Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick (December 16, 1928-March 2, 1982) was a well-known and respected science fiction writer with over forty novels to his credit. Dick had a somewhat traumatic and tumultuous early life with frequent upheaval and moves, which lead to Dick's suffering from agoraphobia and other psychological maladies later in life. Dick was enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley where he studied philosophy, but he did not complete the program.
After working for a brief time in a record store, Dick began to write short stories. In 1954 he finished his first novel, Solar Lottery, but it wasn't until the publication of The Man in the High Castle in 1963 that Dick's work began to be recognized. That novel won that year's Hugo award and would remain his most acclaimed work until 1974's Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, which won the John W. Campbell Award. Perhaps Dick’s most prominent word was 1968’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, his grim futuristic fantasy that inspired the breakthrough film and classic Blade Runner (1982).
