PHILIP K. DICK: IN HIS OWN WORDS by Gregg Rickman‘LSS SNES SSN [snr Ps3554 . 13 Z4 | (Age For My Mother ‘Published by FRAGMENTS WEST/THE VALENTINE PRESS 1705 E 7th Sveet, Long Bate, Californie 0808 right 98, s068 Greg Rickmin Seaond Baton Copyright ©1088 Gres Rickman All rghts onervad. No portion of the book may be used or Tepredsesdin any fr ory aay mens without writen persion ltheauthor.Inteducion Copyright ®108# The Amber Corporation laters of Philp K: Dick Copyright ®1094 Estate of Pllp K. Dick ‘Used by pemiisan ofthe esate and ts apons, Seott Mereita Literary Agency. in. &45 Tid Ave. New York, Now Yor 10022, Printed in the United States of Amores Feriaformatonabotthe Philip K. Dick Social, woe Box, Glen lls, CA 9432. Their newsletter $8 «yar 1N HIS OWN WORDS : I CONTENTS — | INTRODUCTION, by Roger Zelazny ‘= | ‘Cough in the Movement of « Hand Wound Universs* QE=SI |A PREFACE AND THANKS PART ONE: PHILIP K, DICK: AN INTRODUCTION Chapter A Blogephical Note Chapter 2. “Philip K. Dick end the Search for Cartas" | SESE 2 Introductory Note eS 31 One Dicks Novels A Pilgrim's Progress = 3 Two: Diek’s Heroes= Lat inthe Mase 25 ——_Threa: Dick's Themes ~The Search for Caritas 35 Four: Postcipt 1964) 39 Gomment, by Philip K. Dick Notes PARE TWO; NSN WORDS; WRITING SCIENCE FICTION (haners Why Scene Pon? The Benign Gos Moral Chokes & Ebsnect casera seen Third Cad Cekonces Ae An SP exception / Slag Things Five Dilferet Ways Chapter 8 Chistian Belles / The Fallen World / CS. Lewis / 50." "Charles Wiliams / Olaf Stapleton / Benign Conspiracies Tolkien ly Chepler Easlet Weng /°t Love to Wie" /Charybia/ Borges B07 puter. Beethoven toms F Cheplerr “An lncreibly Conventional Weiter” /The Early Stortea/ @ so The Fom and the Craft / Markets of the Files / 2 Pslonlcs" end Joba W. Caimpbel & Chapter 8 Donald Wollhelm / Altemate Tiles / Hard Science 2 etn Chapter © The Sixties / Ellison and Wollhelm / Origin of Dr. sat" Bloodmoney / Dangerous Visions / Hate. Mall / ¥ Countertelts 2 cchoter 10 Haan Elson Reader Response / Publishers end ‘Ages / Deus Irae CensoredGhapier22 Mulipe Viewpoints Will Cook /Exploring All Posie e4 Viewpolnis James Joyce / Third Person Femsle Nennderthsls/ Policemen (Chapter 14 Feng and Fellow Writers / Dit and Splared/ Mich 94 Moorcek and "The Skull”/ Robert Siverbeg Life Predieated on Humen Love" (COMMENT BY ROBERT SILVERBERG) Chapter 16 Ursula K. LeGula / “Golag Crazy in Santa Ana” / 300" "Unreslvable Melaphysial Problems" “Hateful Wom- en" The Late of Heaven and Ubik / Phils Sensitivity (UETTER FROMURSULA X. LeGUIN}/Feriniamand “tho Pre-Persona” PART THREE: THE NOVELS ONE BY ONE ‘Shaper 10 Self-Denial “Kindly Deeb / Ace Books hapter 17 The Early Novels: Solar Lottery / Tha World Jon Mir Made /The Cosmic Puppets (Chapter18 The Early Novels: The Man Who Japed/EyeIntheSky/ 314 Sfarnom /"Sem-Reslty"/ Race An OM Black Mew (Chapter 29 The Early Novels: Time Out of Joat/Goosticisn /The var tao / Valean's Hammer /Dr. Futrity / Ray Bradbury (Charter 20 The Literary Novels / Contenslons of a Crap Artie / ase! Craftsmen, Intellecoals, Sslesmen (Chapter 21 The Novels ofthe Esry Sines: The Me 330" Castle /The Mult-Foc Format/A Sequelto High Ca [Nazis / Massolst and Now Walt for Last Year Ths Nature of Evil (Chapter 22 The Novels of the Ealy Sine: “ta Pages a Day" / M45" Martian Tho Slip/*THad Found My Own iomn"/The ‘Thrao Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (Chapter 20 The Novel ofthe Barly Sates: The Simolacra/Clane 131) ofthe Alphane Moon /The Zap Gun and The Pensll- fate Truth / "it Would Mako # Great Film” De. Bloodmoney /The Many Version of The Usteleported IN His OWN WORDS: V ‘Chapters tas Weiter Blck/ Nom WalforLan Yer endThe (Cnc In Space /A Collaboration Chapter 25 Ray Nelion / Weiting The Ganymede Takeover / sor (INTERVIEW WITH RAY NELSON} CChapter20 The Novels the Late Sixties: Countor-Clock World /t 7a Wan Very Happy" / Do And 3m of Electr ‘Shoop? and Ubik/“Ossliction™ A Maze of Death and (Our Priends from Frolix 8 / The Usik Screenplay / (Galactle Pot Healer / We Can Bullé You Charter 27 The Early Seventies: Hiatus / Flow My Tear the 77 Policeman Seld /“Wrlng Aatoblograplcally"/ Deus rag and Roger Zelazny Chapter 28 The Late Seventies: A Scanner Datkly / The Drug war Cutar:"t Want to Record Them” / Donne / VALIS (Chapter20 The Divine nvasion/A PleasuretoWate"/ASeaualto Sor VALIG/A Study of fodalan/ Muzakand Linda Ronstadt PART FOUR: THE LAST YEAR Chapter 90 The Scott Meredith Agency / Discusive Weitng/ Russ 105, Galen and Bishop Archer Chapter 21 Writing Timothy Archer: The Fest Three Pages / A 1 t/John Lennon's Death /Reigou ‘Mania "My Poor Agent” /larvey the Gat/ Angel Archer TAGood Book Chapter 32 The Making of Blade Runner / Ridley Seot “t Dont HO. Want ToDo the Goddamned Novelization”/Rewellog a "Joke Scresoplay” "They Did Sight Simul Brain” / Good Gras / Sconce Fiction Was estate” / My Lila Boy / A Near Great Film hsstec 20 The Ow n Dalat (Chapter 94 “We Die Too Soon” a‘Vi: PHILIP K, DICK APPENDICES = * A ‘The Novels of Philip K. Dick Bt Shan Story Collections 8 Bibliography 204 nterviews with Pip K Dick Books on Philip K. Dick ‘Mincllaneous References ce “Two Letters fom Philip K. Dick tar, june 2071808 June 2, 1981, Nex: INDEX OF NAMES INDEX TO WORKS INDEX To SUBJECTS, 1N HIS OWN WORDS : VI INTRODUCTION by Roger Zelazny ‘Caught in the Movement of a Hand-Wound Universe Reading this collection of interviews with Philip K. Dick has brought back to mind conversations we had over the years. Ithasalso reminded me of is life. Not so much the substance as the style. Phil was a humorist ~a bizarre one, to besure -alternalely employing the grotesque. the ironic, the slapstick. He was attracted by the possibilities of‘Vl: PHILIP K. DICK situations of this lk in his fiction, and he tended to view his life and life in general slong these lines, at least in conversation and correspondence. It also seems that he somehow personaly attracted happenings of this sort. Te listened to him take ten minutes to construct @ byzanting chain of reasoning to interpret some politcal or philosophical point. Someone would then try poking a few folesin it, and healwayshad an answer in keeping with the tenor of the piece. Finally, when a head would nod and someone would say, “Maybe you have a point there,” he would pause, catch his breath and say, “But no...Maybe youwere right..."and then set off discrediting his construct to substitute something completely different and fust as peculiar. It soemed that whenever he began approaching certainty he would feel uncomfortable, draw back and find an ambiguity to pursue in its stead. It was an Intellectual dance, an eternal approaching with neveran arival. It was very amusing, and he knew it. It was also extremely difficult to know just how serious or playful it might be at any given time. It made me think about his stories and his characters: pathos mixed with the ludierous, the sudden abandonment of ideas to fist with alternatives, near- surrealistic scenes that sometimes seemed objectifications of neuroses, characters generally more acted upon than sex without a great deal of pleasure...He once told me in aletter, “Kafka isa favorite of mine, and I have long ‘wished I could utilize some of his methods in my own s.f.~ but so far I've failed." I wasn't at all certian he'd missed by ‘much, He also liked Bocket, and our last few telephone conversations touched upon the possiblity of our collabo- rating on a book based on an idea he liked in a story by Borges. How strong might have been the influence of any ‘or all of these writers upon him is impossible to say. I's one of those chicken-or-egg things. Did he like thein because he ‘was learning from them? Or was he drawn to them because 1N HIS OWN WORDS : 1 he was already informed with something much like thetr approsches to story-telling and felt a certain kinship? 1 suspect the latter, and I am alvways leary of hunts for Iterary Influences, anyway. Phil had his own existential ance, with pratfalls. I like to think he was also his own choreographer. ‘There was some demonstration of this dance in his own life, one instance of which T was present to witness, ‘occurring in Metz, France in the autumn of 1977, at the ‘Second International Science Fiction Festival. The spon- sors ofthe event had brought over three U.S. sf writers ~ Philip K. Dick, Harlan Blison and myself. Phil was to give the major guest address, several deys into the event. Of necessity, he wrote It out beforehand, It had to be trans- lated into French, so that he could reed «paragraph In English to be followed immediately by the translator reading the same passage In French. The day arrived, 1 could not be present at the talk because I had been scheduled to begin an autograph party ata local bookstore, to be joined later by Phil, when we would both sign copies of the French edition of Deus Irae. ‘My first inkling that eomething peculiar had occurred ‘came when a couple of French fans associated with the Festival came into the store arguing with each other and looking puzzled. They approached me atthe table where 1 ‘was signing books. *Mitiew Zelazny.” one of them sald, “you have worked with M'sieu Dick and you know his mind. Does he really ‘wish to found his own religion with himself as Pope?” “He'd never mentioned it to mo," I sai. He turned triumphantly and sald something to the other in rapid-fire French which I couldn't follow. ‘Then the other addressed me: "But I rode with him inthe zack tothe hotel and he gave methe powerto remit sins ~ and to kill fleas.” tX: PHILP K, DICK “It was a joke," I said. “You can’t always tell when he's Joking, But it was a joke.” “Lam not so sure,” he replied ‘Then the first one asked me, "Do you believe -as M’siew Dick does - that God and the Devil are playing a game of chess forthe fateof the universe, and that every time one of ‘Them makes a move reality is altered?” cleared my throat to begin a reply, but he continued, “And that every time Phil Dick writes @ book reality i switched back to its normal track fora time. Deus Irae has done it most recontly, he sald. Eh?” "Phil had never mentioned that one to me either." I sald. “But, again, you must realize that his sense of humor may not slways come through so wel in translation.” He shook his head “Lam not so sure,” he said ‘More people who had been present at the talk began 4sifting i, They all had similar odd questions for meon the working of Phil's mind and the structure of his personal philosophy. Ikept parrying them. Finally, Phil showed up. looking herassed, sat down beside me and began signing books. “Phil, just what the hell did you talk about today?” I asked hima, “Idon't know." he replied. “Really,” I said. “Ive been getting alot of weird ques- ions about i." "really don’t know," he said “What do you mean?” I asked. “You wrote the damned speech.” “Butits not the one I gave," he answered. Then, “Well, it ‘was. But it wasn't the one they heard, "Oh?" I said. "What happene “Thad to cut it,"he told me. “They were running late and IN HIS OWN WORDS : XI they esked me'to shorten it by twenty minutes." “Sor” “Twent through it and eroseed out sections. My transla- tordid the same, but his copy was set up differenily and he didn't cross out the same sections. I don't know which ones he crossed out, though, and which ones wore retained. 