McKee, Gabriel. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004. 84 + xii pp., $22.00 (USD). ISBN: 0-7618-2673-4.

[1]  Philip K. Dick was author of some of the best science-fiction of the twentieth century, and his work, like so much science fiction, touched on themes of human distinctiveness and the nature of the “real.”  Somewhat unique to Dick’s writing was the consistent presence of explicitly religious material, woven into the fabric of the usual science-fiction themescape.  Some would say that Dick posited a religious viewpoint which was Gnostic or even neo-pagan; yet Gabriel McKee argues in Pink Beams of Light from the God in the Gutter that a closer reading of Dick’s life and personal writings reveals a deeply Christian religious orientation which spills over into his religious philosophy and theology.  McKee argues that Dick, in addition to being a science fiction author, is a contemporary (literary) theologian, who although Episcopalian by confession, is theologically in line with an Augustinian (neo-platonic) and Lutheran theological tradition.  

[2] The text begins with an attempt to overcome the stereotypical division between religion and science fiction by arguing that the thematic pallette employed by science fiction writers is inherently open to religious interpretations.  Concepts such as concern over the nature of future and/or possible worlds, human creativity, and the moral ambiguity of materiality, are mutually expressed by religion and science fiction alike.  Now, it is one thing to point out a shared reservoir of imagery between religion and a fictional genre, but it is an altogether different matter to assert that these commonalities reflect the intentions of the author.  In our postmodern age, issues of intentionality have all but left the world of literary review, yet McKee in this volume uses his keen intellect to explore what motivating factors underlie Dick’s religious imagery.  

[3] To accomplish this, McKee approaches Dick through both biographical and literary angles; bridging together Dick’s popular works with his personal letters and posthumously published journal, The Exegesis.  This two-pronged pursuit of Dick’s religious life creates a picture of an individual who was both tormented and enraptured by divine encounters, visions, and revelations.  The religious texture of Dick’s life was mediated by his adult conversion to Episcopalianism, which spurred on his interest in the writings of Augustine and Meister Eckhart (as well as Plotinus and the I Ching).

[4] In the first chapter (“Dick as Religious Philosopher”) McKee explores Dick’s underlying philosophical presuppositions by sketching out the basics of his philosophical anthropology and metaphysics.  It was interesting to learn how Dick integrated central tenets of Christian piety into his own vision of philosophical anthropology.  McKee argues that empathy presents itself in Dick’s work as the defining characteristic of humanity in juxtaposition to the increasingly technical society—“By loosing empathy, we lose our own humanity” (18).  Accordingly, the Pauline sentiment expressed in 1 Corinthians 13:2 (“…if I understand all mysteries, but do not have love, I am nothing.”) is echoed in Dick’s own fictional and personal piety: “Dick saw Paul’s ideal of love as the solution to the potential ethical dilemmas of the technological future, and much of his science fiction may be read as futurological interpretations of that ideal” (37).  

[5] But, how does one know that Dick’s use of religious imagery is not merely a reflection of Christian culture, rather than the outer manifestations of an inner faith?   The explicitly theological turn argued by McKee initially seemed to be the source of much of my own skepticism.  Although I have read a lot of Dick’s work, and have always known that there was something religious beneath the surface of his writings, I felt that McKee’s reading of Dick as a Christian theologian appeared, at first, to be a bit excessive.  Despite my initial misgivings, McKee convincingly argued that Dick’s fiction flowed from his exposure to Christianity, on the basis of his repeated use of Eucharistic themes, the Christological and Pauline elements of various pieces of his fiction, and the explicitly Christian nature of his private writings.  McKee has made me a believer in Dick’s belief.  

[6] Even though I have been convinced that McKee’s reading is justified, I do have an inkling of fear that Dick’s corpus will be left vulnerable to the same kind of religiously-fuelled hermeneutic-violence that has been suffered by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  I hope that McKee’s work will only contribute to further explorations of Dick’s thought, and will not be the impetuous for an evangelization of Dick’s science fiction.  Perhaps the contentious nature of his thesis will contribute to the work’s usefulness in a classroom setting, as it certainly calls into question the relationship between religious faith and various artistic expressions in popular culture.  In sum, despite its diminutive size, Pink Beams of Light from the God in the Gutter argues its thesis clearly, and it is my hope that it will serve as a useful resource for further theological explorations of Dick’s work (in particular) and science fiction in general.  

Michael W. DeLashmutt
University of Glasgow
mwdelashmutt@yahoo.co.uk