Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick was an American science fiction writer, born in Chicago, who wrote 45 novels and about 121 short stories, most of them in science fiction magazines. He began publishing in 1952, and his alternative history novel The Man in the High Castle won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Among his best-known books are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, and A Scanner Darkly, and his later work, including VALIS, turned toward questions of reality and theology. He died in 1982 at 53, and films such as Blade Runner and Minority Report were based on his fiction.