La realidad bajo ataqueLa resurrección de lo fantástico en la ciencia ficción ontológica de Philip K. Dick

Abstract

In many definitions of the fantastic genre, the story takes place in a fictional world that mirrors the empirical one, and where it happens something contrary to the natural laws. This manifestation of the impossible is what produces the "fantastic effect" in the character and the reader. If we adopt an intradiegetic approach, the need of a world "like ours" disappears as a condition for the manifestation of the fantastic. Scientific logic and rational thought must prevail in the fictional world, in order to allow the character to be surprised by the transgression of immutable laws. For that reason, the fantastic effect is not incompatible with science fiction, as long as the devices that cause it are "science fictional" themselves. Indeed, in a group of novels that show the progressive stabilization of the posthuman and the virtual paradigms, the opposite pair natural/supernatural is replaced by the opposition virtual/real as the cause of the ontological doubt. This uncertainty plays also a central role in many fantastic stories, and it is crucial in several definitions of this genre. The "fake worlds" novels by Philip K. Dick are the core of an ontological science fiction where the plot revolves around the doubts of the characters about the world they are living in. Its influence can be seen in many fictions about virtual worlds, from cyberpunk fiction to the Matrix trilogy by the Wachoswki siblings, in a path that includes transposition from literature to the screen and that goes beyond cultural and geographical borders.