It comes into discourse analeptically in relation to a present, and since it is read from the standpoint of the present, it is proleptic as well, in that it forms ‘the time of the now.’” 6 In other words, we are in the temporality of the posthumous, whenever we retroactively discover the past to have been (possibly unknown to itself) prescient and prophetic, as seen from the point of view of some special problem or urgent concern in the here and now. I take my cue about the posthumous in part from Jeremy Tambling, who, referring to Walter Benjamin’s messianic conception of Jetztzeit or Now-time, explains the condition as follows: “The past is formed in the present, posthumously. Instead, it forms what can be called ‘a loop of belatedness,’ where the present rediscovers a certain past, to which it then attributes the power to shape aspects of the future that are now our present. The condition of the posthumous, briefly described, implies a relation of the past to the present that no longer follows the direct linearity of cause and effect, or the genealogy of generational succession. The enormous impact that Blade Runner and Total Recall would have on creating a special New Hollywood genre, the sci-fi noir thriller, raises the question in what particular sense PKD’s stories put him way ahead of his time and, in a manner of speaking, made him a “precog” (as the predictors are called in Minority Report), who, in the original story are ‘babbling idiots.’ For what strikes one is that both his reputation as a writer and his cinematic emulation, already during his lifetime, belonged to a special kind of afterlife: Comparable to a ‘serious’ writer like Franz Kafka, also specializing in ontologically precarious, liminal experiences, also virtually unknown during his lifetime and now instantly recognizable, Dick’s brand-name fame (his followers refer to each other as ‘Dickheads’) makes his a typical case of the posthumous.

Though he negotiated a somewhat better deal over Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which became Blade Runner (1982), Dick had little time to enjoy these financial rewards: he died before the film opened. For “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale” - the story that became Total Recall and in its original version (1990) grossed over $ 260 million -Dick was paid a derisory $1,000 in 1974. 5Īs this passage implies, Hollywood was late in calling on his work, and only towards the very end of his life was Dick making anything like an income from selling his work. Celebrated though he was in sci-fi circles, it was only in the 30 years after his death that his fame gradually grew - as of 2009, adaptations of hrs novels and short stories grossed an estimated total of $lbn at the box office. But despite his prolific output, and the success of the adaptations of his work - most famously Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report - Dick passed away in relative obscurity. Such major direct and indirect influence on mainstream cinema seems particularly perplexing, given PKD’s outsider status during his lifetime, and his late recognition even as an exceptional sci-fi author:Īmerican author Philip Kindred Dick died in 1982, leaving behind an astonishing 41 novels and around 120 short stories. Not only are some of the most absorbing cult films of the past three decades adaptations of Dick’s fiction (predominately short stories) - e.g., Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006) 2 several other films revealing to their heroes that they are in fact living fake or manipulated lives, such as The Matrix (1999) or The Truman Show (1998), 3 are like PKD clones, just as The Sixth Sense (1999), Vanilla Sky (2001), The Others (2001), Inception (2010), Dark City (1998), eXistenZ (1999), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and Looper (2012), to name a few, also have distinct PKD DNA: they all share his ‘what-if thought-experiment premises, are variations on his obsessions, or play riffs on his themes and motifs, such as “repressed memories, false pasts, strange doubles and simulated realities.” 4 1 Insofar as they have one common father, his name is unquestionably Philip K.

It seems the family resemblance among so many of the films we label mind-games or puzzle films is no accident.

Original causality game