Irrational Expectations; or, How Economics and the Post-Industrial World Failed Philip K. Dick

Rabkin, Eric S. "Irrational Expectations; or, How Economics and the Post-Industrial World Failed Philip K. Dick." SFS #45, 15.2 (July 1988): 161-72.

Important essay arguing that even "as rational industrialism mass-produces its products, so it forces those working within that system to fragment and rationalize their labor—and even their thoughts—into replicable, typically identical units. Dick repeatedly dramatized this 'intellectual desolation' [as Karl Marx put it] by focusing . . . on beings who were themselves artificially produced, machine people he typically called androids" (163). Collects Dickian quotes on mechanized humans and discusses ''Do Androids Dream. . ., "The Electric Ant," The Man in the High Castle, Palmer Eldritch, "Autofac," A Scanner Darkly, and VALIS''—see Dick citations under Fiction.