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Dicking Around
by Steve Dollar
Charlie Sheen can rant about tiger"s blood until his face turns blue, but he"s a pussy in comparison to Philip K. Dick. The visionary novelist and short story writer (1928-1982) was a notorious pill-head who averaged one marriage for every decade of his life. A prophet of paranoia and meta-reality, the author spent his final eight years on the planet processing hallucinations he attributed to a divine cosmic intelligence he called VALIS. No mere Vatican assassin, he became convinced that he was a 1st-century Christian named Thomas-the target of Roman oppression-or, variously, under the spirit possession of the Old Testament prophet Elijah.
Nearly 40 years later, it might seem that just about every word Dick typed (and he typed a gazillion of them) has been optioned for or inspired a movie, miniseries, opera, comic book, rock album, video game, trans-fat-free snack or 3D holographic installation-you name it. Only William S. Burroughs can claim as much hipster cachet as a one-size-fits-all generator of cultural phenomena, underpinning everything from cyberpunk to postmodern philosophy.