HE SURVIVED an epic pill addiction, five wives, a failed suicide bid and a certainty that aliens were out to get him.

So it is no wonder that sci-fi maestro Philip K Dick’s stories are sinister, apocalyptic and racked with paranoia.

26 Philip K Dick's works have been turned into numerous hit films including Blade Runner

26 Tortured genius Philip K Dick tried to push third wife Anne Rubenstein off a cliff after an argument in 1963

His best-known work is the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which inspired the 1982 screen classic Blade Runner, starring ­Harrison Ford.

Next month sees the release of sequel Blade Runner 2049, with Ford reprising his role alongside Ryan Gosling.

Other hit film adaptations of Dick’s work include Total Recall, Minority Report and The Adjustment Bureau.

And for the next ten weeks, Hollywood stars such as Bryan Cranston, Steve Buscemi and Anna Paquin are appearing in new Channel Four series Electric Dreams, made up of various short stories by the author.

However, none of Dick’s 44 novels or 121 short stories is as disturbed as his own life.

Two decades of heavy addiction to amphetamines, Valium and tranquillisers led him to try to murder two of his partners and end up in a dosshouse full of junkie losers.

26 Philip K Dick had a tendency for hating babies, but is pictured here in a sweet snap with daughter Isa

Growing up in Chicago in the 1930s, Dick was an unpopular child. Other boys threw stones at him as he hid under cars, growling like a dog.

His daughter Isa recalled, with no small understatement: “He was ­someone who tended to consider a lot of things that could go wrong, and scenarios that could take us to really bad places.”

Friends painted a vivid picture of a man who, when angry, would stamp his feet, wave his gun and rip his shirt off “like the Incredible Hulk”.

Philip Kindred Dick was born six weeks prematurely with his twin ­sister Jane in 1928 to a feminist activist mother and a father who was an inspector for the US Department of Agriculture.

26 Philip K Dick was expected to die as a baby shortly after his twin sister — and his name was engraved on the tombstone next to Jane’s

His job was to count farm livestock to ensure quotas were not exceeded. If he found an extra sheep, he would pull out a knife and cut its throat.

Both tiny twins were severely ­malnourished and Jane died at just 40 days old, while Philip was thought to have only hours to live.

His name was engraved on the tombstone next to Jane’s — which haunted him until his own death.

26 Dick, pictured with his cat, suffered bouts of intense aggression and would often ring the police to express his concerns Credit: Getty - Contributor

By late 1958 he was already a modestly successful writer with two marriages behind him when he met the woman who became his third wife, Anne Rubenstein. However, they bickered and in 1963 Dick tried to push her off a cliff. When that failed, he insisted she was trying to kill him and had her committed to a psychiatric ward.

26 Philip K Dick, pictured with his last wife Tessa in 1973, believed he had been contacted by creatures from outer space

Dick, who fathered three children, said: “Anne and I were having dreadful, violent fights, slamming each other around, smashing every object in the house. The kids were running in terror.”

Dick left her for a fan, Grania Davis, but later tried to kill her and himself by driving his VW Beetle off the road. He failed, but was ­seriously hurt and unable to move in a full body cast for several months.

In 1966 Nancy Hackett — 17 years Dick’s junior — became wife number four and at this point his drug ­consumption went into overdrive.

26 Richard Madden and Holliday Grainger star in Channel Four's Electric Dreams Credit: Channel 4/Amazon Prime Video/Sony Pictures Television must not be altered or manipulated i

He wrote to a friend: “Loss of memory . . . had Nancy hide my gun. Bees in head. Delusion was that an alien outside force was controlling my mind and directing me to commit suicide.” In 1967 his daughter Isa was born, causing more problems because he had “a tendency to hate babies”.

Yet she speaks of him warmly, ­saying: “He had a fantastic sense of humour, and he could be very ­charming. He was gifted intellectually, and yet so emotionally fragile, as he suffered from terrible bouts of anxiety and depression.”

By 1968 he had become obsessed with sheep and was devoted to a small herd that he and Nancy kept at their California home — prompting him to write Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

26 Harrison Ford and Sean Young starred in Blade Runner in 1982

By 1971 Dick was on 70 pills a day, had dumped Nancy and moved into a grubby house in San Rafael, California. Friends recall a revolving cast of dangerously odd housemates.

One kept loaded rifles under his bed and was sure the FBI was out to get him. Another imagined that aphids were crawling over his skin, doused himself with bug spray and had to be rushed to hospital.

Dick bought a pistol and prowled around the house late at night, ­peering from the blinds. He would often ring the police to express his concerns, among them that aliens were out to get him, or that he had somehow become an android and was a danger to humankind.

26 Philip K Dick had three children, Laura, Christopher and Isa Credit: Getty - Contributor

Then one night in November that year he came home to find his ­windows smashed, valuables gone, the house torn apart and his safe blown apart as though by a bomb. Euphoric, he rang the cops and shouted: “You see? I’m not so paranoid after all.”

Their response was to ask him why he had staged the robbery as a stunt, something that Dick himself later admitted was perfectly possible, ­bearing in mind the quantities of drugs he was taking.

