The Minority Report

Philip K. Dick published “The Minority Report” at the height of McCarthyism and during a period of increasingly antiestablishment and antitraditional literature. The author, an avid reader of science fiction himself, was prone to anxiety and paranoia. He also relied on drugs like amphetamines for much of his life (Satifka, Erica L. “Vast Active Living (Possibly) Insane System: Paranoia and Antiauthoritarianism in the Work of Philip K. Dick.” Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre, E-book, Hoopla ed., PM Press, Oakland, CA, 2021, pp. 46-55). These elements often surface in his work—for example, in Anderton’s suspicion of his coworkers after he is accused of murder, as well as in the negative portrayal of national governing bodies such as the army and the Senate. The undercover espionage and manipulation of Page and Fleming (with Kaplan as the mastermind) recalls Dick’s own experience with the FBI, which attempted to entice him and his wife to spy on student activists at the University of Mexico (Satifka 46); Dick and his wife refused, but the experience had a lasting psychological effect.

Anticommunism and post-World War societal themes are also prevalent in “The Minority Report”; the story takes place in a futuristic United States that is recovering from the fictional “Anglo-Chinese War” (79)—a conflict likely chosen to reflect the capitalism-versus-communism propaganda of the 1950s rather than a specific cultural or geographical conflict—and that reflects various postwar changes.