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Paranoid fiction is a term sometimes used to describe works of literature that explores the subjective nature of reality and how it can be manipulated by forces in power.〔(Postmodern Perspective: The Paranoid Eye. ''New Literary History''.Volume 28, Number 1, Winter 1997, pp. 87-109 )〕 These forces can be external, such as a totalitarian government, or they can be internal, such as a character's mental illness or refusal to accept the harshness of the world he is in. Unlike speculative fiction, paranoid fiction is written in a way so as to imply that the story may only be a delusion of the characters, instead of treating it as an alternate history or an in-fiction universe. ==History of paranoid fiction== The elements of paranoid fiction can be seen in works dating as far back as the late 19th and early 20th century. Some of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novels contained paranoid and psychologically troubled characters set against the dark backdrop of a modernizing Russia. Franz Kafka, in particular, was known for his exaggerated accounts of what he portrayed as real life in his works, to enhance the absurdity of the life themes they conveyed. Similarly, George Orwell's works, while not as exaggerated, confirmed the practice of using dystopian fiction to take a different outlook on highly common themes, including identity and personal desires. The term ''paranoid fiction'' was first coined to label sensationalistic and off-beat stories as bizarre and thus outside the realm of literary fiction. Starting after World War I, however, modernists began exploring the stranger themes of life in art, in response to the themes of death being effectively mechanized and made impossible to toy with by the war's graphic depictions. As a result, modernist literature tended to explore the meaning and construction of reality, shifting away from the progressive, cause-and-effect structure of realist fiction towards a more complex and disjointed depiction of reality.〔Lye, John (1997). ("Some Attributes of Modernist Literature." )〕 After World War II, absurdists carried this focus one step further by placing these common themes in surreal and fantastic settings, turning what would have been otherwise mundane concepts into distinctive, stand-out ones, thus converting the paranoid fiction genre into a legitimate one. Philip K. Dick is most frequently viewed as the forefather of the modern paranoid fiction. His works were literally born out of paranoia and hallucination; he had sudden visions of places he'd never been to and events he'd never witnessed, possibly from temporal lobe epilepsy or an overly active imagination. These visions were so vivid that Dick put them down on paper, never failing to classify them as only "speculative thought," and thus outside the boundary of conventional thought.〔Davis, Erik. ("Philip K. Dick's Divine Interference." )〕 Most of Dick's works start out uneventfully in a seemingly ordinary setting, then transpose to a surrealistic fantasy, with the characters discovering that what they thought real was in fact a delusion. Throughout his works, Dick maintained a balance between the expected traits of the science fiction genre they were also categorized in, and the eccentric and disturbing elements coming from his mind.〔("Strange Words: Paranoid." )〕 A recurring theme in his works is on how reality is perceived and treated differently by people depending on their mindsets. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Paranoid fiction」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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