Anne was then transferred to the Langley Porter Clinic, in San Francisco, for two weeks. She was released with instructions to continue with her medication for a further two to three months. Whatever PKD’s motivations for this action, relations within the marriage did not improve. In his novel Now Wait for Last Year (1966), written in the autumn of

PKD came to believe that he was one of a group of secret Christians (as was the girl), and that their mission was to prepare the world for the return of the Saviour. He ‘realized’ that the Roman Empire had never ended but continued to rule the world and to persecute Christians, and so PKD and other members of the group had to remain in hiding,

One of the major projects Galen took over was the movie rights to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968).

‘Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures.’

1977 – A Scanner Darkly ‘Everything in life is just for a while.’ – Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly This novel had a long gestation period. The original idea was developed by PKD in 1972 but it was only in 1973 that the story gained a structure. He wrote an outline of 82 pages which was submitted to Doubleday. Doubleday were interested and

‘The phosphenes — optic neurons — are a primordial sense system by which the “archetypal ideas or eidei” were originally a priori perceived, but like the bicameral mind, it has atrophied. Why, the hallucinogenic mushroom bread and broth sets off phosphene activity! As mescaline, peyote, LSD, etc., do.’360

The first thing that struck me was the extremes within PKD’s profile. It is unusual to have five sten 10 scores in a single profile together with one 9 and one 8. The profile also has one sten 2. In effect, this means that eight out of the sixteen factors were statistically unusual in that only 16 per cent or fewer of the general population would

In January 1964, in a final attempt to bring the family closer together again, PKD, Anne and the children were baptised into the Episcopal Church. A month later they were confirmed. However, things remained difficult between Anne and PKD. Their therapist felt that the relationship would benefit from having separate councillors and PKD was allocated

PKD was convinced of one point, however, that information not only flowed from the past into the future but also from the future into the past. He claimed to have been drawing on experiences that occurred in his later life as source material for stories that he wrote earlier on in his career.