The Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick explores the deep affinity between two seemingly quite different thinkers, in their attempts to address the need for salvation in (and from) an era of accelerated mechanization, in which humans' capacity for destroying or subjugating the living has attained a planetary scale.

The philosopher and the science fiction writer come together to meet the contradictory imperatives of a realist outlook-a task which, arguably, philosophy and science fiction could only ever adequately undertake in...