1 don't read French.” “Nobody from th He nodded. “Neither am 1 1 suddenly felt as if 1 were in the middle of a Phil Dick story. He had been brought around the world to givea talk, ithad been given and now everyone had a different view a to what had been said ‘And the author was powerless to interpret... Alady came up to the tabl “Let me introduce myself," she said in English Francoise Cartano, I did the French translation of Deus Trae, and I wanted to apologize to you.” “What for?" we asked, “Twas rushed,” she sald, “and I didn’ realize it until it was too late - when the book was already printed - that in places 1 gave Tibor McMasters a 4-wheeled cart, and in other places it has only two wheels. 'm very sorry." “That's allright,” Phil sal. "I's kind of a nice touch. ‘Says something about reality.” We signed a lot of books that afternoon. Phil is very popular in France. I wondered alot about life imitating at Not just anybody's art. Phil Dick's art. Wouldn't it be appropriate his presence really rubbed the fabric of Maya so thin thatthe Chaos leaked through? Whatever, itwas an instructive privilege to inhabit a Philip K. Dick story for those few brief hours and to know thet it was nota paranoid vision, by his definition: udlonce Is certain what you sald."Xil : PHILIP K. DICK Sudden surprises, by the way - and this thought may be In tel a sudden surprise to you - area srt of eniidate to the parenod.r.tobeaceurat about toliveln sucha way e810 ‘encounter sudden suprises quite often oreven now and then Is ‘& indication that you sro not paranoid, boone to the parenold, nothings surprise: everyhing wore exactly ‘hes expoced, and sometimes even more so allie nto his system. For us, though, there ean be no sytem: maybe ‘ystems - that io any theoretical, veel symbeliz, semantic, ‘te, formulation that attempts to act as un allencompassing, allexplaningbypethesls of what the universe ls about = ar ‘manifestations of perarola. We should be conte with the rysterios, the meaningless the contradictory, the hose, 42nd mot of al the unexplainably warm and giving «ol x0: ‘alle Inaitate envionment ia other words very much tke a person, like the behavior of one intecate, able, half-weled, feep, perplexing, and muct-tobeloved human being (0. an other. Tobe eared elite, 20, sometimes. And perpetually ‘misunderstood. Abou which wecen nether know nor be aut tnd we must only trust and make guesses toward. Not belag ‘what you though, ot doing right by you sat belng Just but then sustaining you as by momentary eapece, but then sbandoning you, oral eastsoming to. Whelltsactully upto ‘we may never know, Hiei said that in his Vancover guest of honor speoch in 1072. 'd often wondered about it, as it seemed toleave very lutein which tobelleve. But then, he admits this. Ina leter describing a positive aspect of his work (lo SF Commen- tary #17, 1070) he said: | know only one thing about my naval. them, again and ‘again, this tlnor an neers bimeelf la all ls hasy, awe ‘trength. In theruinsof Earheclieshols bully constructing a Ile factory tat tras ou elgars or maps or imitation artifacts that say. “Welcome to Miami, the pleasure center of the ‘world In ALinealn,Simalacrum he peratesalitte business {hat produces corny electronic organs ~ end. ister on, humane [ike robots which ultimately becomemareof entation thane threat Everything sen asmallscele-Collapsels enormous the positive litle figure outlined agalns the universal rubble i, IN HIS OWN WORDS : XI ‘ke Tagonl, Runcter, Molina, grazed in cope, fate in ‘what he can do.-and yeti tome sence great I relly donot Kaw why {simply belive tn him and tlove Me. He will prevail There is sothing else. AL least sothng else that fates: Tel we should be concerned stout, Beeaus if be there ike ny fther-gure, everthing ial righ. ‘Some reviewers have found “itemess"in my waiting. Lam surprised, becouse my mood i one of trust. Perhaps they are botheredby the fact that whet rut sso very small. They want somathing aster Uhaverews fr them: theres nothing [Nothing more, {shoul ay. But realy, how much do we hi tobavet rt Me. Tegomi enough? lant what he does enough? Snow it counts am stele. He was a strange and wonderful man. I liked his ccockeyed visions, his near-nihilisic dances of Ideas, that final touch of idealism. He was scery, amusing and sometimes profound. There was a kind of catharsis in his best works, such as Ubik, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Dr. Bloodmoney. miss him. !dovbt Time will ‘ever deliver another writer quite like him. But, as he once sid in e poetry fragment ‘Why did clocks bring man into the world? Only to amuse? (Knowing clocks, would this be strange?) Introduction ®1984 The Amber Corporation.XIV: PHILIP K. DICK A PREFACE AND THANKS by Gregg Rickman "ln the final analysis, life is predicated on human love, ‘mutual human love.” = Philip K, Dick (1928-1982) ‘There are people who profoundly affect our lives who we never meet ~- artists, usually, whose work gets into our bloodstream, whom we absorb and who become a part of IN His OWN WORDS : XV ourselves. When we first encounter thelr work, be it in music heard over the radio or In a book casually picked up in some supermart book stall, we feel an instant catharsis with them, @ union, and for & while, for 2 few months at least, we drunkenly gulp every record they made or painting they painted, until the fever has run its course. ‘And then you can truly appreciate the artist. Then you can stand back and see how their perceptions, their vision of life has entered into you and subtly changed the very rhythms of your heart. There must first have been some ‘unknown and unspoken link between you before luck oF search helped you make the connection ~ you have to have in some way prepared yourself for the communion, have hheld yourself open fori. 1 can't be forced ( this is why high school kids hate Hamlet. All teachers can do is prepare their students, to teach them to be ready) Besides the artists we never meet there are,even more importantly, the artists of life we have as friends. A teacher, a brother, a parent, a pal, lover, a student, a son cor a daughter can open you up to shadings of life you could never have known. The operative word is "friend." If each of us carries within ourselves a universe all to our own, Imagine the universes carried within the bus of strangers you ride with each morning? A frlend is someone with ‘whom you co-mingle universes. A friend is someone who cares enough shout you--no strike thet, friends someone ‘who is interested enough in you to learn to care about you. A friendship ie more than curlosty, less than love at firt sight. Love itself is friendship by another name. Tn my life Ihavebeen profoundly affectedby anumber of ists, profoundly affected more by a number of friends. ‘Theres but oneman who wasboth greatartistand friend to me, and he is the late Philip K. Dick. A science fiction waiter, I got to know him first in his weird, great, off-the- ‘wall and masterly science fiction novels, mostly paperbackXVI: PHILIP K. DICK. originals, with tiles like Galactic Pot-Healer and Counter. Clock World, Eye in the Sky and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Thad seen and read parts of Phil's books before. I read some of Ubik when I was 14, standing around waiting for ‘my mother In the upstairs Book Department of the South Bay May Company, circa 1970. I read all of Man in the High Castle in my first year of college, circa 1074. I was Impressed, but went on to other things. ‘The enthusiasms of my childhood were Oz books and. dinosaurs, thon the Peanuts books and American history, the constellations as drawn by H.A. Rey and then In 1968 the complete works of Geonge Orwell. 1970 was the year 1 discovered Buster Keaton, and with him the cinema. In°72 and '73 Bach was joined by Fats Waller and Jelly Roll ‘Morton, They all changed the way I saw end thought. 1980 found me adrift In San Frencisco, a would-be great artist stumbling around insular colonies of artists and actors and shoveling tofu to the upwardly mobile at the Real Foods Health Food Store, Polk Street branch. One night, down- wardly mobile myself, Iwas pushing my way uphill to my Bush Street apartment when I came across a book store I had never seen before, a tiny Used Peperbacks for Sale store front called Twice Read Tales, 682 Post Street. There { browsed and found three novels by Philip K. Dick, Solar Lottery, The Penultimate Truth, and Flow My Tears, tho Policeman Sald-one novel each as it happened from each decade of Phil's writing career. bought them and I read them, remembering back 10 Ubik and High Castle so long ago. I road them over breakfast granola, a tasty flekey kind I can’t find anymore and which came in great plastic sacks. Iread them over the bolted potstoes I mashed for supper. I read them at night, real late, aggressive ‘Gan Francisco roaches and black beetles patrolling the edge of my lamp light. {read themon 1N HIS OWN WORDS : XVI the BART train scooting over to Berkeley, where there ‘wore more used book stores with more Phil Dick books. 1 read them all. All 29 (as of 1980.He wrote three more beforehe died) Plus five collections of short stories. What I loved about his work - still do - was not the worlds of collapsing realities he so skillfully created and which most prize him for. I loved him for the love he showed his characters, even in extremis, even when they didn't deserve i wrote a long essay and sald s0. A fend gave me Phil's address. He lived, ofall places, in Senta Ana. I sent a copy cof my estay to Phil and when I was down visiting in Long Beach for & month (April 1961) he called me up and sald ‘how much be liked It ‘And so I met Phil Dick. Over the next year, the last of his life, 1 met with and Interviewed Phil Dick five times. We also talked on the phone and corresponded. I gathered 18 hours of tape recorded interviews, Phil on all subjects: his life, science fiction, politics his visions. 