The canon of the detective genre: Rex Stout’s detective stories

Themes

Recurring themes in Delany's work include mythology, memory, language, and perception. Class, position in society, and the ability to move from one social stratum to another are motifs that are touched on in his earlier work and became more significant in his later fiction and non-fiction, both. Writing itself (both prose and poetry) is also a repeated theme: several of his characters—Geo in The Jewels of Aptor, Vol Nonik in The Fall of the Towers, Rydra Wong in Babel-17, Ni Ty Lee in Empire Star, Katin Crawford in Nova, the Kid in Dhalgren, and Osudh in Phallos —are writers or poets.

Following the 1968 publication of Nova, there is not only a large gap in Delany's published work (after releasing eight novels and a novella between 1962 and 1968, Delany's published output virtually stops until 1973), there is also a notable addition to the themes found in the stories published after that time. It is at this point that Delany begins dealing with sexual themes to an extent rarely equalled in serious writing. Dhalgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand include several sexually explicit passages, and several of his books such as Equinox (originally published as The Tides of Lust, a title that Delany does not endorse), The Mad Man, Hogg and Phallos can be considered pornography, a term Delany himself endorses. Novels such as Trouble on Triton and the thousand-plus pages making up his four-volume Return to Nevèrÿon series explore in detail how sexuality and sexual attitudes relate to the socioeconomic underpinnings of a primitive--or, in Trouble on Triton' s case, futuristic--society.

Delany has also published several books of literary criticism, with an emphasis on issues in science fiction and other paraliterary genres, comparative literature, and queer studies.

Major works: City of a Thousand Suns (1965); Babel-17 (1966, Nebula Award); The Einstein Intersection (1967, Nebula Award); Dhalgren (1975), Triton (1976), also published as Trouble on Triton; Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984); Return to Nevèrÿon series.

Philip Kindred Dick (1928 –1982) was an American writer, mostly known for his works of science fiction; in addition to forty-four books currently in print, Dick wrote more than 120 short stories and minor works published in pulp magazines. At least eight of his stories have been cinematically adapted. Though hailed during his lifetime by peers such as Stanisław Lem, Robert A. Heinlein, and Robert Silverberg, and despite being highly regarded in France, the writer received little general public recognition in America until after his death.

Foreshadowing the cyberpunk sub-genre, Dick brought the anomic world of California to many of his works, exploring sociological and political themes in his early novels and stories, often dominated by neo-feudal corporate quasi-governments, while his later work tackled drugs and theology, drawing upon his own life experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. Alternate universes and simulacra were common plot devices, with fictional worlds inhabited by common, working people, rather than galactic elites. "There are no heroics in Dick's books," Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, "but there are heroes. One is reminded of Dickens: what counts is the honesty, constancy, kindness and patience of ordinary people."

His novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternative history and science fiction, earning a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is completely unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real."

Dick's stories often become surreal fantasies, with characters discovering that their everyday world is an illusion, emanating either from external entities or from the vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator. "All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality," writes science fiction author Charles Platt. “Everything is a matter of perception”

Philip Kindred Dick and his twin sister, Jane Charlotte Dick, were born to Joseph Edgar Dick and Dorothy Kindred Dick in Chicago. Baby Jane died enroute, just five weeks after her birth (January 26, 1929). The death of Philip's twin sister profoundly affected his writing, relationships, and every aspect of his life, leading to the recurrent motif of the "phantom twin" in many of his books.

The family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. When Philip turned five, his father was transferred to Reno, Nevada. Dorothy refused to move, and she and Joseph were divorced. Joseph fought her for custody of Philip but did not win it. Dorothy, determined to raise Philip alone, took a job in Washington, D.C. and moved there with her son.

Philip K. Dick was enrolled at John Eaton Elementary School from 1936 to 1938, completing the second through the fourth grades. His lowest grade was a "C" in written composition, although a teacher remarked that he "shows interest and ability in story telling." In June 1938, Dorothy and Philip returned to California.

Dick attended Berkeley High School, Berkeley, California. After graduating from high school he briefly attended the University of California, Berkeley as a German major, but dropped out before completing any coursework. Dick claimed to have been host of a classical music program on KSMO Radio in 1947. From 1948 to 1952 he worked in a record store, his only job before selling his first story in 1952. From that point on he wrote full-time, selling his first novel in 1955. The 1950s were a difficult impoverished time for Dick. He once said, "We couldn't even pay the late fees on a library book."

In 1955, Dick and his wife, Kleo Apostolides, received a visit from the FBI. They believed this resulted from Kleo's socialist views and left-wing activities. The couple briefly befriended one of the FBI agents. Dick himself regarded Communism as a control system equivalent to fascism.^[2]

In 1963, Dick won the Hugo Award for The Man in the High Castle. Although he was hailed as a genius in the SF world, the mainstream literary world was unappreciative, and he could publish books only through low-paying SF publishers such as Ace. Even in his later years, he continued to have financial troubles.

In the introduction to the 1980 short story collection "The Golden Man," Dick wrote: "Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in this world. I don't agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there…he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love."

Dick married five times, and had two daughters and a son; each marriage ended in divorce.

The last novel published during Dick's life was The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

Philip K. Dick died in Santa Ana, California, on March 2, 1982.

A number of Dick's stories have been made into movies, most of them only loosely based on Dick's original stories, being used as a starting-point for a Hollywood action-adventure story, while introducing violence uncharacteristic of Dick's stories and replacing the typically nondescript Dick protagonist with an action hero. (Dick himself wrote a screenplay for an intended film adaptation of Ubik in 1974, but the film was never made.)

Major works:

The Man in the High Castle (1962) occurs in an alternate universe United States that is ruled by the victorious Axis powers. It is considered a defining novel of the alternate history sub-genre, and is the only Dick novel to win a Hugo Award. This novel, along with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Ubik, is recommended as an introductory novel to readers new to the writing of Philip K. Dick.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) utilizes an array of science fiction concepts and features several layers of reality and unreality. It is also one of Dick’s first works to explore religious themes.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) is the story of a bounty hunter policing the local android population. It occurs on a dying, poisoned Earth that has become de-populated of all "successful" humans. The only remaining inhabitants of the planet are people with no prospects off-world. Androids, also known as replicants, all have a preset "death" date. However, a few replicants seek to escape this fate and supplant the humans on Earth.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is well known as the literary source of the influential 1982 film Blade Runner. It is both a conflation and an intensification of the pivotally Dickian question, What is real, what is fake? Are the human-looking and human-acting androids fake or real humans? Should we treat them as machines or as people? What crucial factor defines humanity as distinctly 'alive', versus those merely alive only in their outward appearance?

Ubik (1969) uses extensive networks of psychics and a suspended state after death, in creating a state of eroding reality. In 2005, Time Magazine listed it as one of the best one hundred English language novels published since 1923.

VALIS, (1980) is perhaps Dick’s most postmodern and autobiographical novel, examining his own, supposed encounters with a divine presence. It also may be considered his most academically studied work, and was adapted as an opera by Tod Machover. VALIS was voted Philip K. Dick‘s best novel at the website philipkdickfans.com. The word VALIS is the acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System; it is the title of a novel (and is continued thematically in at least three more novels). Later, PKD theorized that VALIS was both a "reality generator" and a means of extraterrestrial communication.

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