Philip K. Dick

Latest Articles

Love and Robots in Death and the Powers: The Robots' Opera

In Tod Machover's new opera, Death and the Powers , high technology meets high anxiety
A third of the way through the opera Death and the Powers: the Robots' Opera , the leading man becomes a machine.
By CHRIS DAHLEN | March 18, 2011

Why I am leaving Facebook

New beginnings
By the time you read this, I'll already be gone.
By DAN MACLEOD | December 29, 2010

2011 film preview: 25 films Mike Leigh didn't direct (plus one that he did)

The movies chill out to start the year
So, it's time for Another Year , meaning not just 2011 but also the latest film from Happy-Go-Lucky director Mike Leigh, a traipse through four seasons in the lives of ordinary people, exploring their small joys and tragedies. Kind of like Blue Valentine , but with no oral sex.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 29, 2010

MIT Kinects with the Future

Philip K. Dicking Around
Here in the future, we don't just have park lights that run on dog poop; we're so advanced that cutting-edge technology occasionally shows up in the toy aisle at Wal-Mart.
By S.I. ROSENBAUM | December 15, 2010

Hello, Numan

A synth-pop legend reluctantly accepts his past
Gary Numan has never been one for nostalgia.
By MATT PARISH | October 19, 2010

Disco stew

Mystery Roar are more than just four-on-the-floor
I’ve never been to a disco band’s practice space, but I figured it would involve lots of velvet, mirrors, and other visions borrowed from the foggy-lens films they used to show at roller rinks. Was that naive of me?
By MATT PARISH | April 20, 2010

The Carols of Christmas

The song’s the thing in The Gift of the Magi
One can't just break out into Christmas carols, even in this warm and fuzzy season.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | December 08, 2009

Rolling stoned

Jonathan Lethem’s freewheeling Chronic City
Every new gambit is just another log on the roaring bonfire of Jonathan Lethem's eighth novel.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | November 04, 2009

Review: Surrogates

Philip K. Dick-ian premise deserves better
Some day in the future — or is it right now? — people will be replaced by surrogate robots, superhuman automatons who live out big-screen fantasies while their hosts, with their greasy hair and bad skin, sit back in wired-up La-Z-Boys.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 30, 2009

October lite

The outlook is still gloomy, but film finds time for childish things
We expected the vampires, the werewolves, the zombies, and the homicidal maniacs. Same thing with the android doubles, the alien abductors, the sexually abused pregnant teenager, the Apocalypse, and the post-Apocalypse. But kids' movies?
By PETER KEOUGH | September 17, 2009

The plots thicken

9/11 Truthers, Tea Parties, Birthers — conspiracy is in the air. No wonder Hollywood is embracing paranoia.
Eight years after the destruction of the World Trade Center — the result of one of the most devastatingly successful conspiracies in history — Americans still take comfort in paranoia.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 11, 2009

Review: Moon

Duncan Jones's debut is more alienation than Alien
Duncan Jones begins his first feature with an infomercial for "Lunar Industries, Ltd" that celebrates Lunar's solution to global warming: strip-mining the surface of the moon for "Helium 3," an isotope that can provide a limitless source of non-polluting fuel.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 19, 2009

The price is right

Alexander C. Irvine sees a Buyout in your future
For a guy sometimes compared to Philip K. Dick, Alex Irvine took his time in getting around to writing about the future.
By SAM PFEIFLE | April 01, 2009

Novel idea: Twitter fiction

Post-modernism, post by 140-character post
Inauspiciously, Tom Scharpling began his Twitter novel with a typo.
By MIKE MILIARD | January 14, 2009

War correspondent

Paul Auster sheds light on Man in the Dark
So here he goes again, the writer known as Paul Auster, starting yet another novel, this time with the words “I am alone in the dark.”
By PETER KEOUGH | September 02, 2008

Tricky Dick

Philip K. Dick's second Library of America volume
The Philip K. Dick phenomenon might be petering out.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 28, 2008

Almost Famous: Micah Salkind

Providence Black Repertory Company
"You can’t throw a stone here without hitting an artist."
By FRANK MULLIN | June 04, 2008

Bought and sold

Rampant consumerism and Iván Navarro at Tufts, ‘Some Sort of Uncertainty’ at Axiom
So I’d like to declare that art about consumerism is one of the æsthetic trends of our young millennium.
By GREG COOK | January 22, 2008

Dead white females

From Fall Out Boy to One Night in Paris , modern pop culture is what it is today thanks to 10 long-expired ladies
Can you remember the last time you curled up under the covers with Marcel Proust’s I n Search of Lost Time ?
By SHARON STEEL | August 08, 2007

Heat waves

Summer reads to cool off with
“Summer joys are spoilt by use,” wrote John Keats, meaning the less you do between June and August, the better.
By JOHN FREEMAN | June 28, 2007

Ice and fire

Ice Cream’s cold contemporary art, Burning Man’s hot stuff
Burning Man began as a San Francisco pyromaniacs’ beach party in 1986.
By GREG COOK | June 28, 2007

The man who knew too much

Philip K. Dick enters the Library of America
Around the age of 13, Philip K. Dick started having a recurring dream.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 28, 2007

Sifting the trash heap

Things I love about the gold and the garbage in comics
There’s an image in an old Warlock comic book by Jim Starlin that sums up a lot of the peculiar, shared pleasure of reading comics.
By DOUGLAS WOLK | June 28, 2007

Smoking hot

Cigarettes on the silver screen
In honor of May 31, International No Tabacco Day, we’re listing the some of the most seminal smoking scenes on the silver screen.
By PHOENIX STAFF | June 01, 2007

Hell is other sequels

Pirates 3 offers buried treasures
At first, At World’s End doesn’t seem to differ much from the world outside.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 23, 2007

A pendantic thriller
If you know your Philip K. Dick, you know screen adaptations of his work are all over the map.
By TOM MEEK | May 02, 2007

The future of an illusion

Reflections on 40 years spent in the dark
When I first realized that movies would, for better or worse, dominate my imagination forever, I really gave no thought to the forces at work creating these transfiguring images on a screen.
By PETER KEOUGH | November 15, 2006

Unhappy accident

Thom Yorke’s unwitting masterpiece
Don’t let the amicable interviews or the delighted dancing fool you. Thom Yorke is upset.
By WILL SPITZ | July 12, 2006

Scanner brained

Richard Linklater animates Philip K. Dick’s Darkly
In 1977, in his novel A Scanner Darkly , Philip K. Dick invented the perfect drug — at least from society’s point of view. True Dick?: Looking for fidelity to the cyber-punk master. By James Parker
By PETER KEOUGH | July 06, 2006

A slacker darkly

Why Dick likes Dick
"We’re great at declaring war on things that you really can’t technically win," says Richard Linklater. Peter Keough interviews Richard Linklater (podcast mp3) Scanner brained: Richard Linklater animates Philip K. Dick’s Darkly . By Peter Keough True Dick?: Looking for fidelity to the cyber-punk master. By James Parker
By PETER KEOUGH | July 06, 2006