He found little commercial success until his alternative history novel The Man in the High Castle (1962) earned him acclaim, including a Hugo Award for Best Novel, when he was 33. He began publishing science fiction stories in 1952, at age 23. īorn in Chicago, Dick moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with his family at a young age. His fiction explored varied philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness.

He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime.

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American science fiction writer.