1 went through his correspond fence on file at the Fullerton State archives, compiling ‘many pages of notes. I'met him in April 1961. He gave an overview of his career, explained why he liked to write science fiction. ‘met him again in September, and twice in October. He ‘went over each of his novels one-by-one, talked about his visions (as reported in his 1961 novel VALIS and else- where), and talked about his if, He was hauntedall his life by a tivia sister who died in infancy ~ they are buried together now. Each time I saw him he seemed more frall, less robust, less happy. On my last October visit he showed me how to read the I Ching and then sent me home. He was ill in‘XVIII: PHILIP K, DICK li November, December, January. I saw him again in Feb- ruary 1982, a marathon session that chiefly concerned Atself with Phil's anger at Reagan, the Russians, and the chemical destruction of Earth - and his professed belief in the imminent return of Christ, Phil Dick was not, as some haveclalmed, “spiraling into madness” in the last years of his life. To the end he ‘maintained perspective on his most outrageous clams, wit ‘among the anger, alternate explanations for every vision. He was however, burning himself up in his love for the world and the life within it. Tsaw him then and I see him now as « martyr of empathy. ‘ 1 saw the scars on Phil's arm one day in November 196, shortly after Anwar Sadat had been assassinated, When he 1 heard the news, Phil said, he crushed his soda pop can and scraped his skin unit he ust drew blood. He was not crazy, Phil said, for he then immediately washed his erm and applied disinfectant. But he felt the need to share the pain of Sadat’s death - a martyr to peace, He had the Old ‘Testament need for a blood sacrifice - only, as in the New Testament, he sacrificed himslt ‘And again--he could be hilarious. When Ityped up these Interview transcripts of Phil's 1 was continually typing in \ (aughterlafer one or another of Phil's deadpan sorties into the absurd. Pil was lso profoundly fteligent, Essentially ' self-educated, he had acquired profound knowledge of | history, philosophy, and religion. And Phil was extremely kind. Each of my visits were devoted in part to is questions about how 1 was doing. He bought me sandviches, he ‘brewed me coffee, he was always extremely complimen- tary about my writing Phil's death left me numb. He was feeling badly the last, ‘evening I talked 1 him, loffered o stay the night with him = COO C OO |W Hs OWN WORDS : XIX Dut he sent me home: I called him when I got there and he ‘aid he was feoling better. The next morning a neighbor ‘saw him go out to get the paper. That same day he had @ stroke. Taken tothe hospital, he wasbegining orally when ‘head another, more massive stroke, and then another. He died ten daysafler lat saw him, on March 2,1982.1-who had been calling him and getting no answer for several days x about his death that night. For the next year or so - I had determined to write a biography of Phil, and had in fact told him so, to his jproval -Itraveled on my vacations and breaks from work and interviewed a number of those who knew him. His father, who was 82, Three of his five ex-wives. His half- sister, His collaborator, Ray Nelson, on one novel (The Ganymede Takeover). And others. Every last soul thought highly of Phil, even when there had been rifts and mmisunderstandings between them. But it seemed there were s0 many versions of Phil's truth 1 was beginning to despair of ever settling on one The ‘Truth, And then It came to me ~ let Phil speak for himself ‘And so T em, ‘This book isthe first of three projected volumes of Philip K. Dick speaking {a his own words. This volume Is Phil speaking on his career asa science fietion writer, on each of| his books and also, inescapably, on the biographical and philosophical elements lying behind each novel. Volume ‘Two, Philip K. Dick: The Last Testament will incorporate Phil's last tape, made the day in February 1982 before he had his stroke, and will cover all of his extraordinary visions and his many statements and thoughts on religion and philosophy ~ the things that mattered most to him in life, which his novels merely animated, The two books are closely Interwoven but have their distinct and separate| i | XX : PHILIP K. DICK uses. Both may be read by the general reader, for I have taken pains to explain each reference. The day may come ‘when Phil's reputation as philosopher exceeds his (large and growing) reputation as a science fiction writer. He would be amused. Volume Three, projected for publication at some point ia 1088 (probebly the summer), will attempt to untangle the tyeads of Phil's extraordinary life. It will include, in addition to Phil's memoirs of his life ae told to me, the {interviews I have made with various of Phil’ relatives and friends and further interviews I hope to make with more ‘who knew him. If anyone reading this book knew Phil and would like to talk with me, please contact me via my publisher at: FRAGMENTS WEST 2705 Bast 7th Street Long Beach, California 90604 T would appreciate In transcribing Phil's talks with me for publication, 1 hhave made every effort to not only accurately reproduce What Phil said, but to capture the style of his spoken speech, which was extraordinarily ich and dense with allusion, He was an incredible conversationalist and great interview; my conteibutions as editor have been merely to lide some repetitions and, by the ordering of chapters, and ‘occasional juxtapositions of statements made on different dates, place chronological and topleal fences around his talk for the benefit of readers. Any deletion of material of| ‘more than a line or two - frequently philosophical digres- sions that Iam shunting off into Volume Two- Is marked by snellipss(..). which occurs forno other reason in themai body of text. (Five stars **** * mark a break in the recording ora change in topic, ora retura tothe same tople 1N HIS OWN WORDS : XX after a lively digression). Within the body of the interviews (Parts Two-Fou anything found in perentheses is an editorial comment oF clarification by me. Thus if anyone were to listen to the original tapes side by side with reading the text, they would find Phil's language reproduced almost word for word, with my editorial comments and phrasing of my questions comprising almost all of the different materials. (While leaving Phil's language intact I have often reworded my questions, to give the reader more information, or simply to make myself sound coherent). havealso added occasional parenthetical comments such as (laughter) or (angry) to indicate the tone of Phil's conversation, 8 tone that could shift very quickly indeed. Finally, four people who knew Phil - Robert Silverberg, Ursula LeGuin, Ray Nelson, and in his marvelous intro- duction Roger Zelazny - have allowed me to fold their ‘comments on Phil into this volume. 1 thank them all very much, Bayond the people who are actually quoted within a book the people who help an author create the book deserve thanks and credit. 1 would like to thank: My mother and my father, for their unfailing kindness, love, and generosity: Paul Williams, executor of Phil Dick's estate, for his ‘generous encouragement and aid in clearing rights to material Tim Powers, another friend of Phil's, who along with Paul helped me out with my fact checking ‘ill Blackbesrd, proprietor of the San Francisco Aca demy of Comic Ar, for giving me Phil's address back in 1081 and in a sense starting this whole project; SyXIU: PHILIP K, DICK ‘Anne, Naney, and Tossa Diek, Me, and Mrs. Edgar Dick, and the other friends and relatives of Phil's ve mets Phil Yeh, Janet Valentine, and the rest of the staff at Cobblestone Gallery, for making this dream a reality: ‘Atlene, Linda, Mary, Rosey, and Hilde of the Alamitos ‘Branch Library, for putting up with meat work while I was actually thinking about this work: “Allof my other friends inside the Wbrary and out, just for being my friends ‘And most ofall tothe late Phil Dick, my frend, What can Tsay? Hoved the guy. rege Rickman Long Beach, California ‘Apel 1904 .S, tathe Second Eaition; We've corrected some typos and amplified some information; in this 1 was helped, especially, by Edmond Gauthier. Y'd also like to thank Philamer Tambio-Yeh and Dennis Niedbale at Fragments West; all the people who've sent me their comments especially Kael Wessel: and, in San Francisco, my best feionds: Lenna and Carrie. My love to you all. Gregg Rickman San Prancisco, California June 1867 PART ONE Philip K. Dick: An Introductionee CHAPTER 1 A Biographical Note Philip Kindred Dick was bom on December 16, 1928, in. Chicago, Iinois. His father, Joseph Edgar Dick (b, 1899), fought World War I in France and eventually became Secretary of the California Cattlemen's Association. His ‘mother, born Dorothy Kindred, held responsible posts in the forestry service. IN HIS OWN WORDS : 3 January 26, 1929. Her brlef Ife, and death, had a profound effect on her brothers life. (This question is gone into in the second book of this serie). ‘The family moved to California in 1929. Phil's parents separated when he was 4%. (Divorced 1995). Phil and his mother relocated to Washington, D.C., where he attended - most unhappily - an academy in Virginia and other schools through fourth grade. They then moved again, eventually settling in Berkeley, Califor Gradugting from high school there, and seeing publica tion for the first time In the Berkeley Gezotte “Young ‘Author's Chub" (1044), he developed a passion for classical ‘music, He worked briefly for KSMO Radio, San Mateo, and, very formatively, fora record store in Berkeley whose owner was a father figure to him and the apperent model {or therecurring figure, in Dick's novels, of theherole small, businessman (Leo Bulero, Jim Fergesson). In 1949 Phil Dickbriefly attended UC Berkeley, dropping cout rather than take mandatory ROTC. (His disgust with the snobbish attitude of the inteligencia on-campus also played e part inthis decision. See Chapter 20) Phil was briefly married, in 1948, to Jeannette Marlin, ‘and in 1950 he married again, to Kleo Apostolides. His 1900 Introduction to The Golden Man paints a vivid portrait of his ife in poverty In the 1950's, struggling to make ends ‘a wirlter, At the end of 1951 he sold his first on he had quit his job asa record was writing ful time. Writing rapidly, and increasingly skillflly, he soon became established as a short story author in the science fiction field. He acquired Scott Meredith as his literary agent, and stayed with the agency for the rest of his life. From 1951 through 1060, he struggled to sell one of the ‘many non-science fiction, lterary novels he wrote, but4: PHILIP K, DICK {alled to place any of them, This disappointment ingorod for ars, belng soothed with the 1975 publication of jons of a Crap Artist (1959) and the acceptance, shortly before his death, of @ new literary novel. The ‘Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) twas in science fiction, though, that Phil Dick made his. literary mark. After hitting peaks of 30 and 28 stories respectively published in 1953 and 1954, he moved into novel writing with the very successful Solar Lottory (1955), frst of many paperback originals published by Ace Books and its canny science fiction editor, Donald Woll- helm. He produced one or two novels a year through the rest of the decade, including his first hardcover novel, ‘Time Out of Joint (1956), In 1958 he and Kleo moved to West Marin County, where he met a widow. Anne Williams Rubenstein. In 1959 Phil divorced Kleo and married Anne. Their elabo- rate homestead is described quite accurately In Confes- sions of a Crap Artist) One child, Laura, was born {n 1960; Phil eso doted om his step-fatherhood of Anne's daughters from her first marriage, Hatte, Jayne, and Tandy. ‘Unhappy with his inability to break out of the sclence fiction fleld - which was undergoing, in any event, @ tremendous slump - Phil, briefly, gave up waiting in 1960- 61, helping his wife set up her jewelry business (which i. thriving). Even more unhappy not writing, he threw ‘himself Into producing the novel many still consider his ‘greatest, Tho Man in the High Castle (1962). This novel winning him the very prestigious Hugo ‘Award for Best Novel ofits year, Phil launched himself {nto his most prolific period yet, publishing no less than four novels in 1964 alone. His marriage to Anne broke up, hhowever.that same year(the divorce was official in 1968). He moved to Oakland and underwent his fist serious spell of writer's block -- although this may have been more in | 1N His OWN WORDS :5 the way of exhaustion, and recharging of creative batteries. ‘Meeting. and in 3906 marrying, his fourth wife Nency Hackett (break-up 1970, divorce 1972, one child, Isolde, ‘born 1967) ellowed the author a short-lived breathing spell {in which he produced some of his best, andleast recognized ‘work: Counter-Clock World (1057), Galactic Pot Healer (1969), the widely acclaimed Ubik 1969). and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). This last novel was to serve as the basis for the Hollywood feature film, Blade Runner (1962), the making of which preoccupied Phil at es inthe last months of his life. (Over the years Phil Dick moved through many widely disparate circles of friends: the antithetical groups of Communists, record store employees, and poets of his Berkeley days; the science fiction community described by his colleague Ray Nelson in Chapter 25 and the “counter culture” drug users he took up with after he end Nancy ‘moved to San Rafael in 1968, (And particularly after Nancy left in 1970) ‘More nonsense has been written on Philip Dick's usage of drugs than on any other topic relating to him (though tally of misrepresentations that he was “crazy” in is ls ‘years may top the old record any day now). The facts ‘appear to be that he was a steady user of amphetamines for 20 years, from the early fifties through about 1972, He used them. he said, ta keep up his writing speed, which was {indeed prodigious. and always claimed that his supply we legal the was apparently over-prescribed by one or more psychiatrists). Although he has @ heavy reputation as an “acid head” novelist, he took LSD only two or three times, and not Ul about 1967 (his famous “LSD novel” The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch was in fact written and published some years before ths) ‘The shifting, collapsing realities Philip K. Dick's novels are famous for presenting stem more from theauthor's own rs6: PHILIP K, DICK. ‘amazing imagination - and life - than from eny drugs he Ingested. (In fact, he once claimed in an interview that medical examination hed proved hs liver had “detoxified” the amphetamines he took before they reached his brata! It is true that he did suffer serious liver and pancreatic damage from his habit). 1 was more a romantic Identification with the “anti- Establishment” aura of the dope culture youth Phil Dick ran with in 1970-72, than attachment to drugs, that led Phil to make his home “open house” to runaways and drifters sgalorein those years. Phil always clalmed that he learned a ‘reat deal from these youth, and was heartened and astounded by their heroism: others say he was horeibly used end ripped-off by this element; and probably both sides are right, Phil was never at ease with authority witness his career-long obsession with policemen (Chapter 419)- and in about 1963 he cemented his anti-Establishment jatus by participating nen anti-waract he professed to be sfraidtotellme about aslateas 1902 (Ibelievelt was merely income tax evasion; in any event he did settle a big Dill with the IRS ia the seventies). In November 1971, Phil's house was blown open, tered, and ransacked, by an unknown force, variously speculated to be government agents, a secret right-wing organization, a secret left-wing organization, drug-mad youth, and Phil himself. (Paul Williams’ article in Rolling. Stone - see Appendix B for Bibliography - has the most ‘complete set of speculations on record on this mystery. never solved), The fact that the house-breakers left valu ables and took Phil's cancelled checks going back twenty years would tend to indicate that the hit was Indeed politically motivated, In February 1072, Phil Dick fled to Vancouver, Canada, where as guest of honor at a science fletion convention 1N HIS OWN WORDS :7 there (March 1972) he delivered the important address, “The Android and the Human,” @ summary, he said, of a lifetime of his thought. There was a suicide attempt, followed by a month in a very strict drug rehabilitation center in Vancouver called X-Kalay. He took the opportunity of an offer from Cal State University, Fullerton, to store his papers and manuscripts {nthe library there, to leave Canada and what he felt wasa too-strlct regimen. From the spring of 1972 and forthe rest of his life he was a resident of the great flat suburbs of ‘Orenge County, California, with a new circle of friends (prominently including authors Tim Powors and K.W. Jeter) and a new series of intense relationships. In 1079 he married Tessa Busby, not yet 20, and a son, Christopher, was born within a year. He began writing again, completing bis renunciation of the drug scene with the extremely intense and brilliantly pure A Scanner Darkly (1977). Thismarriage, however, broke up as well (in 1076) and aftera second botched suicide attempt [described in Chapter 4 of his novel VALIS), he settled with some serenity into @ condo apartment a few blocks from Santa, of his life, over- shadowing all else, was however the *VALIS events" of February-March 1974, Put as concisely as posable, he felt that he had seen God, ora manifestation of God - perhaps God greater than the “creator deity” who had done such a bad job with this planet. Feeling that head been allowed to see everything but that he'd been denied understanding of {t,he filed over the next years a handwritten journal of two million words (he "Exegesis", analyzinghis visions in exhaustive detail, and more crucially in terms of his art spun a wise and sane book out of this madness, VALIS. (1981. ‘Thus the rumors of Phil's “insanity,” spread by any _—_—_—_—_—_—_—_—_—_—_—~“_—“X?—aSaaaSSMMSS9S9 |8: PHILIP K. DICK number of eager voices through the science fiction com- ‘munity and beyond. The groundwork of this picture of Phil Dick as mad visionary was already being laid, of course, by such widely reported earlier visions of his as his seeing a “Palmer Eldritch face in the sky" (1963), the acidhead mage of the late ‘60s, and his own amazing work. For toppers, there was a late vision of a suffering Christ-like “Tagore” in Sri Lanka (reported to me and others in 1981), and his involvement in the last months of bis life with an organization claiming to publicize the imminent return of "Maitreya the Christ.” ‘This book is being written to help establish, or solidify, Philip K. Dick’ reputation asa great waiter, by having him relate in his own words his struggles and triumphs as an author. 1am devoting the second book of this series, Philip K. Dick: The Last Testament, to the extraordinary record of his visions, and intend to proven there,that Phil Dick ‘was far ftom Insane - it's us who are likely insane for laughing him off. The visions ofthe last decade of his ife ‘were not those of a madman spiraling into insanity, but of @ supremely seeing human being burning himself up, physi- cally and spiritually, with bis empathy for the whole human race. Let who will read these books and laugh then, ‘To conclude the data of Phil's life -he continued, in his Santa Ana “high castle,” writing and thinking up until ‘Thursday, February 18, 1982, He had much tolook forward tothe publication of his Timothy Archer novel (based on. his close friendship with the late Bishop Jim Pike and his circle in the late sixties), the release of Blade Runner, the enjoyment of new fame and prosperity as a science fiction writer, The years of starvation and neglect had given way to recognition. ‘On that day he had a stroke, followed by more severe strokes and a heart attack. He died on March 2nd. IN HS OWN WORDS : 9 CHAPTER 2 Philip K. Dick and The Search for Caritas INTRODUCTORY NOTE “This is the essay which first served to Introduce me to Philip K. Dick, lam publishing It here because he liked it, tnd because it forms the backdrop for most of this book, It serves as well, I think, as a prety fair survey of Phil Dick's work as a writer.0: Pa K. Dick ‘The piece as it stands reads essentially as Phil read it in the spring of 1961. Thave corrected errors, updated it with an afterword covering the two books he published after ‘VALIS, and used the footnotes to open the plece out 10 ‘other references, ta this book and elsewhere. ‘The article may be read as e supplement tothe conversa tions that make up most ofthis book, or as background for them. In itself, itis for me a sweet souvenir ofthe year 1 knew Phil Dick. There s no "p Philip K, Dick ts @ great wi IV MIs OWN WoRDs: 11 “Basically, 1am not serene, ~ Philip K. Dick" Philip K. Dick is a great writer, one of the greatest we Ihave. His greatness is not a function of beautiful pro stylisticinnovation, his status in thefieldof science fiction, 1is influence on others, or even his incredible imagination, ‘He has deservedly won recognition in somedegree for altof these things. But where his real greatness lies isin the love and care he has for his most tortured characters, and his understanding of their pain. His empathy. Or, as he so frequently cals it in his books, cari This view of Dick hes not been central the critical work fon him thus far, but itis one that imposes itself after a careful reading of hie work, with special attention paid to ‘what Dick himself has to say about it Dick's recent work has become ever more personal. the philosophizing ever ‘more explicit, tl where VALIS (2981) includes both scho- larly footnotes. and Dick himself as @ character. For all that, VALIS is fully in line with the overriding concerns of Dick's earlier books, stories, essays, and Interviews. It also contains links to the great body of Dickian themes, variants, and motifs, the most important of which we will detail here In the frst part of this essay, however, we will trace the linear development of Dick's career, one beginning some thirty years ago with the publication of his first story ("Beyond Lies the Wub,” 1052). Wub-fur coats and wub- ‘bound books have recurred in Dick's writing ever since that first story about a fat, furry creature who'd rather phllo- sophize than die. Not all of Dick's recurring themes are tragic. (ONE: Dick's Novels - A Pilgrim's Progress Critical work on Dick todate has emphasized the prolific {imagination that led him to publish six books in 1964 alone,12; PHILIP K. DICK. nda total of nineteen (plus twenty-two stories) In 1962-70. "He can strike more sparks from an idea he's used in six books already than most of us cen from a notion we've never encountered before,” wrote John Brunner in one of the first appraisals of his work.’ Stanislaw Lem praised Dick with fant damns for “resurrecting” what he considered the science fictional “trash” of androids, precogs, psl- powers (and he might have added time travel, alternate luniverses, space ships, alien invasions, end the World- after-the-Bomb, other genre staples Dick has made his own). To Lem, this “trash” recovers in Dick's hands its “long-extinct, metaphysical-exotic velue,"* which is an- other way of saying that Dick takes the religious, moral, end philosophical consequences of quasi-scientific miracles riously. Dick's reputation in the science fiction community still rests largely on his pre-1965 work, notably the novels Eye in the Sky (1957), Time Out of Joint (1959), the Hugo- award winner The Man inthe High Castle (1962), Martian ‘Time Slip and Dr. Bloodmoney (2965). Of the later novels only Ubik (1969) is considered major Dick by most of his commentators." Itis my contention, however, that Dick's richest period fer those dazzling early works and others as good - ‘The Cosmic Puppets, The Game Players of Titan, Clan of the Alphane Moon). Dick's finest, most humane and beautiful flowering comes In the neglected novela Now ‘Wait for Last Year, Counter-Clock World, Galactic Pot Healer, the “policeman trilogy” of Do Androlds Dream of Electric Shoop?, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Sa ‘and A Scanner Darkly, and 2 half-dozen others nearly a8 400d, all published in the years 1968 10 1977. Morerecently ‘VALIS (1081) s that flowering plucked, ground under, and then reborn. Schematically, I will break Dick's progress as a novelist 5 ———— Or IN His OWN WORDS : towards the starlling self-portrait, in VALIS, of “Horse- lover Fat," whose empathy Is killing him, into four distinct periods, Anomalies, of course, break up such easy cate- ‘gorization- Our Friends from Frolix 81970), forexample, ‘would seem tolink up with The Game Playors of Titan and Clans of the Alphane Moon, from 1969-64, as part of an “allen invasion” teiloay. But of course Titan also links with Solar Lottery (1058) - “game ple} Penultimate Truth (1064)- huge tra for on a depopulated planet. Clans of the Alphane Moon looks back tothe story “Shell Game” (1954) and ahead to A Maze of Death (1970) in its concerns with the murderous ‘workings of a literally insane, Isolated society. Where It really counts Frolix does belong in Its period, because it does link up with the surrounding volumes (the comic Galactic Pot-Healer and the tragic A Maze of Death) in the overriding concern of Dick at the time for a God-figure coming to save us, to jola with us in “poly-encephalic fusion," to literally swallow us. Thave suggested above the density of the cross-efer- encing in Dick's work. But it does progress in distinct phases, thus: ‘The First Period (1952-00) ~ The bulk of Dick's short fiction and elght early novels. Dick ase fully professionel, very competent and unremarkable author struggling, as the decade goes on, to break out of genre formulee and into his ‘own, unique world. And in his view, failing ~ the non- reception greeting his best work fand the apparent unpub- lishability of his non-selence fiction) led him in 1960 to ‘lve up writing, and go to work in his third wife's jewelry store." Published novels: Solar Lottery (1955). The World Jones Mado 1950), The Man Who aped (1956), Eye inthe Sky (1957), The Gosmlc Puppets (1957), Time Out of Joint (20959), Vulcan's Hammor (1960), Dr. Futurity (1960). ‘The Second Period (1962-05) ~ The novel Dick wroteto14: PHILIP K, DICK sgotout of working in the jewelry store, a novel largely set in «shop that becomes one, was the phenomenally sucessful ‘The Man In the High Castle, written about and writen using the 1 Ching. The I Ching recurs as the author of the tench's enigmatic slips of advice in A Mazo of Death (and, symbolically, asthe lying Book of Kalends in Galactic Pot- Healer). But itis the other Second Petiod novels, the {imaginatively fecund, wildly plotted, and multiple char- actered books Dick produced n every short timethat make the fullest use of High Castle elements: chance, reality a Take, hatred of Germany, poltical satire as bitter and ironic as Brecht. Ten novels: The Man in the High Castle (1962), The Game Players of Titan (1963), Clans of the Alphane Moon, The Penultimate Truth, The Simul- ‘cra, Martian Time-Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Unteleported Man (all 1964), Dr. Blood- ‘money or How We Got Along After The Bomb and The Zap Gun (both 1965), Important stories: "If There Were No Benny Cemoli" (10963), "Oh, to be a Blabell,” "Precious Astifact," “The Little Black Box” (1964), "Retreat Syn- drome” (1965). ‘The Third Poriod (1968-76) - In hs introduction to the Gregg Press edition of Counter-Clock World David G. Hartwell suggests that one reason that all of Dick's novels since Dr. Bloodmoney, always excepting Ubik, are com- ‘monly thought “past-prime” by critics is that “SP fandom, ‘and SF criticism are generally ill-equipped to deal with metaphysics beyond the level of Arthur C. Clarke's evolu- tionary mysticism,” as in Childhood's End (1953). It fs certainly true that Dick's unrecognized Third Period novels urn away from the bitter anti-Cold War satire of the Second Period (culminating in the bizarre self-parody of ‘The Zap Gun) towards, finally, the exptessed hope that help (an alien divinity) Is on the way. This is just one difference. These novels gain a very sad, touching melan- IN HIS OWN WORDS : 18 choly in their depictions of human relationships (particu lary inthe snorting masag® of Now Wait for Last and Counter-Clock World) only suggested in the lier books, together with a corresponding gain inhuman nobility. The vietims of the earlier novels the ant-lankers {a The Penultimate Truth, the Martlan colonists of Three Stigmata) are passive targets for manipulation. while in ‘Now Wait for Last Year or Our Friends from Frolix Bthey fare in open revolt. In the context of these touching, dynamic, metaphysical novels the supposedly far superior bik seems a throwback to the nightmarish dream novels and collapsing realities of such earlier novels as Eye in the Sky, Time Out of Joint, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Only now there's no wake-up call and death ie final, not @ dream.Nine novels were published ‘through 1970: Now Wail for Last Year and The Crack in Space (1968), Counter-Clock World (1967), The Gany- mede Takeover (written with Ray Nelson, 1987). Do ‘Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Galactic Pot- Healer and Ubik (1969), A Maze of Death and Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1970).” In 1970-73 Dick was afflicted with sevore personal problems and di tte writing. Thebooks published before Scanner Darkly (1977) were all essentially completed by the 1970 hiatus, though in fact Dick’s Fourth Period can be said to begin with the story “A Little Something for Us ‘Tempunauts” (1974), according to Dick his first story written after the break. (The controversial anti-abortion story “The Pre-Persons,” also published in 1974, was according to Dick written some time earlier). For the record, the novels We Gan Build You (1972), Flow My ‘Tears, the Policeman Said (1974), and the collaboration with Roger Zelazny, Deus Trae (1976) can be considered as “Third Period” although even here there are problems. We Can Build You was first published as the serial “A.10; PHILIP K. DICK. Lincoln, Simulacrum” in 1969-70 (Dick says it dates ten years before thet). Deus Irae was begun in 1964, turned over to Zelazny by 1968. Flow My Tears was essentially ‘completed by 1970, and then set aside. ‘The Fourth Period (1977-82)-- A Scanner Darkly marks Dick's full emergence on the other side of the tragic, dramatic, yet finally artistically rewarding years of the early 1970s. Scanner is his briliantly written memo, hilarious in places and yet profoundly tragic, of his two years inthe California Bey Area drug culture (1970-72), and attendant calamities. His most recent novel, VALIS (1981), takes up the most Important personal experience yet, the March 1974 “in sion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind. (@) divine power which was not evil, but benign...."* This of course parallels his vision of an evil deity in the sky of 11969, which bore the three stigmata soon given to Palmer Eldritch ‘An author's personal life is lelevant to hia critics save ‘where it affects his creative work. Dick's life over the past several years has been the explicit subject of his latest work, hence “admissable evidence.” Yet between Dic life and art, what matters is that A Scanner Darkly, andin its own way the strange and troubling VALIS, succeed on their own as realized works of ai. ‘TWO: Dick’s Heroes - Lost in the Mazo Most Dick commentators have noticed the seeming fuutlity of Dick's protagonists against the horrors and amid the unreal realities they find themselves in. To Stanislaw ‘Lem “the primary ontological elements - space and time are Dick's instruments of torture” for those characters,” while Pau! Williams is much more generous and accurate} Dick's characters are all ultimately small (that 1, ‘ordinary, believable) people made bigby thelr stamina a IN HS OWN WORDS : 37 inthe faceof an uncertain world. Dick cares about the people in is books true, he contrives horsiblethings tohappen tothem, but thatisinsomesensebeyond his control; he Is like @ god condemned to watch his ‘universes fall apart as fast as he creates them, with his poor beloved characters trapped inside.” Dick confirms his complete identificatfon with his char- acters, and that the nightmares they suffer come from h own dreams, When he Is writing "I am in the world I'm ‘iting about, It js real to me, completely and utterly. ‘Then, when I'm finshed and have to stop, withdraw from that world forever ~that destroys me. Themen and women have ceased talking. I'm alone.”"