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Philip K. Dick criticism has proliferated over the past thirty years. This fact and the diffusion of his influence during this time period beyond the boundaries of his science-fiction novels suggest how Dick's satiric and visionary, yet distinctively proletarian, sensibility has captured some thread in the texture of American culture in the second half of the twentieth century. As Eric Carl Link frames Dick's influence, "To read the work of Philip K. Dick is not only to read of the future, but also to read a version of the history of U.S. culture throughout the entire cold war era" (9-10). Dick's central themes-the elusive nature of reality, the uncertain boundaries between the human and the artificial, and the invasion of simulacra and counterfeits into the substance of life-are not just political, but existential in nature. Given this fact, and the imaginative and intellectual energy of his writing, the considerable critical attention given to Dick, most notably his science fiction, is understandable.
First, a few words on chronological and generic matters appear in order. Regarding chronology, this review, with the exception of several important articles appearing in 1975, will cover scholarship from 1982 to 2010.1982 is a convenient starting point for two reasons. First, it is the year of Dick's death, thus making the materials covered here almost entirely posthumous, and, second, it is also the date of the release of Bladerunner., by far the most influential film based on Dick's writings, which can be seen to mark the beginning of the wider cultural diffusion of Dick's influence. I will focus on Dick's science fiction rather than on his earlier realistic novels, essays, and philosophical works (except as they enter into critical analysis of his science fiction), or the films based on Dick's science fiction that have a less direct relation to his written work itself.
Several previous reviews of Dick criticism both merit attention in themselves and also mark its progress, growth, and possible saturation point. In 1984, in "The Transmigration of Philip K. Dick," Carl Feckete criticizes the lack of new publications among the eleven selections in Joseph Olander and Martin H. Greenberg's Philip K. Dick and the lack of original scholarship in that publication as well as in Hazel Pierce's 1984 Philip K....