Kipple
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kipple is a term coined by science fiction author Philip K. Dick in the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. It refers to unwanted or useless junk that tends to reproduce itself. Some of Dick's descriptions of it suggest an analogy to entropy. According to two characters from the book, John Isidore stated that the first law of "kipple" is that "kipple" drives out "nonkipple"; Buster Friendly liked to declare, "Earth would die under a layer — not of radioactive dust — but of kipple."
Other forms of the word used in the novel include "kipple-ized", "kipple-factor", and "kippleization". People can turn into "living kipple". An apartment can become "kipple-infested".
- "There's the First Law of Kipple," he said. "'Kipple drives out nonkipple.' Like Gresham's law about bad money. And in these apartments there's been nobody there to fight the kipple."
This term comes up again in other PKD books such as Now Wait for Last Year. Here Dr. Eric Sweetscent is also under a pile of kipple, especially in relation to his wife and his employer.
Kipple is also mentioned in Dick's novel Galactic Pot-Healer. Phrases idly run through the protagonist's head: "Do you like Yeats?" "I don't know, I've never had any." "Do you like Kipling?" "I don't know, I've never kippled."
It crops up again in A Maze of Death:
- "I'll pile her stuff outside and then get mine aboard. I'm under no mandate to load her kipple".
In a deleted scene featured on the DVD of the 2000 documentary The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick, Miriam Llord, a friend of Dick's, said kipple originated as a phrase she used for clutter around her house. Dick asked to borrow the phrase for the novel.
