] Like the babbling psychics who predict future crimes in ] Minority Report, Dick was a precog. Lurking within his ] amphetamine-fueled fictions are truths that have only to ] be found and decoded. In a 1978 essay he wrote: "We live ] in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured ] by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by ] religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, ] What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with ] pseudorealities manufactured by very sophisticated people ] using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not ] distrust their motives. I distrust their power. It is an ] astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, ] universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same ] thing." The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick |