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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 5:30:12 GMT -5
The great science fiction writer and futurist Philip K Dick was infatuated with Linda Ronstadt. Philip is becoming more popular in death than he was in life. I thought a thread to explore his life and obsession with Linda would be interesting to fans of both writer and singer. Why Philip K. Dick mattersThe Verge
Published on Oct 1, 2012
When sci-fi author Philip K. Dick died 30 years ago, his work was out of print, virtually unknown. Today he's more famous than ever. At the 2012 Philip K. Dick Festival, held in San Francisco, fans (including novelist Jonathan Lethem) explain the unique appeal of this visionary writer.
More from The Verge:
More human than human: how Philip K. Dick can change your life
'Dickheads' gather in San Francisco to celebrate the sci-fi visionary
By jesse.hicks on October 1, 2012 11:01 am
Read the full article here:
www.theverge.com/2012/10/1/3424828/philip-k-dick-festival-science-fiction-change-your-life
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 5:32:15 GMT -5
Meet Philip K Dick, the robot!Philip K. Dick AndroidBring Me the Head of Philip K. Dick How a creative team of scientists and academics from Memphis created - and lost - an android superstar.
by ED ARNOLD
Philip K. Dick was one of the most influential science-fiction writers in history. He wrote prolifically until his death in 1982 — completing 41 novels and 121 short stories. To date, eleven of his works have been adapted for film, including Total Recall and Minority Report. Dick was the first science-fiction author added to the collection of the Library of America.
In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, later adapted into the film Blade Runner, Dick created a world in which androids were indistinguishable from humans. The androids themselves could be programmed to believe they were human. The University of Memphis group knew that creating an android of Dick would titillate science-fiction fans and push the bounds of what the young and talented crew could accomplish.
The team in Memphis agreed. The institute would build the brain, and Hanson would provide the body. Graesser put Eric Mathews, on his way to becoming the associate director of the FedEx Institute, in charge of the joint project.
Mathews began to look for a way to pay for the project, and after a few unsuccessful attempts at funding, convinced the FedEx Institute to invest $30,000 to build the android, a modest amount for a project of this complexity.
To make the android even more realistic, the team wrote some of Dick's dialogue into a customized program, using the transcripts from hundreds of interviews and his many works of literature. The creation was not a puppet, however; the android had to be able to respond to questions on its own.
Though Olney is proud to talk about his involvement with the project, he's still a bit surprised that it garnered so much attention. "A lot of the conversational stuff with the robot wasn't that interesting," Olney said. "What made it interesting was that it was Philip K. Dick. It had this resonance."
Olney describes the program as basic, but Mathews suggests Olney is being modest.
"People don't understand how complex the problems are," Mathews said. "This robot listens to you; it then has to convert that speech to text. It then it has to parse the dialogue, pump it through a series of dialogue rules, and respond naturally."
The android had two modes. A "chat bot" mode, which was essentially an interactive, scripted mode. The android was regularly asked, "What are you?" and the robot would respond, "I am Phil, a male Philip K. Dick android electronic brain, a robotic portrait of Philip K. Dick, a computer machine."
The other mode was as much art as science. Using the massive transcript records, Olney's program would look for keywords and context clues to formulate answers to the scientists' questions. The android would then answer without prompting, which would occasionally spin the android into semicoherent ramblings that seemed nearly human.
"There was a dimension to it that was really authentic," Olney said. "We have a video of this one conversation where we're talking to the robot about religion. There's a hilarious conversation, because they won't let up, and they won't change topics. Some of the stuff it came back with was surprisingly plausible."
Dick's own children witnessed this firsthand. Because of copyright concerns, Hanson asked the Dick family for its blessing, even promising the author's daughters that they would have the right to kill the project if they didn't like what the team created. Just a few days before the robot was set to be unveiled, Isa Dick visited the FedEx Institute.
"She had a moment with this robot that could've been a deal breaker," Mathews said. "We didn't know what it was going to say or how she'd react to talking to her robot father."
Years later, Isa Dick told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, "It looked very much like my dad. When my name was mentioned, it launched into a long rant about my mother and this one time that she took me and left him. It was not pleasant."
Still, Isa Dick approved the project.
full article: www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/bring-me-the-head-of-philip-k-dick/Content?oid=3191917
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 5:37:23 GMT -5
 Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American writer known for his work in science fiction. His work explored philosophical, social, and political themes, with stories dominated by monopolistic corporations, alternative universes, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. His writing also reflected his interest in metaphysics and theology, and often drew upon his life experiences in addressing the nature of reality, identity, drug abuse, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences.
Born in Illinois, he eventually moved to California and began publishing science fiction stories in the 1950s. His stories initially found little commercial success. His 1962 alternative history novel The Man in the High Castle earned Dick early acclaim, including a Hugo Award for Best Novel. He followed with science fiction novels such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and Ubik (1969). His 1974 novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel.Following a series of religious experiences in February 1974, Dick's work engaged more explicitly with issues of theology, philosophy, and the nature of reality, as in such novels as A Scanner Darkly (1977) and VALIS (1981). A collection of his non-fiction writing on these themes was published posthumously as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011). He died in 1982, at age 53, due to complications from a stroke.
Dick's writing produced 44 published novels and approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime.
A variety of popular films based on Dick's works have been produced, including Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (adapted twice: in 1990 and in 2012), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), and Blade Runner 2049 (2017).
In 2005, Time named Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923.[6] In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 5:42:21 GMT -5
this is something all dickheads will know:
Which science fiction author's love for the works of composer John Dowland led him to include the title of one of Dowland's best-known songs in the title of one of his books?
Philp K. Dick
Dick had two professional stories published under the pen names, Richard Phillips and Jack Dowland. "Some Kinds Of Life" in Fantastic Universe, October, 1953 was published as by Richard Phillipps apparently because "Planet For Transients" was published in the same issue under his own name.
The surname Dowland refers to Renaissance composer John Dowland, who is featured in several works. The title Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said directly refers to Dowland's best-known composition, "Flow My Tears". In the novel The Divine Invasion, the 'Linda Fox' character, created specifically with Linda Ronstadt in mind, is an intergalactically famous singer whose entire body of work consists of recordings of John Dowland compositions. Also, some protagonists in Dick's short fiction are named 'Dowland'.
Flow I. (based on a theme by John Dowland)LeventeZone
Published on Jul 22, 2016
Opening track from the new album "The Dowland Shores (of Philip K. Dick's Universe)".
Based on theme from John Dowland's "Flow My Tears" (Second Book of Songs, 1600).
