Phillip K. Dick and paranoia.

In the above rare interview Phillip K. Dick talks about issues within his novel a Scanner Darkly [which was made into a film with Robert Downey Jn] particularly the notion of paranoia and surveillance. The story tells of a narcotics agent who ultimately turns against himself and gives evidence against himself. Which is in essence a height of paranoia where you yourself are surveilling and judging your own actions because you can personally never escape your own thoughts and thus the surveillance.

The paranoia that is reflected in Dick's book is the similar to the paranoia people are beginning to feel when they cant speak out in their own life, paranoia derived from oppression.

Dick says Science fiction is something which is considered for adolescents, or for disturbed people to read, so were limited in writing to books which have no sex no violence and no deep ideas but have this idea of space opera which is a western type vibe set inn the future. Therefore it is hard or was at the time he wrote a scanner darkly to get people to think about the deeper ideas portrayed in his book, but this more and more is beginning to change as the things he has previously written about particularly in terms of surveillance are beginning to come true.