Philip K. Dick was a writer of modest accomplishment when he met Anne Rubenstein in late 1958. By the time the couple broke up less than six years later, Dick had written more than a dozen novels and was well on his way to eminence as one of the most influential of postwar American writers.

The events and emotions of that marriage turn up again and again in Dick’s novels, transfigured into science fiction. Anne Dick, as Ms. Rubenstein became, made custom jewelry, which was a major plot element in his best-known novel, “The Man in the High Castle.” Their children’s Barbies are featured in “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,” where colonists on Mars escape their wretched existence with reality-altering drugs and Perky Pat dolls.

The couple were also devoted to their sheep, which are prized possessions in his celebrated novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” the basis for the film “Blade Runner.”

Above all, Ms. Dick shows up in female characters. She inspired Juliana, the heroine of “High Castle,” who has no trouble slashing a Nazi operative’s throat, as well as a number of shrill, carping, unhappy wives in other books.