I put this, eventful. A drug addict, fascinated by mental illness which effected one of his 5 wives, saved by a "pink laser beam" revolution, which implanted the needed information to catch his greedy co-workers, and lead to three novels does not come around a whole lot. Behind all of that craziness, I believe there was a good man though. From what the article tells me, his novels focused on human decency and how we should treat each other. Characters often did the hard things at the right moments. So it goes to show you, don't judge a book by its cover, there could be an amazing man or an amazing story behind it.