Point Reyes Light - November 4, 2004
Bio on Philip K. Dick, Pt. Reyes sci-fi writer
By Jacob Resneck
A biography of the internationally know science-fiction writer Philip K Dick, who once lived in Point Reyes Station, describes the late author as one of the most influential writers of the last century.
Dick led an erratic life, spending five years in Point Reyes Station beginning in 1958, when he arrived with his second wife Kleo Apostolides.
In Point Reyes Station, he met resident Anne Dick, who became his third wife and who still resides in town.
"Phil was a nice man, but he had problems," Anne Dick said last week. "I’m not quite sure what they were," she told The Light while alluding to his paranoia, which was a hallmark of his stories. Mainly set in the future, many of his novels echoed the paranoia that pervaded the Cold War during which he lived.
From 1958 to 1964, Dick spent his West Marin years much like he did most of his life: struggling to make a living on his writing. While he was a frenetic writer, publishing several novels a year, science fiction novelists were not high earners. Dick was paid on average a mere $2,000 a novel, earning an average $12,000 a year.
Life in Pt. Reyes Station
While living in Point Reyes Station, Dick did some of his best writing, drawing on its landscape and people to color his novels. The Simulacra (1964) was set in Point Reyes Station, Anne Dick noted, though he named it after the Sonoma County hamlet of Jenner.
"Local townspeople such as Bob Allen, a science teacher at West Marin School, George Stratton, the school principal, artist Alys Graveson, wound up in the book too," Anne Dick recalled. "All of the people around here were characters in his books.
Casting Anne as the villain
"I was in all of them too, and I was always an adulteress and a murderess. Figure that one out."
After Ridley Scott’s movie version of Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) won such accolades as Blade Runner, Dick’s novels and stories were adapted for numerous Hollywood films. Dick’s stories were the basis for Total Recall and Paycheck and – most recently – Minority Report. Anne Dick approvingly commented that Minority Report came close to be truly Dickian, which has become science-fiction shorthand for plots imbued with paranoia yet believable, or even prophetic.
"The real reason his books became so successful is because the world became so Dickian," Anne Dick said.
The latest biography published, I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick, was written in French by the Parisian novelist Emmanuel Carrère.
French biographical novel
It takes the form of a novel, interspersing material from Dick’s stories with his life in Northern California. Reviewers have criticized the book’s tendency to overly summarize the plots of Dick’s novel. Anne Dick said that Carrère visited her in 1993. He was just one of the many Phil Dick fans that have pilgrimaged to Point Reyes Station over the years.
"He sat with us and drank our California wine, which he complimented," Anne Dick recalled. She said she has yet to read Carrère’s biographical novel. However, she added, her daughter Laura, an executive with EDS ("the largest data processing firm in the world"), didn’t think much of it.
Philip K Dick died of a stroke in 1982 at the age of 53. By then he had published 44 novels and was just beginning to receive acclaim from the literary world. Anne Dick operates a successful jewelry business in Point Reyes Station and owns a bed & breakfast inn on Mesa Road.