Album info page: leventeth.wixsite.com/thedowlandshores
Bandcamp release: levente.bandcamp.com/album/the-dowland-shores-of-philip-k-dicks-universe
Amazon CD: www.amazon.com/Dowland-Shores-Philip-Dicks-Universe/dp/B00IWQ0UUO
Philip K. Dick's novel about a totalitarian police state, "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said", in its title makes a reference to Dowland's perhaps most famous composition.
“...the supposedly real world has begun to feel more and more like a Philip K. Dick novel. [...] You might note that, alongside Dickensian and Kafkaesque, we now have an adjective to describe this state of affairs. Phildickian. And the world seems more phildickian every day.” (Jesse Hicks, The Verge, 2012)
Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was an American writer, whose works, exploring philosophical, political and theological themes, have moved from a rather unique corner of “science fiction” into mainstream (including cult film adaptations like Blade Runner and Minority Report) and into courses on literature.
In Dick’s exquisitely complex, often disturbing (and disturbingly prophetic) universe there are numerous veiled or direct references to John Dowland, the English Renaissance composer. While navigating through Dick’s unique and turbulent world, these references for me were akin to encountering safe shores of humanity, of familiar and cosy reality, where one could stop for a moment among the many turbulent flows and currents.
This album is about those shores - the human, sometimes background or secondary, stories and undercurrents in Dick’s ever-changing labyrinthine universe.
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 6:07:01 GMT -5
Top 10 Philip K Dick Adaptations
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 6:10:25 GMT -5
VALIS by Philip K DickLinda Ronstadt , Republican presidents and Philip K Dick's VALIS…posted in Books & Literature, Language & Writing, Philosophy & Critical Thinking, Politics, Psychology, Religion & Spirituality, Science on July 26, 2004 by Limbic
Last week a colleague remarked that singer Linda Ronstadt has caused a near riot in a Las Vegas casino after dedicating a song to propagandist Michael Moore.
We had a brief chat about how polarised US politics had become and continued on with our business.
On my way home that night, I was finishing Philip K Dick’s superb book “VALIS” which is mostly indescribable (read it, READ IT!) but is partly about the downfall of an evil republican president (ostensibly Nixon) brought about inter alia by a girl child prophet.
Imagine my surprise when I open page 213 and read about the protagonist having a dream where he is being driven around by..you guessed it..Linda Ronstadt..who sings him a message. The message is cryptic and highly symbolic. The dream comes after the protagonist frets that the The Empire – recently set back by the downfall of Nixon – will make a comeback and they will have to wait until the child is an adult before they can expect help. What he does not realise is that the child has just been killed in a freak accident. The dream is a message from the messiah child. Linda Rhonstadt is a symbol of her as an adult.
What had the little girl told us? That human beings should now give up the worship of all deities except mankind itself. This did not seem irrational to me. Whether it had been said by a child or whether it came from the Britannica, it would have struck me as sound.
Kevin drove me home; I went at once to bed, worn-out and discouraged, in a vague way, I think what discouraged me about the situation was the uncertainty of our commission, received from Sophia. We had a mandate but for what? More important, what did Sophia intend to do as she matured? Remain with the Lamptons? Escape, change her name, move to Japan and start a new life?
Where would she surface? Where would we find mention of her over the years? Would we have to wait until she grew to adulthood? That might be eighteen years. In eighteen years Ferris F, Fremount [Nixon then, now Bush? Ed], to use the name from the film, could have taken over the world—again. We needed help now.
But then I thought, You always need the Savior now. Later is always too late.
When I fell asleep that night I had a dream, In the dream I rode in Kevin’s Honda, but instead of Kevin driving, Linda Ronstadt sat behind the wheel, and the car was open, like a vehicle from ancient times, like a chariot. Smiling at me, Ronstadt sang, and she sang more beautifully than any time I had ever heard her sing before. She sang:
“To walk toward the dawn
You must put your slippers on.”
In the dream this delighted me; it seemed a terribly important message. When I woke up the next morning I could still see her lovely face, the dark, glowing eyes: such large eyes* so filled with light, a strange kind of black light, like the light of stars. Her look toward me was one of intense love, but not sexual love; it was what the Bible calls loving-kindness. Where was she driving me?
During the next day I tried to figure out what the cryptic words referred to. Slippers. Dawn. What did I associate with the dawn?
Studying my reference books (at one time I would have said, “Horselover Fat, studying his reference books”*), I came across the fact that Aurora is the Latin word for the personification of the dawn. And that suggests Aurora Borealis—which looks like St Elmo’s Fire, which is how VALIS looked. The Britannica says of the Aurora Borealis:
“The Aurora Borealis appears throughout history in the mythology of the Eskimo, the Irish, the English, the Scandinavians, and others; it was usually believed to be a supernatural manifestation . . . Northern Germanic tribes saw in it the splendor of the shields of Valkyrie (warrior women)”
Did that mean—was VALIS telling me—that little Sophia would issue forth into the world as a “warrior woman”? Maybe so.
What about slippers? I could think of one association, an interesting one. Ernpedoeles, the pupil of Pythagoras, who had gone public about remembering his past lives and who told his friends privately that he was Apollo, had never died in the usual sense; instead, his golden slippers had been found near the top of the volcano Mount Etna. Either Empedoeles, like Elijah, had been taken up into heaven bodily, or he had jumped into the volcano, Mount Etna is in the eastern-most part of Sicily. In Roman times the word “aurora” literally meant “east.” Was VALIS alluding to both itself and to re-birth, to eternal life? Was I being—
The phone rang.
Picking it up I said, “Hello”
I heard Eric Lampton’s voice. It sounded twisted, like an old root, a dying root. “We have something to tell you, I’ll let Linda tell you. Hold on.”
A deep fear entered me as I stood holding the silent phone. Then Linda Lampton’s voice sounded in my ear, flat and toneless. The dream had to do with her, I realized; Linda Ronstadt; Linda Lampton, “What is it?” I said, unable to understand what Linda Lampton was saying.
“The little girl is dead,” Linda Lampton said. “Sophia? How?” I said.
Mini killed here By accident, The police are here, With a laser. He was trying to—*
I hung up.
The phone rang again almost at once. I picked it up and said hello.
Linda Lampton said, “Mini wanted to try to get as much information—”
“Thanks for telling me,” I said. Crazily, I felt bitter anger, not sorrow.
“He was trying information-transfer by laser,” Linda was saying. “We’re calling everyone. We don’t understand; if Sophia was the Savior, how could she die?”
Dead at two years old, I realized. Impossible.