* Williams records that the stories of Palmer Eldritch and A Scanner Darkly were 0 frightening to him that he had difficulty reading the galleys for the printers. ‘There {a a distinct progression in Dick's work from the conventional, standard sclence fiction heroes ofthe earliest work through the tormented “little men” of the middle period novels to the ultimate suffering protagonist, Dick hime, in VALIS. The phases of this progression match those of the novels. ‘The First Period includes Dick's earliest stories and novels. Itis a critical commonplace that Dick’ first novel, Solar Lottery (1955) marked a sharp rise in qualty from, as Damon Knight put it the “instantly saleable and instantly forgettable” stories he'd published in enormous quentity to that point." Knightand others tothe contrary, allbut three of the early novels (Eye in the Sky, The Cosmic Puppets, ‘Time Ont of Joint) are fully anticipated in tone, texture, character, and plot structure by one or another another of the short stories, The worlds of oppressive bureaucracies Jerry-bull dictatorships, Cold Warcrises, and mutated and, pesky psl-powers that backdrop Solar Lottery, The World10; PHILIP K, DICK Jones Made, The Man Who Jeped and Vulcan's Hammer fare the same for long stories like “The Variable Man’ (1953), “A World of Talent” (1954), and “The Minority Report” (1955). Some stories top these ~ the grey ash post- Apocalypse parables "Second Variety" (1053) and "Captive Market” (1055) top all other stories In thie genre, and are bleaker by farthan Dick's later post-World War III world of ‘mutants and “sports.” Dr. Bloodmoney and Deus Irae, (The mutations in both were anticipated in "Planet for “Transients,” 1953). “The Golden Man” (2954), the perfect and all-powerful precog, anticipates in is awful lslation poor Manfred Stelner in Martian Time-Slip. Dick's shor fiction is inferior to his novels only in that the compressed space needed forthe shorter format leaves sollte room to weave the muli-character, loosely linked narrative webs that make the longer works 50 rich. It is significant that once Dick had mastered the mult-charactr, tangentially linked plot (first mastered in the non-sclence fiction Confessions of a Crap Artist) he wrote very litle short work ~ 19 stories since 1965, a number of them mere warm-ups for novels, ‘The two weakest First Period novels ere Vulcan's HammerandDr.Futurity (both 1960), expanded from earlier short stories "Vulcan's Hammer,” 1950, and "Time Pawn,” 1954) o satisfy Ace paperback standards while he ‘was concentrating on his mainstream novels, It is signifi- ‘cant that Dick does hisbest work when ambitious--the first novel, Solar Lottery, is markedly superior to most of his earlier short fiction, if only in first demonstrating the author's inerediblo facility in plot and character juggling, and in creating a believable “other world.” Solar Lottery. ‘was written to break out of the shor fiction field, Confes- sions of a Crap Artist to break into the “mainstream, ime Out of foint to break into hardcover. Dick was proud When Ace Books editor Donald Wollheim denounced IN HIS OWN WORDS : 19 ‘Time Out of Joint and it was published as a hardcover mystery novel with a jacket making no references toDick’s, other titles." ‘All the published First Period novels, and most of the stories, feature single protagonists who can only be called heroes, placed in conflict with asoclety or event of distinct evil. Ted Benteley (Solar Lottery), Allen Purcell (The Mi ‘Whe Japed), William Barcis (Valcan's Hammer) all begin Idealistically serving on irational society but end by rising against it, Security officer Cussick (The World Jones Made) is the first in a line of harassed Dick policemen holding the line against madness. The protagonists of Eye in the Sky, The Cosmic Puppets, Time Out of Joint and Dr. Futurity all areat first baffled by the Insene worlds they find themselves in, but once they figure out what's wrong, they move forcefully to correct it. The partial exception here is Ragle Gumm in Time Out of Joint, whose lazy normalty is only gradually revealed to him as insane. He then behaves as heroically as the rest Confessions of a Crap Artists a true transitional work here, none of its five major characters being heroic (or, in the case of the three people narrating the story, completely sane). The ten Second Period novels, with the exception of the weak novella The Unteleported Man (the second half cof which was deleted by its publisher, all featuro several ‘marginally connected, marginally surviving characters trying to work out from under an oppressive society, often at cross-purposes. Gone are the optimists ofthe early novels—-wenow have protagonists who just scrape by. Solar Lottery, The Man ‘Who Japed, Time Out of fointallend with heroic vowsand noble posing (the hero of Japed refusing safe passage from Earth in order to single-handedly face down the world government). No one in the Second Period is so foolish or Mealistic, operating out of fear and instinct as much as20; PHILIP K, DICK, courage. Witness Nicholas St. James, ait tanker in The Penultimate Truth, shaking with teror as he prepares to break through to the earth’s surface, or Rachmacl ben Applebaum in The Untgleported Man, driventoan insane eighteen year space flight by harranguing, sarcastic "cred- Hor jet-blloons.” Dick had written of oppression before, rule by lies and Aictatorial deception. The world of Solar Lottery was ‘governed by a Quizmaster selected by chance who, once in absolute power, immediately became legal target for Ii censed assassins. Real power is held by great industrial combines, or "Hills." Floyd Jones (The World Jones ame to power through his precognitive ability to see one Year into the future ~ thet, and his stirring up of hatred ‘against harmless migrating alien “defters.” Morec (Moral Reclamation, in The Man Who Japed)ruled by gossip. The all-powerful Vulcan's Hammer was 2 self-perpetuating ‘computer (like that in “Autofac,” only meaner), ‘Theevilof these worlds is minor compared tothoseof the Second Period. In ‘The Penultimate Truth most of the ‘world’s population labors in “ant tanks! below the earth's surface, while @ privileged few live on vast green estates (Gesmesnes), writing the propagenda sent below about the ‘ever-raging nuclear war. In The Unteleported Man the overcrowded Earth’s unemployed find useful work on a distant planet fifteen minutes away, one way only. Adver- tised as a paradise, itis in fact a slave state. (A similar ‘device makes up The Crack In Space) Evil dominates the Post-nuclear world of De. Bloodmoney, the Narified planet of The Man in the High Castle. ‘The “vugs” who rule an occupied, depopulated Earth (he Game Players of Titan) le to the few humans left about their prevention of human fertility. For thelr own sanity, the few humansleft in "Precious Artifact” (1004)are IN HIS OWN WORDS : 21 comforted by their alien conquerors with artifical kittens and parrots. In "The Mold of Yancy" (1955), The Penulti- ‘mate Truth, and The Simulacra, an unseen elite programs «fatherly robot president. In the latter novel, model after model is “married” to an eternally young and beautiful lackie Kennedy figure. Germans, especially. are associated with the oppression: the German-led United Nations sup- ports the one-way deportations of The Unteleported Mat Hermann Goering is brought in by time machine to The Simulacra, Nazi deception fuels The Penultimate Truth, Nazis rule with horrifying results in The Man in the High ‘Castle, and in both Dr. Bloodmoney and Deus Irae (begun, {in 1068) World War Iil is touched off by a mad German, scientist. The kickers that Dick's last name, as evesled in ‘VALIS, is German itself, meaning "Fat ‘The lies and mistruths ofthe Cold War era draw much of Dick's rein this period. In this period the populace at large fs gullible and passive. Just as in The Penultimate Truth, there's no nuclear war, in The Zap Gun there's no Cold War, but power and profits are kopt_ high by manufactur- ing and publicizing terror weapons like The Evolution Gun, ‘The Paychic Conservation Beam, and The Garbage Can Banger. Those are then “plowshared” into ridiculous con- sumer goods like ceramic owls. (Compare the phony plagues in The Penultimate Truth like “the Stink of Shrink.” In more solemn, later work he gives us truly terrifying plagues, like the one in Deus forgans to eat one another). Satire and sarcesm give way In Dick's Third Period to sadness and sympathy, though minor works like The (rack in Space and The Ganymede Takoover are crowd- ed, fairly comic throwbacks. (What can onemakeof Thisbe Ott’s whore-in-the-sky Moments of Bliss satellite, with its bbreast-shaped landing field and winking pink nipple? The two headed George Walt in the same novel, The Crack in22: PHILIP K, DICK Space, isa parody of Dick's other mutant villains, like Dr. Blooimoney of Hoppy the phocomeus,Blodmoney While in the Second Period Dick favored large, spravl- {ng plots, with many characters, many of whom never met ‘or heard of others, in the Third Period Dick cuts back to three or four important people instead of a dozen. Dick prolific imagination narrows focus. If The Simulac mixed Hermann Goering, a robot president, an ageless Furst Lady, an insane psychokinetic pfanist, flying Nitz ‘commercials thet crawl into your ear, a baroque jug band, and the “chuppers.” Neanderthal throwbacks who see an Truth threw in fant pleasure of atime-traveling scoop sent back to plant evidence of a non-existent battle between Indians ‘and extra-erresrials in the fossil record ~that was just the food of Dick's genius at full tide ‘Third Period Dick is simpler but deeper. In Counter- Clock World, universally regarded as “not working,” Dick sketches en Impossible universe where time is going backwards, the dead cometo fe, infants are absorbed into waiting wombs, excrement ("sogum")is proudly consumed and food Is shamefacedly excreted into boxes of cornflakes ‘and cans of peaches, tobe sent back tothe supermarket and. ultimately planted in the ground. ‘Most if not all other science fiction waiters would have {dwelt on and further explained these miraculous happen- ings, dwelling on the time travel and other paradoxes, ‘making the disturbing implications funny speculation (as Dick himself does, toa degree, in the story “Your Appoint- ‘ment Will Be Yesterday," 1986, featuring tome of the same characters), Brian Aldiss in is novel An Age alsa known as Cryptozoie, 1967) briliantly treats the same idea but ultimately, and disappointingly, passes it off as an insane fantasy. [IN HIS OWN WORDS : 23 Dick, insteed, only casually deploys his backwards, or “Hobart Phase" world, being more interested In dovetailing {nto it the philosophy of Augustine end Erigena (a quota- tion from Erigena, “Love Is the end and quiet cessation of, the natural motion of all moving things, beyond which no motion continues," Is the heading for Chapter Five). The novel infact ~ like much post-1995 Phil Dick ~isabout love and the death of love, end ts chief drama isnot that of time reversal but the triangle of Sebastian Hermes, his wife Lotta, and Officer Joseph Tinbane. Lotta and Tinbane are young, born as they were before the Hobart Phase took effect - they never died and are actually getting younger. Hermes, however, owner of the Flask of Hermes Vitarium (which resurrects the old-born), fs old-born himself, who still feols “on him, in the dreary part ofthe night, the coldness of the grave ‘Hermes loses Lotla to Tinbane through a failure of courage, wins her back after Tinbane's death by an act of fearful bravery that calls down the wrath of the forces raging above them. Hermes, Lotta, and Tinbane are all cought up in a battle of glanis not that different from that ‘which catches up the unhappily married couple of Now Walt for Last Year, or the policeman-android-wife triangle of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The antago- nlst in these battles are lesser evil vs. greater, the Anarch Peak’s church against the Library (Counter-Clock), the rival allen forees of Now Wait for Last Year. While in Dick's earlier works one clearly evil side is presented as antagonist, herein Dick's Third Period his ordinary humans, are