PKD Studies a La Kafka, Borges, Calvino (Book Review‪)‬

PKD Studies a la Kafka, Borges, Calvino. Jason P. Vest. The Postmodern Humanism of Philip K. Dick. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 2009. 227 pp. $50 paper. In the realm of science fiction criticism, we don't even need to say his name anymore. Like James Bond, we know his name--it's everywhere, a fixture in the pages of Extrapolation, Science Fiction Studies, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Foundation and others, not to mention journals of postmodernism and popular culture. PKD is adequate enough. And we might as well call the widespread critical attention to his work PKD Studies, given the rampant proliferation of research on the former(ly perceived) gutter-author since the 1970s. PKD Studies, of course, is not limited to mere scholarly readings of his novels and stories. There are biographies the likes of Lawrence Sutin's renowned Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (1989), the most thorough depiction of PKD's life, and more recently Emmanuel Carrere's creative nonfictional I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick (2005), a speculative exegesis of that speculative exegetic. PKD is even the protagonist of Michael Bishop's Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas (1993), a novel that functions both as plucky entertainment and biocritical homage. Almost twenty years ago, Science Fiction Studies published a best-of anthology of forty critical articles dating from 1975-1992 on PKD's work. This anthology remains a seminal resource and facilitated the hundreds of essays and books that emerged in the subsequent two decades. Indeed, PKD criticism replicates likes kipple, and it doesn't seem as if it will slow down anytime soon.