I hung up the phone and sat down. After a time, I realized that the woman in the dream driving the car and singing had been Sophia, but grown up, as she would have been one day. The dark eyes filled with light and life and fire. The dream was her way of saying good-bye.
www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/linda-ronstadt-republican-presidents-and-philip-k-dicks-valis/
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 6:13:44 GMT -5
INTERVIEWS
1979 Philip K Dick interview
Hour 25 - Philip K. Dick - Interview
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 7:12:38 GMT -5
Ten Strange Moments in the Life of Philip K. DickAUG 08, 2008by ANDY MARINOin LITERATURE
PKD
Philip K. Dick wrote about fifty thousand novels and short stories during his lifetime, thanks to a specially formulated motivational diet of amphetamines and a severely heightened sense of paranoia. In recent years, Hollywood has strip-mined his work to churn out films of varying quality, from slapped-together junk (PAYCHECK) to lovingly faithful adaptations (A SCANNER DARKLY) to slick blockbuster star vehicles (MINORITY REPORT). According to IMDB, two more of his novels and a short story have been adapted and are currently in various states of production. That means eight feature films since 2001 will have been based on his fiction. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to assume that even the most unadventurous consumer of pop culture in America has probably been exposed to the mind of Philip K. Dick in some tangential way.
Even at its most hallucinogenic, his work always maintained a touch of the autobiographical. Like many authors he wrote aspects of himself and his friends into his characters, but more importantly he took situations from his life – bizarre interactions, flashes of insight, paranoid freakouts – twisted them slightly or sometimes not at all, and came up with some of the most relentlessly insane stories of all time. This list represents some of those situations; there are many more. Anyone curious should check out a fantastic book about PKD’s life entitled I Am Alive and You Are Dead by Emmanuel Carrere.
1. His twin sister Jane died a few weeks after their birth. His name was engraved alongside hers on a headstone. A blank space was left for the date of his own death.
2. As a child, he began having the recurring dream that would haunt him throughout his life: he’s in a bookstore, frantically searching for a story entitled “The Empire Never Ended”, driven by the knowledge that it contains the secrets of the universe. He digs through a pile of magazines, but wakes up before he reaches the bottom. This happens over and over again. Fast-forward to 1974, when he’s in his forties. He begins to have a different recurring dream about a hardcover book with a blue jacket and the word Grove in the title. Convinced that the secrets of the universe are once again being dangled before his subconscious eyes, he spends his waking hours searching for the book. Finally, he comes across The Shadow of the Blooming Grove, a thick hardcover book that matches the one in his dream… but instead of the secrets of the universe, its pages contain the biography of President Warren G. Harding.
3. He once flailed around his dark bathroom, frustrated that he couldn’t find the light cord. Then he remembered the switch was on the wall. This reinforced his impression that something was out of place in his daily existence, and inspired the novel Time Out of Joint.
4. He relied on the I Ching, an ancient Chinese fortune-telling method, to plot his Hugo Award-winning novel The Man in the High Castle.
5. He became convinced that his third wife, Anne, had murdered her first husband and that he was next, so he had her committed to a mental hospital. Soon, he became convinced that he was in fact the crazy one and tried to have himself committed in her place.
6. He saw a giant robotic face in the sky, which followed him for several days. A priest told him it was Satan. This incident inspired him to become a Christian.
7. His book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch was instantly hailed as the quintessential LSD-experience novel. He became regarded as a sort of psychedelic guru, but he hadn’t yet taken acid. When he finally tried it he found the experience terrifying and never did it again.
8. After his home was burglarized and many of his personal possessions and manuscripts stolen, he spent years formulating complex paranoid theories about the perpetrators. Eventually, he became convinced that he had done it himself, even though he had no memory of the actual incident.
9. He idolized Linda Ronstadt and sent her fan letters. One night, he was awakened by her hit song “You’re No Good” coming from the radio. Terrified, he began to scream; Linda Ronstadt was telling him he was no good, adding, at the end of the chorus, “Die, die, die.” He interpreted this as a message from anti-Christian forces from the year 70 AD.
10. He believed that a benevolent entity was communicating with him through a series of visions and dreams. He named it VALIS: Vast, Active, Living, and Intelligent System. Manifesting itself as a beam of pink light, VALIS told Phil to take his young son Christopher to the hospital because the boy’s life was in danger. This turned out to be true: the child had a hernia, and an immediate operation saved him.
Philip K. Dick died in 1982. He was buried next to his twin sister.
www.popten.net/2008/08/ten-strange-moments-in-the-life-of-philip-k-dick/
Was Philip K. Dick a Madman or a Mystic?By Kyle Arnold | Jul 08, 2016
In The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, Kyle Arnold delves into the complicated psyche of one of the 20th century's most important writers. At the center of the subject is the profound vision Dick experienced in 1974, which he referred to as "2-3-74." Arnold, a psychologist at Coney Island Hospital and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, explains the experience and its significance.
In February of 1974, Philip K. Dick was home recovering from dental surgery when, he said, he was suddenly touched by the divine. The doorbell rang, and when Dick opened the door he was stunned to see what he described as a “girl with black, black hair and large eyes very lovely and intense” wearing a gold necklace with a Christian fish symbol. She was there to deliver a new batch of medications from the pharmacy. After the door shut, Dick was blinded by a flash of pink light and a series of visions ensued. First came images of abstract paintings, followed by philosophical ideas and then, sophisticated engineering blueprints. Dick believed the pink light was a spiritual force which had unlocked his consciousness, granting him access to esoteric knowledge.
In the following months, the visions continued. Scenes of ancient Rome appeared, superimposed over Dick’s suburban neighborhood. A local playground seemed a Roman prison. Where there was a chain-link fence, Dick saw iron bars, and where there were children playing, he saw weeping Christian martyrs about to be fed to lions. Dick saw pedestrians dressed in Roman military uniforms, stone walls, and iron bars. “I hadn’t gone back in time,” Dick wrote to a friend, “but in a sense Rome had come forward, by insidious and sly degrees, under new names, hidden by the flak talk and phony obscurations, at last into our world again.” Dick supposed time had stopped in 70 A.D., the year the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by a Roman siege. Everything that happened afterwards was an illusion, and the world was still under Rome’s dominion. Dick believed the Roman Empire was embodied in the tyrannical Nixon administration, and responsible for the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. His own role was that of an undercover Christian revolutionary fighting to overthrow the Empire. That was why the delivery girl had flashed him the fish sign. Some of this information, he claimed, was provided by three-eyed extraterrestrial time travelers who entered his bedroom through a portal of pink light. Dick fictionalized these experiences in his sci-fi novel VALIS.
