Stars in my Pocket: SF, Philip K. Dick, and the Space Age

What is it about?

The trope of space exploration, that has attracted so many SF writers during the “golden age” of the genre, remains one of its hallmarks. We may, however, question its contemporary centrality after the waning of the intellectual climate that De Witt Douglas Kilgore labeled as “astrofuturism”. Perhaps, just like David Hartwell argued in Age of Wonders, “When it comes true”, by that meaning the Moon landing and other achievements from the American space program, “it’s no fun anymore”. Even if establishing the general truth of that hypothesis is a task too hard to undertake within the limitations of a paper, we will look at the peculiar way Philip K. Dick embraced that trope, perhaps anticipating its exhaustion, or rather its substitution for a more inner (should we also say “virtual”?) approach to space.

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