Books: Welcome to the Club

From almost any perspective, it makes sense to canonize Dick's writing. He has influenced artists ranging from the novelist Jonathan Lethem—who's repaid his debt by editing the Library of America edition—to the Wachowski brothers, whose "Matrix" movies are unimaginable without Dick's vision to inspire them. His prose was a little flaky and his genre a bit dodgy, but, as a character in "The Man in the High Castle" says, "He told us about our own world ... This, what's around us now."

© 2007