There’s considerable difference of opinion among Philip K. Dick enthusiasts about what it all meant. Was it a psychotic break or a religious experience, and how would one tell the difference? Dick knew that what he called his “divine madness” would come across as mental illness. By his own admission, he grappled with paranoia, and self-depreciatingly called himself a “flipped-out freak.” The paranoia was probably the result of speed. A prolific author who published 34 novels during his lifetime, Dick used amphetamines to maintain his productivity. Friends recall that his refrigerator was stuffed with bottles of amphetamine pills jammed next to pre-made milkshakes. Dick gulped the pills by the handful and washed them down with the milkshakes. He called them his “happiness pills” and “nightmare pills.” When his addiction went into high gear, so did the paranoia. While walking in the country, Dick had a vision of a “vast visage of perfect evil” spanning the sky. “It had empty slots for eyes –it was metal and cruel, and worst of all, it was God.”
And yet, the divine madness of 1974 was different. Although it included paranoid elements–the most obvious being the nefarious Roman Empire lurking beneath appearances–there was more to it than that. Dick felt guided by tutelary spirits. Following their advice, he took better care of his health and made clever business decisions. In one instance, a hallucinated voice urged him to seek medical care for his infant son for what turned out to be a hernia. Dick’s judgment improved. He felt more alive. In a sense, his divine madness drove him saner.
It didn’t last. Eventually, “the divine spirit left.” Spiritually abandoned and in despair, Dick attempted suicide. He overdosed on his blood pressure medication and slit his wrists. Then, he climbed into his car and turned the engine on, with the garage door closed. He hoped that if the overdose and slit wrists didn’t do him in, the carbon monoxide would. The suicide failed. Dick vomited up the medication, his wrists coagulated, and the engine stalled.
For the rest of his life, Dick was obsessed with his close encounter with the pink light. Trying to make sense of it, he wrote an 8,000 page commentary he called his Exegesis. In it, he proposed that the source of the pink light may have been God, the KGB, a satellite, aliens, a 1st century Christian named Thomas with whom he was in telepathic communication, the CIA, a version of himself from a different dimension, or possibly his deceased twin sister contacting him from the spirit world. Each new theory seemed to telescope outward into further possible theories, ad infinitum.
While Dick never settled on a definitive explanation of what happened to him, he did explain why his divine madness was so captivating. Before the visions, he felt alienated for most of his life, an observer in a strange world. But in 1974 it seemed as if “the world changed to accommodate me so that I was as a result of this radical change no longer a stranger here; it became my world–and my anxiety, which tormented me every day and night, departed… all of a sudden I fitted in.” For a short time, he had a place in the universe.
www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/70857-was-philip-k-dick-a-madman-or-a-mystic.html
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 7:16:17 GMT -5
The transfiguration of Philip K DickRoz Kaveney 23 Aug 2011 10:32
There is an American television show called Warehouse 13, a supernatural comedy-thriller, featuring the place—a bit like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark—where dangerous supernatural relics are stored; things such as Alice Liddell’s looking glass or Lizzie Borden’s compact.
The news that Philip K Dick’s annotated copy of the New English Bible, in good condition, with a couple of holograph sheets inlaid, is up for sale on eBay almost inspires one to think that the show’s producers have missed a trick—except that this relic, and the unusual circumstances around it, are real.
For those few people who know nothing of him, Philip Kindred Dick was a prolific science fiction writer and mystic who died in 1982; many of his short stories and novels have been filmed, one or two of them memorably: Blade Runner is an adaptation of his Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Richard Linklater made a powerful animated version of Dick’s novel about drugs and law enforcement, A Scanner Darkly. In 1974, Dick had the first of a sequence of visions, which raise some fascinating questions about the nature—and the value—of religious experience.
A paranoid cosmology
It is the nature of religious and mystical experience to be hard to put into words—if Dick did so more effectively than many, it is precisely because he was a pulp writer of genius.
His sense, for example, that we still live in the “iron prison house” of a materialistic Roman Empire and that, in some very real sense, it is always 50AD—or his attempt to describe God as a Vast Active Living Intelligent System, an artificial intelligence orbiting another star, were partly religious insights, partly craziness and partly plot ideas. It is not to be reductive about religion to accept that these three categories have a certain amount in common.
Dick is one of the great artists of paranoia—he took a lot of amphetamines to keep up his frenetic rate of literary productivity before discovering that he did not need them. For years he claimed to have been burgled and spied on, before the revelation of Richard Nixon’s enemies list made it rather likely that he was telling the truth. His work features conspiracies; revelations of underlying truths; mental patients forming a viable society based on diagnostic caste divisions; an alternate world in which the axis won and a version of our world is produced by a novelist using the I Ching for divination; and androids passing themselves off as human but revealed by their lack of empathy and compassion.
There is a sense—of course there is a sense—in which the particular direction taken by the deepening of his religious convictions is of a piece with some of his other ideas.
There is the sense of being special—believing yourself to be in mental touch with a community of persecuted Christians in Judaea who help you organise your tax affairs is probably more fun than just going to church. There is the sense of knowing what other people do not know—eternal Rome was a more glamorous hypothesis than four more years of Nixon. There was the sense of significance—a Philip K Dick whose decades of producing paperback fiction for a quick buck were a preparation for his receiving the word of God was a man who could respect himself more. (After all, he was not to know that, after his death, he would be a dominant figure in popular culture whose fiction has received more critical attention than most of his colleagues put together.)
Heretical and humane
Dick received the first instalment of his vision along with a packet of painkillers and in a sense religion was always about healing his pain, but not that alone. He knew, and was fearfully impressed by, the heretic Episcopalian bishop James Pike and his last novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which deals with Pike and a version of his death on a spiritual quest in the desert, is one of his best and most humane. Dick always had a problem with women—his several divorces, his obsession with Linda Ronstadt, his many female villains—and it is touching that this last book has, in its narrator Angel, one of his best female characters.
In the end, those of us who are agnostic find it easiest to accept the existential validity of religious experiences that make those who endure or enjoy them better writers and more likable human beings. I doubt that the few notes Dick scrawled in his copy of the Bible are more useful in their insights than his own books, especially that last one. —
mg.co.za/article/2011-08-23-the-transfiguration-of-philip-k-dickThe Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick
R. Crumb
Shortly before his death, Philip K. Dick has what can only be described as a religious experience, which he described in, among other places, his novel Valis. In Weirdo #17, R. Crumb adapted Dick’s story.
Click the image below to see the almost-full-size pages in a lightbox. Enjoy!
sensitiveskinmagazine.com/the-religious-experience-of-philip-k-dick/
 “I saw God,” Fat states, and Kevin and I and Sherri state, “No, you just saw something like God, exactly like God.” And having spoke, we do not stay to hear the answer, like jesting Pilate, upon his asking, “What is truth?”
–Philip K. Dick, VALIS
In the months of February and March, 1974, Philip K. Dick met God, or something like God, or what he thought was God, at least, in a hallucinatory experience he chronicled in several obsessively dense diaries that recently saw publication as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, a work of deeply personal theo-philosophical reflection akin to Carl Jung’s The Red Book. Whatever it was he encountered—Dick was never too dogmatic about it—he ended up referring to it as Zebra, or by the acronym VALIS, Vast Active Living Intelligence System, also the title of a novel detailing the experiences of one very PKD-like character with the improbable name of “Horselover Fat.”
LSD-triggered psychotic break, genuine religious experience, or something else entirely, whatever Dick’s encounter meant, he didn’t let the opportunity to turn it into art slip by him, and neither did outsider cartoonist and PKD fan Robert Crumb. In issue #17 of the underground comix magazine Weirdo, Crumb narrated and illustrated Dick’s meeting with a divine intelligence in the appropriately titled “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick.” It was eventually collected in the edition, The Weirdo Years by R. Crumb: 1981-'93. (See the comic in motion in the awkward, amateur video above.) The comic quotes directly from Dick’s telling of the event, which began with a wisdom tooth extraction and was ultimately triggered by a golden Christian fish symbol worn around the neck of a pharmaceutical delivery girl. Most PKD fans will be familiar with the story, whether they treat it as gospel or not, but to see it illustrated with such empathetic intensity by Crumb is truly a treat.
If you only know Crumb as the creator of lascivious Rubenesque women and schlubby, druggy horndog hipsters (like Fritz the Cat), you may be surprised by these emotionally realist illustrations. If you know Crumb’s more serious work, like his take on the book of Genesis, you won’t. In either case, fans of Dick, Crumb, or—most likely—both, won’t want to miss this.
www.openculture.com/2013/08/robert-crumb-illustrates-philip-k-dicks-infamous-hallucinatory-meeting-with-god-1974.html
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 7:21:15 GMT -5
 Philip K. Dick BIRTH 16 Dec 1928
Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA
DEATH 2 Mar 1982 (aged 53)
Santa Ana, Orange County, California, USA
BURIAL
Riverside Cemetery
Fort Morgan, Morgan County, Colorado, USA
PLOT Section K, Block 1, Lot 56
MEMORIAL ID 1490 · View Source
www.findagrave.com/memorial/1490/philip-k.-dick#source Benediction
We are a world
Growing dark with dying flashes
While the moon is crying
Full of unfamiliar music
With some heaven
between God & Prayer
I watch
For here the light
no longer follows
I see the new ghosts
Lost in the innocence
of their mission
On an Earth that is burning
Who will be there
Angel of death
In the moon of the red grass
Surrender your shroud Benediction |
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 9, 2018 10:18:57 GMT -5
Philip K. Dick - A Day In The Afterlife (complete)
no data available
Published on Feb 1, 2014
BBC Arena Documentary about the author, Philip K. Dick, from 1994.
Features Terry Gilliam, Fay Wheldon, Thomas M. Disch, Brian Aldiss, Paul Williams, Elvis Costello, and other friends and fans.
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Post by Tony on Dec 9, 2018 15:27:31 GMT -5
I read a lot of his books in the '70s and '80s. In fact, sometimes, to get a sideways look from someone, when they asked about hobbies, I would tell them I collected "Dick books." In fact, I used to have one of his book covers as my avatar on this forum:  This particular book was made into a movie with Robert Downey Jr. When I initially became a fan of his writing, I was not aware that he was also a Linda Ronstadt fan. I found out about that later. She is mentioned by name in some of his works. |
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 10, 2018 2:27:13 GMT -5
I read a lot of his books in the '70s and '80s. In fact, sometimes, to get a sideways look from someone, when they asked about hobbies, I would tell them I collected "Dick books." In fact, I used to have one of his book covers as my avatar on this forum: This particular book was made into a movie with Robert Downey Jr. When I initially became a fan of his writing, I was not aware that he was also a Linda Ronstadt fan. I found out about that later. She is mentioned by name in some of his works.
So you were one of the first dickheads (as they now call themselves). Ahead of your time Tony (no pun intended)!
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 10, 2018 2:41:34 GMT -5
Some Dick related music. That sounds odd so I will do like many others do and refer to him as PKD.Replicant's Dream (inspired by Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?")LeventeZone
Published on Jul 30, 2016
Track from the new CD "The Dowland Shores of Philip K. Dick's Universe".
leventeth.wixsite.com/thedowlandshores ALBUM INFO
“...the supposedly real world has begun to feel more and more like a Philip K. Dick novel. [...] You might note that, alongside Dickensian and Kafkaesque, we now have an adjective to describe this state of affairs. Phildickian. And the world seems more phildickian every day.”
(Jesse Hicks, The Verge, 2012)
Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was an American writer, whose works, exploring philosophical, political and theological themes, have moved from a rather unique corner of “science fiction” into mainstream (including cult film adaptations like Blade Runner and Minority Report) and into courses on literature.
In Dick’s exquisitely complex, often disturbing (and disturbingly prophetic) universe there are numerous veiled or direct references to John Dowland, the English Renaissance composer.
While navigating through Dick’s unique and turbulent world, these references for me were akin to encountering safe shores of humanity, of familiar and cosy reality, where one could stop for a moment among the many turbulent flows and currents.
This album is about those shores - the human, sometimes background or secondary, stories and undercurrents in Dick’s ever-changing labyrinthine universe.
Among the compositions, which were inspired by these, there are also a few tributes to John Dowland - hopefully adapted to fit into the Dick-inspired musical world as Dick’s references to the music of a distant past fit into his universe...
Release date : 15 July 2016 (Amazon CD & Bandcamp), in all formats: 1 Aug 2016
TRACK LISTING incl. preview links
1. Flow I. soundcloud.com/levente-toth-2/flow-i-based-on-john-dowland
2. REKAL Inc. soundcloud.com/levente-toth-2/rekal-inc-inspired-by-philip-k-dick
(inspired by We Can Remember It For You Wholesale)
3. Human Is soundcloud.com/levente-toth-2/human-is
(inspired by Human Is)
4. Flow II.
5. Stigmata soundcloud.com/levente-toth-2/stigmata-inspired-by-philip-k-dicks-the-three-stigmata-of-palmer-eldritch
(inspired by The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch)
6. Twelve Realities
(inspired by Faith of Our Fathers)
7. Imperial Truths
(inspired by The Man in the High Castle)
8. Fading to Chaos
(inspired by Ubik)
9. Flow III.
10. Identity Regained
(inspired by The Divine Invasion)
11. Replicant’s Dream
(inspired by Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
12. Flow IV.
BIOGRAPHY
His CDs released by the former PeopleSound and Vitaminic indie internet labels were noted for the compositional versatility, which created well-received blends of medieval, ethnic and space/ambient elements.
One composition from his debut album was also featured on the compilation CD entitled “Noua Romanie – Rebirth of a Nation”, which was a special project released by Earthtone / Sonic Images Records founded by the legendary Christopher Franke (ex-Tangerine Dream).
