"The other crucial thing one notices rereading Dick today is how much he belongs to a particular time, and how keeningly the music of that time runs through his books—not the music of the spheres, or of the future, but the AM-FM radio soundtrack of the sixties and early seventies. On the one hand, the screeching, treble, machine-gun announcements of public disasters; on the other, the chesty, cooing accompaniment of hipster reverie and psychedelic jamming. (You had to be there.) These two worlds were separate then, or felt separated—people did turn to progressive-rock stations with the feeling that the mixture of the d.j.’s deep, stoned voice and 'Layla' was a form of rebellion against the Empire. (You really had to be there.) Dick’s world is always structured around that sort of division: the public news is of one kind, private understanding another. A small, futile, but perceptive band of stoners and hipsters is ranged against the Empire; they don’t win, but they do see."
In The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik revists the life and work of Philip K. Dick.
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