The Man in the High Castle

Galactic Pot-Healer

Clans of the Alphane Moon

In 1973, four years before it was published, Philip K. Dick sent his agent, Scott Meredith, an outline of his novel A Scanner Darkly. This cover letter includes an enthusiastic PS.

Fifty years ago, the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick coined a phrase for these “useless objects” that accumulate in a house: “kipple.” In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for the movie Blade Runner, he theorized that “the entire universe is moving toward a state of total, absolute kippleization.” Kipple reproduced, Dick wrote, when nobody was around. The ubiquity of mobile devices and the ease of online shopping have made Dick’s prediction come true, with one small tweak: Our kipple does not just multiply on its own, every time we turn away. We grow it ourselves, buying more and more of it, because we can.