Levente (Levente Toth) is a United Kingdom-based synth artist and published photographer.
Born in Transylvania’s Hungarian ethnic minority, his main escapism during the communist dictatorship was listening to electronic music.
He built his first analogue synth when he was a teenager living under the Ceausescu regime. Music creation has really begun later on in his home studio, which he established after his relocation to the UK in 1995.
THE INSPIRATION: PHILIP K. DICK'S WORKS
The novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said bases its title on John Dowland’s perhaps most famous composition. Its dehumanised totalitarian world is in stark contrast with the Dowlandian emotive universe it refers to. The opening and closing pieces of the album are based on Flow My Tears (1600).
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale poses a fundamental question: how can we define our identity if our memories are artificial? The music explores this duality of machine-constructed vs. genuine human realities.
Human Is explores the nature of what we define, and perceive, as humanity - it can be a trait of anything that is capable of deep empathy. Hence the music transitions from something otherworldly to a rather terrestrial elegy.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, with its many layers of different realities, religious and philosophical ideas, has fundamental human aspirations at its centre - and these even shape how humans imagine what a god is. The music was inspired by the dynamism and the metaphysical explorations of the novel.
Faith of Our Fathers, with its disturbing totalitarian world and its ‘true reality’ that appears in different forms, is a powerful allegory, too. The music was mainly inspired by these shifting realities and the Oriental elements of the story.
The Man in the High Castle, with its parallel post-World-War-Two reality of a totalitarian East and West, has at its core a superlative quest for an absolute, inner, truth. The music is inspired by the Oriental and Western elements, and the contrast between the heroic and the introspective.
Ubik, while its world regresses into chaos, is again a fascinating exploration of what reality is... and what may be under the veil of reality. The music fades from order to chaos, as the universe in Ubik unstoppably and swiftly degrades.
The Divine Invasion, while it is a mesmerising metaphysical and religious journey, speaks also about the search and rediscovery of one‘s identity. Hence elements of Eastern and Western music surface in the track inspired by this melancholic and, at the same time, uplifting novel.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has a subtle undercurrent: can something, seen as inhuman, be more human than we, who are actually dehumanised by the world we created? The music is inspired by the shift from something apparently quasi-alien to the very human longing for postponing life’s end.
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 10, 2018 2:48:15 GMT -5
Philip K. Dick - What You See Is Your Projection (Video Lecture)
Fractal Youniverse
Published on Jun 7, 2018
This is a really interesting segment where Philip K. Dick discusses Carl Jung's concept of projection and how this idea was central to many of his amazing science fiction books.
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 10, 2018 2:57:13 GMT -5
So what is it about Linda Ronstadt that has attracted so many men all at the top of their game with many being creative geniuses? (Philip K Dick, Jim Carrey, George Lucas, Jerry Brown, Albert Brooks, John Boylan and a multitude of others we don't even know about. Even Barack Obama had a crush on Linda.)
I will add others to this list as I find them.
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 10, 2018 3:01:15 GMT -5
PHILIP K. DICK DOCUMENTARY
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 10, 2018 3:09:46 GMT -5
The exegesis of Philip K. Dick - hacking the hero's journey: Richard Doyle at TEDxLowerEastSide
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 10, 2018 3:26:41 GMT -5
Posted on June 4, 2016The Divine Invasion (1981) by Philip K. Dick“When has the government ever told anyone the truth?” (p.76)
divine-invasion-dick-philip-k-paperback-cover-artThe Divine Invasion was published in the same year as VALIS.
It is the second book in the VALIS Trilogy, although there is only a brief mention of VALIS in the story. Like VALIS it addresses religion and philosophy, but it’s not as tightly structured or plotted as the first book. In fact, some parts of The Divine Invasion feel like they belong to a completely different story. According to Jonathan Lethem, one of the editors of Dick’s Exegesis, this book was written in only four weeks. It would be easy to say it shows.
The Divine Invasion tells the story of two distant-planet colonists, Herb Asher and Rybys Romney. We follow them on their journey back to Earth as Rybys is due to give birth to a son, Emmanuel. The book goes on to chronicle a battle between the forces of good and evil in which Emmanuel will play a major role. He is joined by a young girl called Zina, an old man, Elias, who acts as his guardian, and a kid goat. I kid you not.
“The goat leaped from their arms and ran off; Zina and Emmanuel watched it go. And as it ran it grew.” (p.230)
Dick fills the book with his religious philosophizing, questioning reality, divinity and our place in it all. He attempts, yet again, to make sense of his “mystical” experience(s) of February and March 1974 that led him to write VALIS as well as his mammoth Exegesis. This can make it feel a bit chaotic and random at times, yet it is bursting with ideas. I had a lot of fun reading it. Where else but in a PKD story can you discover that the name of Earth’s vast Artificial Intelligence System is “Big Noodle”?
Also funny, in a slightly uncomfortable way, is Dick’s inclusion and depiction of a character based on his unrequited object of obsession at the time, the singer Linda Ronstadt. This leads to some memorable lines:
“And yet-his ultimate move had fallen through because Linda Fox . . . it had been the wrong time. Her menstrual cycle, he thought. Linda Fox has periods and cramps? he asked himself. I don’t believe it. But I guess it’s true.” (p.209)
*
Bizarre! I enjoyed The Divine Invasion more than VALIS, despite VALIS being the tighter written and better structured book. I guess it’s because I like the eccentric side(s) of PKD. I like it when he is a bit bonkers and you’re not quite sure what the heck is going on. I like it when he messes with your head and leaves you wondering if this or that character is really experiencing the craziness or just dreaming it. I like big noodles, too.
biginjapangrayman.wordpress.com/2016/06/04/the-divine-invasion-1981-by-philip-k-dick/ The Divine Invasion is 1981 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It is the second book in the gnostic VALIS trilogy, and takes place in the indeterminate future, perhaps a century or more after VALIS. The novel, originally titled Valis Regained, was nominated to the BSFA Award[1].
After the fall of Masada in 74 AD, God, or "Yah", is exiled from Earth and forced to take refuge in the CY30-CY30B star system. Meanwhile, the people of Earth are ruled by Belial, the spirit of darkness, but Yah is intent on reclaiming his creation.
Writing
The book was conceived as a sequel to Dick's VALIS, though it shares no characters and virtually no plot elements with the other book. The Divine Invasion was conceived immediately after the completion of Valis, with the working title VALIS regained.[2] Dick did not begin actually writing the novel until March 1980 (more than a year after VALIS's completion in November 1978), when he wrote it in less than a month.[2] The opening chapters were based on Dick's short story "Chains of Air, Web of Aethyr" that had been written between VALIS and The Divine Invasion, and published before either in 1980 in Stellar Science-Fiction Stories #5.[2]
Plot summary
After a fatal car accident on Earth, Herb Asher is placed into cryonic suspension as he waits for a spleen replacement. Clinically dead, Herb experiences lucid dreams while in suspended animation and relives the last six years of his life.