being crushed by massive shades of grey, and must choose to help each other in order to stay alive, ‘In First Period Dick characters were secondary to the unfolding story, while in the Second Period they echieved a ‘well judged balance with it, Ifthe story was strong (The Man in the High Castle) so were the well-rounded, |24 : PHILIP K, DICK carefully created people in It If the story was a helter- skelter patchwork (The Simulacra), so too were its color- ful characters, In Dick's Third Period he continued creating fictional ‘worlds of greath depth and Imaginative sadness (sadness more than mirth). The Earth of android animals and ‘rampant decay "kipple")of Do Androids Dream isas fully realized as the dreary Martian colonies of The Three ‘Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or Martian Time-Slip (with its decaying “gubble"). It isin the Third Period, however, that Dick's interest in his characters supercodes that in his story, in the Third Period where his empathy for his "poor beloved characters” comes through strongest. Itis in the Fourth Period that Dick's hero becomes an anti- hhero.becomes “himself.” But this doesn't happen ‘til after the author's most imaginative inhebitation of three seem= ingly unlikely protagonists the "policemen trilogy" of Do ‘Androids Dream, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Sad, and A Seanner Darkly. Dick had used policeman protago- nists before - Cussick with his drug-taking wife in The World Jones Mado, Tinbane with his helpless love for Lotta Hermes in Counter-Clock World, Given Dick's anti- establishment reputation (fully justified by the counter- authority parables of the Second Period, if not the liberal pleties ofthe First: the anti-MeCarthyite message of Eye in the Sky, for example) It would seem strange he would extend his imaginative sympathy tothe State's Enforcers, Yet he does. The torn, muddled, tortured General Buck- man (in Flow My Tears, arbiter of the fate of nominal leading man Jason Taverner) is in fact a General in the service of a dictatorial Amerika, a projection of a 1960s radical's most paranoid nightmare. The old college cam- uses are surrounded and the harried radicals live under sround ~ literally. But it is not merely an aching social ‘conscience that spurs Buckman’s tears, In a deservedly IN HIS OWN WORDS : 25 in Chapter Twenty-Seven ("A man, he thought, eries not for the future or the past but for the Its his personal tragedies, a reflection of those ity but very much individualized nonetholess, that drive thie gruff character and others like him to grief. Fores Ruth Rae tells Taverner elsewhere in the novel: “Jason! Grief ie the most powerful emotion a manorchild oranimal can feel. I's a good feeling.”"* Rick Deckard in Do Androids Dream, Folix Buckman in, Flow My Tears, Robert Arctor the narc in A Scanner Darkly are all policemen who learn how to grieve, follow- {ng Officers Tinbane in Gounter-Clock World, Cussick in The World Jones Made, characters in all walks of life in Dick's novels. Deckard needs a mechanical toad, Arctor a selfcrucifixion with drugs. They share with other Dick characters, later Dick characters in particular, an ever ‘widening capacity for grief. The ultimate product is"Horse- lover Fat,” the Dick-figure in VALIS, who begins to {question what empathy has brought him. ‘THREE: Dick's Thomes - The Search for Carit ‘Therearelitle themes, recurring phases, running motifs, in Dick's work, and big ones. Angry characters in book after book “grate” at each other. People Ny in personal helicopters called “flapples” “flipflaps,” “squibs,” o “slivers.” Sandra Miesel calls “modular building blocks plot elements that are combined and recombined in each new Dick story, identifying them for Eye in the Sky as “commercial rivalries, émployment crises, marital ten- sions, small group catastrophies, religious cults, and political menaces." ” have pointed out many other recurring elements in the sections above. What is truly important, however, Is the use to which Dick pute all these elements, all his imagina- Won. An overarching world view emerges from careful study of Dick's work, all of It, This world view develops as20: PHILIP K, DICK ‘hia work does and Is internally consistent evenif frequently contradictory on the surface (the way, for example, aliens and I Ching-type books can be trusted in some novels but sot in others). ‘To reduce this great body to a schematic diagram, we find that Dick is @ fundamentally moralistic writer, with a strong belief in Good and Evil literally batling for men’s souls, battling on the shifting, untrustworthy flelds of an ever shifting “reality.” On the one hand, and generally dominant, is Evil ~ entropy, the Form Destroyer, the ‘Bubble god. the tomb world. On the other, struggling and never defeated, is Good --the life-giving spit the restora- tive spirit, empethy, caritas, human caring. The lack of these things defines the Android. Thus: Evi Entropy Androids coon Creation cartasy Restortion Empathy To flesh out this diagram all we need do is repate to virtually any of Dick's novels. From the First Period, for instance, Dick's one experiment in an almost Charles Williams-esque fantasy, The Cosmic Puppets (1957). liter- ally incorporates the battle of Good and Evil ina small Virginia town, a boy who left there at age nine returning to find nothing as he'd left it. Everythings ersatz, shoddy -for the ancient Zoroastrian) god “of darkness, filth and death, chaos and evil," Ahriman, has taken possession of half of the town. Abriman rules in the person of a small boy who collects spiders, snakes, and rats, and who animates short. lived clay golems to carry outhis aids. The other haf ofthe town is held down forGood by young gil, Mary. daughter ‘of the towndoctor. She has bees -a creative, bullding insect on her side, and litle else, IN HIS OWN WORDS : 27 ‘The retumeé, Ted Barton, an insurance salesman, is drawn Into a batle to restore the old town, to dissolve the false town bullt over the real one, using is own memor and those of one of the few townspeople who reriembers the town before the Change: the town drunk, once skilled ‘engineer. It ultimately takes, however, the death and resurrection of Mary to reétore the proper balance, which her sacrifice does by awakening Mary's father to his true status: that of a forgetful Ormazd, god of ereation, a god ‘who would rather nt resume his true from. This plot turn takes The Cosmic Puppets out of a straight Williams- esque Christian allegory altogether, into something more daring and more Dickian. ‘The novel's richness, like so many of Dick's works, can only be suggested in this brief outline. The notion of the false town imposed on the real one, and the reluctance of the townspeople to resume tholr true identities, relate directly to the “insane” idea In VALIS, put forward by Dick in Interviews as “maybe" his own belief, that the "reel world” ended in the year 70, and that the intervening centuries of “spurious time” are "false memories” imposed ‘Ted Barton's employment as an insurance salesman relates tothe humble small-scale capitalism of so many of Dick's characters, an array of jewolers (The Man in the High Castle), TV repairmen (Dr. Bloodmoné}), and hustl- Ing businessmen (like Leo Bulero in The Three Stigmata of Paliner Eldritch). Running through all he books isa hatied for death, entropy, and decay (called "gubble” in Martian ‘Time-Slip, "kipple” in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) on the one hand, and a love for the privat concerns battling it on the other. ‘Manfred Steiner, the autistic boy of Martian Time-Slip, s00s deeper into the "gubble” world of decay and entropy than others. He can soe the future--the universe decaying,28 PHILIP K-DICK and he with it Another precog, the infallible Floyd Jones (The World Jones Made), is maddened by foreknowledge of his own death, and his decay afterwards. The half-alive of Ubik need “Ubik" in a spray-on can to restore what life they have, Everywhere entropy. "Chickenhead” .R. Isidore (name- sake to the nominal author, the retarded sconce fiction collector, of Confessions of a Crap Artist), living in bombed over and “kippled” San Francisco in Do Androids Dream of Eloctric Sheop?, fels the presence of "the tomb had been there himself, “a pit of corpses and dead ‘whore he had to stay “until the bones strewn around him grew back into living creatures.” He had been sent there when his unique ability to restore dead animals to life (s0e Counter-Clock World) had been destroyed by the government. "The unique nodule which had formed in his brain" was destroyed by radioactive cobalt.” Government crusades against special powers are found In Dick's writing as far back as “A World of Talent” (1954), ‘whore th talent in dangeristhatof aboy'stocounteractthe government’, Rule by those with special powers, whose psionic powers haven't been destroyed, forms a comupt ‘oligarchy in “A World of Talent” and in Our Friends from Frolix 8. Telepath wars rage in Ubik ~ can" help tolepaths who are killed. Leo Bulero and others take therapy” to advance their evolution in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, but must look out thet they don't regress instead. Special powers are no insurance against the temptations of pow inst universal decay. ‘What is a barrier Is creation, oF recreation ~ to Dick, similarly blessed activities. The most masterful illustration of Dick's profound hope isthe novel Galactic Pot-Healer, one of his finest, Joe Fernwright is Earth’s best ceramics repairman, but in a world of thermoplastic, unbreakable pots he is sorely pressed for work. A world-wide welfare j ' [IN HIS OWN WORDS : 29 state keeps him fed and listless He 1s sent for by Glimmung, an ancient ebtity on Plowman's Planet, to raise the cathedral Heldscalla from the ocean floor where it has set decaying for several centuries. He is just one of many crafts-workers'brought from alloverthe galaxy ~ only to find that Glimmung, whimsically all-powerful on Eerth (manifesting himself as hhoops of fire and water behind a paisley shawl and the voice of a wind-up Victrola}, s opposed by all the forces of the ocean tomb world. Joe must fight himself and all logic to believe that the aging Glimmung can accomplish his miracle; Glimmung himself must battle his dark counterpart, an anti-Clim- ‘mung from an anti-cathedral. Finally Joe and the others from all planets are swallowed up by Glimmung Just as Old ‘Mankind’s champion Thors Provoniis literally apart ofthe great alien Morgo Rahn Wile in Our Friends From Frolix 8, and the kindly empathetic telepathic Ganymedean slime mold Lord Running Clam saves Chuck Rittersdoxt in Clans of the Alphane Moon}, ‘The cathedral raised, Glimmung wante his partners to stay with him, Inside of him, in fusion forever. But Joe ‘wants out. Instoad of repairing pots, he'll try making them - “his justification...for leaving Glimmung and all the others." He works hard on his maiden effort. "The pot was awful," isthe book's final line, but Joe will try again, and again, Potsare in fact arunning symbol, in Dick's work, for the finest of human qualities (though against this must be set the ceramic efforts of the awful Fay Hume in Confes- sions of a Crap Artist). Swoot Emily Hnatt (in Three Stigmata, regressed through E-therapy], and the one com pletely positive character in Flow My Tears, the Police- man Said, Mary Anne Dominic, both make pots. The pot Mary Anne gives Jason Taverner Is the one thing that survives the novel's epilogue “openly end genuinely cher-HILIP K, DICK Ished. And loved," the fame of Jason Taverner and the police state of General Buckman both having died with time, ‘The pot Ho.On appears to @ pill-tripping Peter Sands @eustrae) as “Thelittleclay pot which ‘came from the earth and can, like you, be smashed to bits and return to the earth, which lives only as long as your Kind does."