Mulling over Paul DiFilippo's interesting post (and trying to wake up
in time to greet the eager public), I found this from PKD, which also
speaks to Slothrop:
Paranoia, in some respects, I think, is a modern-day development of an
ancient, archaic sense that animals still have -- quarry-type animals
-- that they're being watched...I say paranoia is an atavistic sense.
It's a lingering sense, that we had long ago, when we were -- our
ancestors were -- very vulnerable to predators, and this sense tells
them they're being watched. And they're being watched probably by
something that's going to get them...
And often my characters have this feeling.
But what really I've done is, I have atavised their society. That
although it's set in the future, in many ways they're living -- there
is a retrogressive quality in their lives, you know? They're living
like our ancestors did. I mean, the hardware is the future, the
scenery's in the future, but the situations are really from the past.
[a 1974 interview quoted at the beginning of The Collected Stories of
PKD]
Chris