In the past, Herb lived as a recluse in an isolated dome on a remote planet in the binary star system, CY30-CY30B. Yah, a local divinity of the planet in exile from Earth, appears to Herb in a vision as a burning flame, and forces him to contact his sick female neighbor, Rybys Rommey, who happens to be terminally ill with multiple sclerosis and pregnant with Yah's child.
With the help of the immortal soul of Elijah, who takes the form of a wild beggar named Elias Tate, Herb agrees to become Rybys's legal husband and father of the unborn "savior". Together they plan to smuggle the six-month pregnant Rybys back to Earth, under the pretext of seeking help for Rybys' medical condition at a medical research facility. After being born in human form, Yah plans to confront the fallen angel Belial, who has ruled the Earth for 2000 years since the fall of Masada in the first century CE. Yah's powers, however, are limited by Belial's dominion on Earth, and the four of them must take extra precautions to avoid being detected by the forces of darkness.
Things do not go as planned. "Big Noodle", Earth's A.I. system, warns the ecclesiastical authorities in the Christian-Islamic church and Scientific Legate about the divine "invasion" and countermeasures are prepared. A number of failed attempts are made to destroy the unborn child, all of them thwarted by Elijah and Yah. After successfully making the interstellar journey back to Earth and narrowly avoiding a forced abortion, Rybys and Herb escape in the nick of time, only to be involved in a fatal taxi crash, probably due to the machinations of Belial. Rybys dies from her injuries sustained in the crash, and her unborn son Emmanuel (Yah in human form) suffers brain damage from the trauma but survives. Herb is critically injured and put into cryonic suspension until a spleen replacement can be found. Baby Emmanuel is placed into a synthetic womb, but Elias Tate manages to sneak Emmanuel out of the hospital before the church is able to kill him.
Six years pass. In a school for special children, Emmanuel meets Zina, a girl who also seems to have similar skills and talents, but acts as a surrogate teacher to Emmanuel. For four years, Zina helps Emmanuel regain his memory (the brain damage caused amnesia) and discover his true identity as Yah, creator of the universe.
When he's ready, Zina shows Emmanuel her own parallel universe. In this peaceful world, organized religion has little influence, Rybys Rommey is still alive and married to Herb Asher, and Belial is only a kid goat living in a petting zoo.
In an act of kindness, Zina and Emmanuel liberate the goat-creature from his cage, momentarily forgetting that the animal is Belial. The goat-creature finds Herb Asher and attempts to retain control of the world by possessing him and convincing him that Yahweh's creation is an ugly thing that should be shown for what it really is. Eventually Herb is saved by Linda Fox, a young singer whom he loves and who is his own personal Savior; she and the goat-creature meet and she kills it, defeating Belial. He finally discovers that this meeting happens over again for everyone in the world, and whether they choose Belial or their Savior decides if they find salvation.
Characters
Herb Asher: audio engineer
Rybys Rommey: mother of Emmanuel, sick with MS
Yah: Yahweh
Elias Tate: Incarnation of Elijah
Emmanuel (Manny): Yah incarnated in human form
Zina Pallas: Shekhinah
Linda Fox: singer, songwriter, Yetzer Hatov
Belial: Yetzer Hara
Fulton Statler Harms: Chief prelate of the Christian-Islamic Church (C.I.C), Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church
Nicholas Bulkowsky: Communist Party Chairman, Procurator maximus of the Scientific Legate
VALIS: agent of Yahweh, disinhibiting stimulus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Divine_Invasion
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 10, 2018 3:49:30 GMT -5
Lost Pages by Paul Di Filippo A collection of nine stories transplants famous writers to strange new worlds, as "Frank" Kafka becomes another Superman, Henry Miller becomes a messenger, and Anne Frank a stand-in for Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. Original. IP. Imagine "Frank" Kafka as the scourge of Gotham's mean streets; Henry Miller as a messenger for Western Union; Philip K. Dick as a hardware store salesman married to Linda Ronstadt. Paul Di Filippo, one of the original cyberpunks, reimagines the lives of some of the superstars of literature. Nine unpredictable stories position famous writers in strange, alternate existences.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Parallel%20Universes/Texts/Final%20Interview%20with%20Philip%20K_%20Dick%20-%20From%20Twilight%20Zone%20Magazine%20-%20June,%201982.htm
 Ever wished you could go back in time and change one crucial point in history? Ever thought what the world would be like if, say, Lincoln was not assassinated? This book is a compilation of what ifs where what is changed is the life of some famous writer.
The introduction, "What Killed Science Fiction" is an absolute hoot. Detailing the various things that went wrong with real science and the flops that Hollywood made, the fun is finding all the references to things as they are in our world, while it makes a perfect case for just how and why the dreams of science fiction died. And of course, this is a parody of "Who Killed Science Fiction" of SF fan fame.
The first story, "The Jackdaw's Last Case", is told in typical early 1900 style, with a large amount of description and flowery phrases, as it looks at Franz Kafka as a super-crime fighter. The story is somewhat slight, its interest is in the style and the odd situation, not quite coming off as a parody of the early scientifiction pulp stories.
"Anne" is bittersweet, following a very different life path for Anne Frank. Its conclusion is almost an acidic put down of Hollywood and the American dream.
"The Happy Valley at the End of the World" is, perhaps, the weakest story here, as we enter a world depopulated by a hemorrhagic plague, with a daredevil pilot convinced that H. G. Well's Wings Over the World is the blueprint for how to return the world (and fliers) to glory. Overly long and without much of either the humor or parody that suffuses most of the other stories.
"Mairzy Doats" is my favorite of this bunch, as we find Robert Heinlein, through an odd combination of circumstances (though highly believable - showing just how close to reality some of these alternate histories can be), as President of the United States, and mounting a manned mission to the moon. Heinlein is one of my favorite authors, but I could really appreciate just how well this story extrapolates some of Heinlein's political and social ideas to their extreme, deflating both the ideas and the man in a thoroughly delightful way.
"Campbell's World" is one that any science fiction fan can relate to, showing just what would have happened if Joseph Campbell, rather than John W. Campbell, became editor of Astounding magazine in 1938. The results are literally astounding.
"Instability", written with Rudy Rucker, is one I did not care for, probably because I've never cared for Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsburg and the other `Beats'. But as a story of the ultimate meeting of the Physicist with the Poet, it certainly belongs in this collection.
