Philip K Dick’s The Electric Ant

Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was an American science fiction writer known for his imaginative and thought-provoking works that often explored the nature of reality, identity, and the human condition. Born on December 16, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, Dick spent much of his early life in California. His upbringing was marked by financial struggles, as his family faced economic hardships during the Great Depression.

Dick’s interest in writing and storytelling emerged at an early age, and he began submitting stories to various science fiction magazines in his late teens. However, his professional writing career didn’t take off until the early 1950s when he started selling short stories to pulp magazines. His early works reflected the influence of writers like H.P. Lovecraft and A.E. van Vogt, showcasing a blend of speculative fiction and psychological exploration.

In 1955, Dick published his first novel, Solar Lottery, which laid the foundation for his distinctive style and thematic concerns. Dick’s writing gained wider recognition in the 1960s, with the publication of novels like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), which served as the basis for the iconic science fiction film Blade Runner. This novel, like many of Dick’s works, delved into themes of artificial intelligence, empathy, and the blurred boundaries between human beings and machines. Dick’s writing style was characterised by a unique blend of psychological depth, philosophical inquiry, and a willingness to challenge conventional narrative structures. He often depicted dystopian worlds, parallel realities, and the fragility of human perception. His works were not always commercially successful during his lifetime, but they gained a cult following for their intellectual depth and imaginative storytelling.

It is Dick’s exploration of existential questions and the malleability of reality that I am concerned with in this blog. The short story “The Electric Ant” deals with what it means to be human and how the experiences of an android might differ, if at all, from that of a human being. Our protagonist Garson Poole wakes up in hospital to find that he is missing his right hand and that he feels no pain. This is the start of his discovery that he is not human, after all, but an android. It is in fact a horrible awakening. The doctor said to him point blank:

Mr Garson Poole, owner of Tri-Plan Electronics. Maker of random ident darts that track their prey for a circle-radius of a thousand miles, responding to unique enceph wave patterns. You’re a successful man, Mr Poole. But, Mr Poole, you’re not a man. You’re an electric ant.

An electric ant is an organic robot. In Poole’s case, he did not know that he wasn’t human and had functioned alongside humans, believing himself to be one. The novel recognition was that he had been implanted with the erroneous belief that he was human and alive. The discovery that he was not human came with the swift result that he was no longer Mr Poole but straightforward Poole, a cypher, I suppose.

Poole was composed of ‘natural skin covered natural flesh, and true blood filled the veins and capillaries. But beneath that, wires and circuits, miniaturised components, […] surge gates, motors, multi-stage valves…’ Poole had also been programmed not to notice the clickings and whirrings of his component parts. The deception was complete. There was the added realisation that he was not a free being but one programmed to have certain thoughts and to act in predictable and precise ways. This is, of course, an allegory for our own lack of freedom, our predictable responses in the light of how our nervous system is structured to perceive the world and to react given the inputs. It is a most disarming and alienating awareness of our situation.

Poole discovered that his perceptions were manipulated by electronic systems, that his reality was composed and systematically structured by a miniscule unit within his breastbone. Well, this is not that different from the top-down systems that determine how we perceive the world. These systems convert sensations to perception allowing us to see faces, to hear words from auditory sensations, to convert molecular gaseous objects to the odours of roses or of oleaginous exhausts of vehicles.

By experimenting on the electronic unit that determined what he perceived, Poole was able to demonstrate that he could alter his reality, that the skyline of New York City could be made to disappear and he speculated perhaps, flowers, prostitutes and prisons could also be eliminated from his view. This conjecture is tantalisingly close to many of the agnosias that have been demonstrated in humans with specific brain lesions: anosognosia, hemianopsia, etc.

The most intriguing discovery is saved to the very end. His Personal Assistant, Sarah Benton, discovers when Poole dies that she too starts to disappear, first she can see through her hands, then the walls of the room became ill-defined, and all the matter around her started to disintegrate, and she started to cease to feel. This is Dick’s response to the idea that reality is subjective, that the objects of perception are inaugurated by our perceiving of them and that they cease to exist, the minute we exit the situation.

Photos by Jan Oyebode