After a couple of spells in a psychiatric ward, he twice tried suicide.

First, in 1972, he took an overdose of the sedative potassium bromide, but threw it up.

A few years later he tried gassing himself on car fumes in his garage, slashed his wrists and took another overdose. But the car stalled, the blood clotted and he threw up again.

26 His novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspired the 1982 film Blade Runner Credit: Warner Bros

Waking in hospital convinced Dick to end his 20-year drug habit and he checked into rehab, announcing: “The reward for the life of a writer is not happiness, but sudden death or ­disability.” But the damage to his brain and body was irreversible. In 1973 he embarked on his final, fifth marriage, to 18-year-old Tessa Busby.

26 Philip K Dick became convinced his existence was an illusion and checked himself into rehab in a bid to end his 20-year drug habit

During their four years together, Dick believed he had been contacted by creatures from outer space via a beam of pink light.

One extra-terrestrial, called Zebra, told him that time had stopped moving during the Roman Empire and that his existence was an illusion.

Tessa, now 63, who had a son, Christopher, with Dick, told The Sun this week: “He would throw my things. I’ve met some of the women he knew before me and they broke up because of his wild mood swings.”

26 Philip K Dick tried to commit suicide twice

Dick’s paranoia that the authorities were out to get him was the main cause of their divorce in 1977. It didn’t help that his pet name for her was “Dummy”. She recalled: “Phil was convinced his enemies were going to try to get to him by hurting our son, so he wanted to make them think he didn’t care by leaving.”

Although the films he inspired have now taken more than a billion ­dollars (£740million) at the box office, Dick spent his final years in poverty.

Tessa said: “We were always asking friends and relatives for a little money to keep the lights on.”

He died from a stroke aged just 53, just four months before Blade Runner was released in 1982. At the time it was a complete flop.

His grieving daughter Isa, then 15, remembers going to see it and said: “There were two other people in the whole theatre.

26 Although the films he inspired have now taken more than £740million at the box office, Dick spent his final years in poverty Credit: Getty - Contributor

“The movie was a total failure. The lights came up before the dedication at the end, so I didn’t even get to see that. It was a double slap in the face.”

But Blade Runner’s popularity grew over time — and Dick has since become one of Hollywood’s favourite sources for imaginative stories.

Amazon has made a second TV series based on his 1962 novel The Man In The High Castle and he has a cult following of fans — who call themselves Dickheads.

He is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Fort Morgan, Colorado, next to his twin Jane — as his parents intended. His children, Laura, Isa and Christopher, own the rights to his stories.

Yet when he died he left few belongings, no will, hardly any money — but enough tales to fill a lifetime of nightmares.

Blade Runner 2049 is in cinemas on October 6.

His stories that became big films

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (1968)

26

Bounty hunter Deckard is hired to kill six androids. He wants the money to buy a live replacement for his electric sheep.

In 1982 movie Blade ­Runner, Harrison Ford is hired to kill four “replicants”. There’s no mention of electric sheep.

26 Harrison Ford in the first Blade Runner movie Credit: Rex Features

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (1966)

26

In this short story, clerk Douglas Quail remembers he is an assassin after visiting a memory-implanting company.

In 1990’s Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenneger is a construction worker with the more macho surname of Quaid.

26 Arnie as Douglas Quaid in 1990's Total Recall Credit: Rex Features

The Minority Report (1956)

26

Mutants can see crimes before they happen, and work for a special police unit.

Its chief, podgy, ageing, balding John Anderton, is “seen” killing a man in the future. In 2002 film Minority Report, he’s played by fit, much younger Tom Cruise.

The Man In The High Castle (1962)

26

After the Nazis win World War Two, the US is mostly occupied by Germany and Japan. Juliana kills her boyfriend after discovering he is a Nazi assassin.

The 2015 TV series of the same title, starring Rufus Sewell, is far less racist and sexist.

26 Rufus Sewell in the 2015 series Credit: Alamy

The Adjustment Team (1954)

26 Credit: Amazon

In the short story, an estate agent catches a secret agency which “adjusts” situations and is threatened with being replaced.

In 2011’s The Adjustment Bureau he is a politician (Matt Damon) who is told to keep quiet or be “reset”.

26 Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in The Adjustment Bureau Credit: Universal Studios

A Scanner Darkly (1977)

26

Cop Fred poses as a drug user to learn who is dealing deadly drugs. He takes too much and forms a split personality, so starts to investigate himself.

The 2006 film of the same name has the same plot, but Fred (Keanu Reeves) reveals his true identity to a girl he fancies.

26 Keanu Reeves and Woody Harrelson in the movie Credit: Warner Bros

Paycheck (1953)

26 Credit: watersones

Engineer Jennings agrees to do a secret job and to have his memory wiped after it is finished. Waking after the erasure he realises he is in a police state.

In the 2003 Ben Affleck film of the same name, the engineer’s firm are the bad guys, rather than the government.

26 Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman in Paycheck Credit: DreamWorks