Philip K. Dick: Authenticity and Insincerity

'''Huntington, John. "Philip K. Dick: Authenticity and Insincerity."' SFS'' #45 = 15.2 (July 1988): 152-60.

In an essay crucial for commenting on the works of P. K. Dick, JH suggests that Dick's use of A.E. van Vogt's "dictum that every 800 words a new idea should be introduced" leads to a sense in which there is less to Dick than meets the eye. "The illusion of conscious profundity in such works as [The Man in the] High Castle, [Do] Androids [Dream of Electric Sheep?], and VALIS is to a large extent generated by arbitrary narrative shifts. However, insofar as the search for the 'real' and 'authentic' is central to Dick's philosophical program, the mechanical narrative device is itself thematically important and expressive" (160; from JH's abstract).