I'm very excited to be on the line-up for the Manchester Literature Festival this year. I'll be appearing alongside the wonderful Irenosen Okojie, the magnificent Francesca Beard, and the always fabulous Kate Feld to talk about the life, times and imagination of Philip K. Dick. There'll be a screening of the BBC Arena documentary 'A Day in the Afterlife' and then we'll delve into the paranoid world of this most singular sci-fi writer.
My credentials for this come by way of my deep dive into Blade Runner for my PhD thesis, where I argue that the film can be read as a parable for neurodivergent acceptance. There's no doubting that Philip K. Dick was neurodivergent (no doubt a term he would have loved playing around with in his work), and his frenetic, complex and often highly paranoid visions of the future were no doubt deeply shaped by this. He's one of those true 'visionaries', perhaps even more so than Orwell, who may have predicted the surveillance state but didn't see the madness it would provoke as much as PKD did.
I'm definitely going to have to brush up on my PKD between now and then as it's been a few years since I last read one of his works (which I believe was Martian Time-Slip - I think the first novel to ever use autism as a plot point). I've got Game Players of Titan and The Man in the High Castle here on my shelves, so that's as good a place as any to start. Might even try and squeeze in Ubik if I can, and it's certainly time to finally watch Linklaker's adaptation of A Scanner Darkly.
The event is on Saturday 19th October at 2pm in the afternoon at Manchester Central Library. Tickets are free but booking is advised. Here's your link: https://manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/events/your-local-arena-presents-a-day-in-the-afterlife
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