Ma l f u n c t io n o f t h e D eity T he W o r k and T h o u g h t of P hilip K. D ick B y E d R u p p e n t h a l Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D., University of Leicester, November 2007 UMI Number: U5220B2 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U522032 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 A b s t r a c t Malfunction of the Deity: The Work and Thought of Philip K. Dick By Ed Ruppenthal Malfunction o f the Deity examines the work and thought of the American science- fiction writer Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982), with its critical focus on the demonstrable methodology of Dick’s writings. The root of Malfunction o f the Deity is Dick’s own conception of and justification for God or for a ‘Creator entity’. The thesis shows that Dick’s primarily dualistic cosmological ideas, as expressed in his science-fiction and personal writings, possess as their nucleus the belief that the human world is flawed through the machinations of a malignant being or agency. This agency begins in many of his stories as a loosely ideated construct, but one which in most cases will metastasise and recreate the human world as an illusory manufactory over which evil holds sway, and against which the smaller forces of good are forced to struggle. The thesis presents Dick as a liberal philosopher and theologian whose pseudo-didactic approach draws from a variety of extant historical, sociological and especially theological sources that inform both his science-fictional and his non-fictional work. Analysis of Dick’s writing and mystical thought in this thesis identifies Dick as an intellectual presence within the genre of science-fiction and more broadly within the field of American literature, and the thesis also contemporises Dick with a number of other American science-fiction authors and emphasises the contradistinctive style of his ideas and writing. A prolific author, the thesis cannot and does not investigate all of his output, but his major works - including the novels A Scanner Darkly (1977), Do Androids Dream o f Electric Sheep? (1968), The Man in the High Castle (1962), The Three Stigmata o f Palmer Eldritch (1965), Uhik (1969) and Valis (1981) - are analysed in detail. The thesis broaches its subject using shifting frames of reference, an approach intended to reflect the diversity of themes explored in Dick’s work. The crux of the thesis resides in Chapter Two, a representative study of the period February to March 1974. Dick’s own shorthand of ‘2-3-74’ is used to refer to this period, during which he suffered a mental breakdown and/or underwent a series of mystical experiences that he often interpreted as divine revelation. Critics have suggested that 2-3-74 shaped and informed the themes in his post-1974 work, but part of the purpose of this thesis is in exposing the fact that those themes are explicit in Dick’s earliest fiction, dating back to the 1950s, and in essence form a continuation of his propensity for restaging ideas in increasingly complex ways. This complexity requires that the thesis first broach Dick’s theological ideas in their most basic terms, with the Introduction delineating the peculiar cosmological emphasis evident in Dick’s work as a way of building up to Dick’s experiences during 1974. In taking this approach, the thesis does not follow Dick’s work chronologically. The nexus that bonds the greater part of his science-fictional output is the restaging of specific cosmological ideas, and working to a strict chronology would not be appropriate for an author whose work represents temporal distortion in both methodology and end product. Careful signposting throughout the thesis instead serves to allow the reader to tackle the subject matter as it is broached, in a practical way designed to improve the reader’s understanding of Dick as an author and thinker. T a b l e o f C o n t e n t s Acknowledgements ii Dedication iii Note to Readers iv Introduction 1 Chapter One: Two Worlds, Two Gods 30 Chapter Two: 2-3-74 52 Chapter Three: Entropy Tends to Go Up 73 Chapter Four: Identity and the Hidden World 105 Chapter Five: Encryption and Holography 132 Chapter Six: Machine Worlds 152 Conclusion 174 Works Cited 202 i A cknowledgements The completion of this thesis would not have been possible except for the close support I received from a number of individuals, remarkable in their kindness and consideration, and all of whom I owe a debt of thanks. For offering me the opportunity to work part-time within the Department of English at the University of Leicester and thereby granting me a much-needed measure of financial security, I would like to thank the following members of staff: Professor Richard Foulkes, Dr. Mark Rawlinson, and Mrs. Sue Lloyd. I would also like to give special mention to Professor Gordon Campbell, who was kind enough to employ me for a short time as an editorial assistant on The Review o f English Studies. Friends that I have met during my time at the University of Leicester have been a great boon to me, providing me with their company and goodwill seemingly as I required it, and at a cost at times - 1 am sure - to their own responsibilities. I would therefore like to thank Dr. Scott Freer, Dr. Chris Louttit, Dr. Sam Perry, Dr. Rebecca Styler and Dr. Paula Warrington for their lasting friendship and support. During the course of preparing this thesis I was greatly aided by a research trip to the Poliak Library at California State University, Fullerton, where Mrs. Sharon Perry provided me not only with access to the Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Collection, but with a warm welcome and with unconditional support for my endeavours. For her kind assistance and patience I would like to express special thanks. Closer to home I would like to thank my friends Simon Cadden, Allan Faulkner, Andy Offor, Ben Redshaw, Brette Smith and Nick Yates both for our ongoing friendship and for occasional but essential trips to the pub! I would also like to thank my family, being my mother Madeline, my father David, and my brother Neil, on whose sufferance I have completed this thesis and without whose understanding I would never have done so. It is to them that I have dedicated this thesis, with much admiration and with my love. Finally, I wish to thank my supervisor Professor Martin Halliwell, whose attentive reading of my work allowed me to shape the thesis in a way which I hope is representative both of his patient guidance during my time at the University, and of his own singular academic expertise. D e d ic a t io n For Madeline, David, and Neil N o t e t o R e a d e r s Out of courtesy I would like to make the reader aware that some words used in the thesis are presented with alternative spellings. For example, where the sixteenth- century German mystic Jacob Boehme is referred to, his name is often listed in other sources as Behmen or as Bohme. Within the main body of the thesis, and where a reference using an alternative spelling is not cited, I write the name as Boehme simply for purposes of consistency and clarity. Similarly, within the body of the thesis, I spell the word artefact, to which Dick refers in his cosmological writings, using U. K. English. Where the word artifact is used, it appears solely within cited sources as written in American English by Dick himself. Boehme’s use of the word Ungrund is spelled as it appears in Robin Waterfield’sJacob Boehme: Essential Readings (1989) though Dick rendered the word as Urgrund. Furthermore and again for the sake of clarity, where a source is first cited in each chapter of the thesis, I provide the reader with a footnote containing full reference details for that source. Thereafter in that chapter, I refer to some sources by giving an abbreviated title. For example: I useScanner to refer to Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly (1977). I ntroduction Philip Kindred Dick (1928-1982) was a writer both of his time and ahead of his time. His popularity today is evidence enough that the themes he wrote about are becoming increasingly prevalent within popular culture. As Hollywood recreates his novels and short stories on film (most recently in Richard Linklater’s 2006 adaptation of A Scanner Darkly), it also silently borrows from his ideas (for example, in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, 1998) and proves that the thematic means by which Dick expressed himself are now interlaced with popular culture and private thought to the extent that audiences, seeking entertainment, remain unaware of the debt that modem culture - in particular contemporary science fiction - actually owes to Dick’s ideas.