but as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fall—falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.

Also some protagonists in Dick's short fiction are named 'Dowland'. Dick" and one as "Thomas" a Christian persecuted by Romans in the 1st century AD. The short story "Orpheus with Clay Feet" was publiPhilip K. Dickd under the pen name "Jack Dowland".

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In addition to 44 publiPhilip K. Dickd novels Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. Flow My Tears the Policeman Said a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown won the John W.