"World Wars III" is a nice little tale of the world as it would be without Einstein or any of the other physicists who made the A-bomb possible. The added charm of this one is the weird skewing of musical personalities, from the Beatles and Elvis Presley to Barry Sadler and Dionne Warwick.
Philip K. Dick married to Linda Ronstadt? "Linda and Phil" is a quiet tale of alternate realities that Dick (naturally) has to set right. Doesn't quite have the head-splitting wackiness of a Dick original, but good for a quick read.
"Alice, Alfie, Ted, and the Aliens" is one for science fiction aficionados only. The fun is catching who all the people are and which characterizations of them really fit the person. Alfred Bester doesn't come off so well here, but `Chip' Delany is marvelously satirized.
Most of these stories have a very strong `in-crowd' element - those who are not steeped in the world of fantastical literature may miss many of the sly, underhanded references scattered throughout. I've been reading this stuff for 45 years, and even so I have the suspicion that I missed a few of them. But there is some good parody, some biting social comment, and a good sense of style throughout these stories. Not perfect, and some of the stories are much weaker than the others, but a good light read, with an occasional laugh.
--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat) |
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 10, 2018 4:34:14 GMT -5
 The Selected Letters, 1974by Philip K. Dick, Don Herron
I've read most of PKD's novels and short stories but I had no idea that they published collections of his correspondence. It is so illuminating, so perversely entertaining, to have such a personal window into a brilliant mind failing itself. In 1974, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said had just been published, and we're dropped right into the middle of Dick's bitter arguments with his publishers and endless gripes about disappearing royalties and short print runs. He's particularly mad at Stanislaw Lem, who published Ubik in Poland. When a piece of fan mail arrives from then Soviet-occupied Estonia, he freaks out and begins a terrified, one-sided correspondence with the FBI. Delusions about Marxists and USSR mind experiments build up and out of control, and the acid patterns begin to form; PKD's powerful imagination is getting the better of him.
As the year goes on he has powerful dreams and hallucinations, and in correspondence with Claudia Bush and some other close friends, he tries to make sense of everything his mind throws at him. In the ideas that emerge, Dick devotees will recognise early sketches of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, VALIS, Radio Free Albemuth and even the unpublished The Owl in Daylight. Even as it gets hard to follow the complex, obtuse logic of it all, these intimate ramblings makes for absolutely compelling reading.
There are lighter, often quite funny moments too. It's amazing to me that even PKD himself said things like "I wake up and feel like I'm living in a PKD novel". He sends fan mail to Linda Ronstadt and hate mail to Richard Nixon. Plus there's this quote, which has haunted me ever since I came across it:
"Most of what I used to think were games played for ideological reasons have over the years turned out to be played for money. This is a hard lesson to learn. You keep hoping something more is at stake, and it's always just money."
If you're not already familar with his work this book will mean nothing to you, but if you're the kind of person whose already read, say, ten to twenty of his books already, this will be hard to put down.
www.goodreads.com/book/show/216392.The_Selected_Letters_1974 |
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Post by RobGNYC on Sept 20, 2021 18:17:40 GMT -5
More PKD on Linda. Just read this in his novel Valis (written 1978, published 1981):
"[Fat] drank his drink and set the empty glass down and stood up. 'Let's go back to my apartment. I want you to hear the new Linda Ronstadt record, Living in the U.S.A. It's real good.'
"As we left the bar, I said 'Kevin says Ronstadt's washed up.'"
"Pausing at the door out, Fat said 'Kevin is washed up.'"
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2021 18:30:47 GMT -5
Did Linda have any interest in his books?
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Post by erik on Sept 20, 2021 19:38:51 GMT -5
Quote by heartbreaker re. Philip K. Dick:
If she did, she likely wouldn't admit it; but methinks not.
Of course, several filmmakers did, at least in terms of his short stories. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? was made by director Ridley Scott into BLADE RUNNER in 1982 (and sequelized by Denis Villaneuve in 2019's BLADE RUNNER 2049). We Can Remember It For You Wholesale was filmed by Dutch director Paul Verhoeven in 1990 as TOTAL RECALL, with "Aaah-nuld" Schwarzenneger. And in 2002, Minority Report was filmed under its title by some guy named Steven Spielberg (you might have heard of him once or twice [LOL]).
I don't think sci-fi is Linda's literary bag...although, quite ironically, one of the best songs she ever did, especially with Jimmy Webb's name to it, is also the title of a 1966 sci-fi novel by Robert Heinlein: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
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Post by eddiejinnj on Sept 20, 2021 22:47:36 GMT -5
I have to try and remember to do some more reading on PKD. Definitely quite unique, imo. eddiejinfl
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Post by RobGNYC on Sept 20, 2021 23:26:00 GMT -5
I have to try and remember to do some more reading on PKD. Definitely quite unique, imo. eddiejinfl PKD is my favorite author. For the novels, I'd recommend starting with Do Androids Dream, on which Blade Runner was based, or Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (about a TV/recording star and a little easier to get into than some of the later ones like Valis). His short stories are also a good place to start ( Minority Report and Second Variety are two excellent collections). |
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Post by Tony on Sept 21, 2021 1:54:41 GMT -5
I used to have about 20 of his books, some hardcover, mostly paperbacks. But I have given away or sold most of them. I used to say to my guests "Do you want to see my collection of Dick books?"
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2021 6:07:34 GMT -5
"Benediction" can be found on "The Prayer Cycle" album, Sony I think.
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Post by RobGNYC on Aug 23, 2022 10:26:51 GMT -5
More PKD on Linda. From "Introduction to The Golden Man" (1980):
"I remember back in the mid-sixties when I first heard Linda Ronstadt; she was a guest on Glen Campbell's TV show, and no one had ever heard of her. I went nuts listening to her and looking at her. I had been a buyer in retail records and it had been my job to spot new talent that was hot property, and seeing and hearing Ronstadt, I knew I was hearing one of the great people in the business; I could see down the pipe of time into the future. Later, when she'd recorded a few records, none of them hits, all of which I faithfully bought, I calculated to the exact month when she'd make it big. I even wrote Capitol Records and told them; I said, the next record Ronstadt cuts will be the beginning of a career unparalleled in the record industry. Her next record was Heart Like a Wheel. Capitol didn't answer my letter, but what the hell; I was right, and happy to be right. But, see, that's what I'd be into now, had I not gone into writing science fiction. My fantasy number that I run in my head is, I discover Linda Ronstadt, and am remembered as the scout for Capitol who signed her. I would have wanted that on my gravestone:
HE DISCOVERED LINDA RONSTADT
AND SIGNED HER UP!
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Post by eddiejinnj on Aug 23, 2022 16:53:10 GMT -5
He was quite the fan, I would say. eddiejinnj
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