“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”

American science fiction writer and novelist

Philip K. Dick was an American science fiction writer and novelist. He is known for work that questioned reality, identity, and perception, and for stories that often unsettled the line between the ordinary and the strange. He wrote 45 novels and about 121 short stories, with most of his short fiction appearing in science fiction magazines. His fiction often followed characters facing alternate realities, false environments, powerful corporations, authoritarian rule, drug use, and altered states of consciousness. He is regarded as a major figure in 20th-century science fiction.