| Philip K.Dick(1928-1982)is a famous American science fiction writer known for his prolific creation.Critics have often compared him to Kafka,Calvino,and Borges for his brilliant writing and profound thought.Also,he is the first sci-fi author whose works are selected in the "The Library of America Series." People have been aware of the significant influence of Gnosticism on Dick’s creation,especially in his later writing.This paper mainly focuses on Philip K.Dick’s scientific novels,discussing how Dick accomplishes his individualized gnostic writing on the textual content and what artistic features we can find in his special narrative style.Based on the close reading of Dick’s works,biographies,essays,interviews,and relevant knowledge of Gnosticism,this paper tries to reveal the spiritual resonance between Philip K.Dick and Gnosticism and explore the possibility of adopting and retrofitting gnostic and mythological logical narration and its concrete presentation and artistic features of the textual content.Also,this unique writing skill is how Dick reacts to the situation of his time and weaves his aesthetic experience-something more specific with strong personalized characteristics into his novels.Dick’s gnostic writing will be discussed in the following four different aspects.The first chapter focuses on how Dick integrates gnostic images and the symbolic language around these images into his personalized writing.First,in his novels,we can find several sets of complex worlds against each other.The author attempts to approach the so-called "real world" and answers the question-What is real?-that has haunted him all his life.Secondly,Demiurge is also a regular gnostic image in his novels.The imperfect world and the evil and ugly rulers created in his works correspond to several features of Demiurge in gnostic mythology.Finally,Dick’s novels often flash with images of external saviors and mysterious messages.The characters follow this hidden knowledge which plays the role of the gnostic gospel and gnosis heading to the essence of things.The second chapter,"The Isomeric Structure between Philip K.Dick’s Novels and the Gnostic Mythology," examines the narrative model of Dick’s novels brought from the gnostic mythical structure,which helps Dick construct his fantastical world with the sci-fi elements and modern elements.The world of his novels operates roughly according to the mode of falling/descending to returning.At the same time,the inner journey of the characters in his books also turns from division to unity.The third chapter mainly discusses the gnostic view of space-time displayed in Dick’s writing.First of all,Dick’s idea of time breaks out from the linear time in Christianity and is different from the simple circular perspective of time from ancient Greece.He attempts to offer a theory about the orthogonal time to resist the false reality which slides on the horizontal axis,leading us to infinity.Second,the consistency between his time concept and the gnostic time is that Dick implies that time is a fallacy and an illusion that help the evil God trap people in a "Black Iron Prison" in his novels.Finally,Dick’s fifth-dimensional space-time essentially refers to the Gnostic concept of space-time.The fourth chapter explores the artistic features of Dick’s mythological narration.Dick’s gnostic writing is just a microcosm of the entire transition period of science fiction.The science fiction New Wave breaks the rigid types and evaluation standards deliberately.Its emphasis on narrative skills and literariness,makes the original evaluation standards invalid,and embraces more styles,themes and subject matters.Dick has created many fantastic post-human body images in his novels.The science fiction New Wave firstly brings the possibility of combining the genre of science fiction with other new paradigms and symbolic themes.Dick’s unique gnostic writing also opens up a new way of examining the world of science fiction.The gnostic dualism of mind and body is the key to decipher the various forms of the body in Dick’s works.At the same time,Dick shows his aesthetic and cognitive art in his gnostic narration with his unique style and special features-the pursuit of transcendence and eternity,the metaphorical fabulation,and the imagination,curiosity and the sense of wonder to the world. |