* The man-made sphere Orville, a plowshared ‘weapon, gives similar religious counsel in The Zap Gun. In VALIS Horselover Fat’s encounter with God; “the true God," not the “fucked-up blind deluded creator deity” who made the false world wo're imprisoned in, comes through “the little pot Oh Ho which Stephanie had thrown for hiin on her kickwheel.”® Against the positive creativity of “spectal powers" and the craftsmanship (Jewelry, pottery, salesmanship) of the Individual, Dick sots the destructive powers of drug which as early in his work as The World Jones Mac assume negative connotations (the drug-taklag of Cussick’s wife). Dick, unfairly, bas an “acid-head” reputation.” Whatever the actual circumstances of his private life, Inhis creative work drugs were initially used to translate his ccharactersto different realities, generally unpleasant ones. ‘The Martian colonists in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch use Can-D to escape the tedium of thelrday-lo-dey lives, use Chew-2 for a bigger thrill and are trapped in Palmer Eldritch’s head. The drug translations of Now Wait for Last Year are magical, addictive, and corrosive in {increasing proportions. By 1972 and his famous Vancouver speech, the drug addict assumes terrifying proportions as the android mind: he has always hated, mental loss leaving Intelligence: IN HIS OWN WoRDS : 31, ‘Whei a heroin addiet confronts you, two insect eyes, two lightless slots of dim lass, without warmth or tue life, calculate tothe last docimal point how many tangible commodities you can be cashed in for. He, belng already dead, views you asif you were already dead, or never lived.” slots" exactly recall oneof Palmer Eldritch’s Eldritch, in Dick's vision of him, is the God of Wrath, bie fear that the universe ts hostile to human love personified, Forall that, Dick makes the Palmer Eldritchof ‘hls book a suffering and not too loathesome character. His ‘great crime is not “personifying evil” but in trying to live forever through the absorption of other people's lives ‘All these strands of Dick's work ~ the drugs, the android people, the false reality, the question of God's benign of hateful face ~ come together In VALIS. Perhaps il can be ‘aid that Dick hes handled each question better before, {ndividually, in other novels. A Scanner Darkly is the ultimate drug, or anti-drug, novel ~ comic, pathetfo, and ‘genuinely horvifying as It laments the tragedy of “some people who were punished entirely too much for what they «did, They wanted to have a good time, but they were like ‘children playing in the street: they could see one after another of them being killed -run over, meimed, destroyed = but they continued to play anyhow." In his Author's Note to the novel from which I quote) Dick makes clear how much of the story is autobiographical andlist fifteen of his friends who were destroyed in this way. ‘While A Scanner Darkly is elogiac, the first half of VALIS takes on a bitter, even sell-ptying tone, between heavily footnoted bouts of philosophizing (in Chapter ‘Three, for instance, we are" hit with quotes from or references to Kolne Greek, two minor seventeenth cen: tury English metaphysical poets, Vaughn and Herbert, the2: PHILIP K, DICK role of the T-34 Soviet tank in World War Il, Heraclitus, Daedalus, Parsifal, andthe nature of time). Horselover Fat, Dick's perplexed alternate ego, debates the reality of his visions with himself and his skeptical friends who include ‘science fiction novelist named Philip K. Dick). ‘The second half of VALIS takes off when Fat discovers that his speculations about the good “homoplasmates” (perfect human beings such as Jesus and Buddha) trying to hhelp menkind may actually be true and that VALIS [Vs Active Living Intelligence System) is speaking to him and to others. He makes the connection through a science fiction rock musical movie by that name, and for awhile with both Dick and Fat meeting the beby who Is VALIS. personified ~-things seem to be working out weil. Philip K, Dick and Horselover Fat merge into one soul; but entropy ‘wins another round when the baby dies in freak accident. ‘The book ends with Horselover Fat returned and watching television. searching for a new message from VALIS above. Stil searching for caritas. ‘Never, do think, has @ writer so Isid himself on the line as Philip K, Dick does in VALIS. Throughout his career Dick has been concerned with his réputation, of not appearing as deluded or as a drug adic." Yet knowing full well that some who would read VALIS would react by deeming him crazy, he went ahead anyway (and, in terms of reputation in certain citles, paid the fll price).* What ‘rice the search for carltas? A price Dick feels i worth it. search for caritas begins with hie aversion to androids, the insect brain, the mind without pity, Cold, heartless people reoccur like specters in his work: the universe of Palmer Eldrtches his dria takers find them- selves in; Fay Hume in Confessions of a Crap Artist riving her husband to his death; Pat Conley ia Ubik IW Hs OWN WORDS : 29, laughing and mocking as a dying Joe Chip mounts the endless stair to his room. Sometimes, often, the android folk are not deliberately malicious. They are schizoid, isolated in thomselves. Thore fs litle difference between Pris the maker of androids in We Can Build You ther “Abraham Lincoln” simulacrum is, ‘warmer hearted) and "Pris" the gendine android of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, who kills Rick Deckard's real sheep and helps torture JR. Isidore’ live Insect, Yet Louis Frauensimmer (We Gan Build You), Rick Deckard and Isidore areall in love with Pris, This too isnot Dick does not hate his humanold machines ~in fact, the cranky automobiles that debate their drivers (The Game Players of Titan) and the robot who is studying tobe a freo- lance viiter (Galactic Pot Healer) are some of his books! ‘most endearing characters. (On the other hand look ovt for the flying Nite commercials, floating creditor jet-balloons, and taxis hat betray you tothe police despite being bribed. = this last in Now Wait for Last Year. Or the infuriating ors that want money to open, in UbIk). What Dick hates are people who act like machines. These are the people ‘who have only their private worlds the idios kosmos) and not shared world with others (the kolnos kosmos). Inall my works, well, vitually all, the protagonist Js suffering from a breakdown of his idios kosmos ‘atleast we hope that's what's breaking down, not the koinos kosmos. As his idios kosmos breaks down, the objective shared universe emerges more clearly. but it may be quite different from the Idios kosmos Which he Is in the process of losing. Hence, strange transformations take place. ‘Thus the bizarre worlds of Eye In the Sky, The Cosmic Puppets, Time Out of Joint, The Three Stigmata of24: PHILIP K, DICK Palmer Eldritch, Martian Time-Slip, Now Wait for Last ‘Year, Ubik and A Maze of Death that most Dick commen- tery has tried to puzzle out. Frequently, what seems unreal (the soft drink stand that dissolves in ‘Time Out of Joint, leaving piece of paper saying "Soft Drink Stand”) is ‘what's actually true. The crowded, smoky, noisy San Francisco Mr, Tagom! finds himself In after staring at the plece of jewelry full of wa, in The Man in the High Cast {s the real San Francisco, in the world where the Nazis lost ‘The I Ching, through Hawthorne Abendsen, hes written ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy in that book to tell the world that the Nazis never could heve won, ‘To do battle against entropy ~ the fakery of Ahriman’s false town in The Cosmic Puppets, the mass produced antiques collected in The Man in the High Castle, the phony half-life decay of Ubik ~ stand struggling entrepre- sours and artisans. The town drunk has his laboriously ‘made Spell Remover. Frank Frink stops making fake Civil Wer guns, starts creating jewelry with wu. Robert Childan, stops selling those guns, and with great shame and difficulty spurns an offer to mass produce Frink's jewelry as good luck trinkets, (Tagom! uses one of those guns to kill a Nazi thug) Dick sees these figures as “redeemers... the minor man asserts himself inall his hasty, sweaty strength. Inthe rus of Earth's cities he busily constructing alittle factory that tums oat cigars or maps..." One of Dick's redeomers Js Leo Bulero, Can-D drug pusher, bigtalking businessman, who nonetheless {s the man who stops Palmer Eldritch. His “inter-office audio. ‘memo circulated to Pre-Fash level consultants at Perky Pat Layouts, Inc, ...immedistely upon his return from Mars," printed as frontispiece to The Three Stigmata, Is wh: Dick has called “my credo ~ all I actually have to sey or [IN HIS OWN WORDS : 35 want ever to say," adding darkly that it was deleted from. the German edition,” ‘Imean, afterall; youhave to consider we'reonly made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. Buteven considering, I mean, Isa sor of bad beginning, we're not doing todbad. So {personally have faith that even inthis lousy situation ‘were faced with we can make it, You get me?™ ‘Against the dust ~carites, love. If VALIS shows the pa empathy has brought Dick, the totality of his work shows the need for empathy. Between the self-snuffing robot of “The Electric Ant” (1969), who slices apart his reality ta land witnesses the disappearance of the world, and the of “The Little Black Box" 1m, lies the richness, depth, and greatness of Philip K. Dick's vision. ‘Throughout...he theme of fakes, of deception, the theme of guile and cunning, are evident,but I would algo Like to have a theme of human trust noted, even though it may be submerged at times under the ‘ominous....Caritas in the final analysis is emotional trust I trust, then, thet you will not misread me and ‘see dislike and anger only; please reach out to me at the coté below that, the core of love. FOUR: Postscript (1988) ‘The Divine Invasion (1961) and the posthumously pub: lished The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1082) round off Dick's career, his Fourth period, and his life, all too neatly. Already these last two novels have been joined with VALIS to form a “gnostic trilogy” or “VALIS tullogy."* To me The Divine Invasion was a-complete ‘success (after the incredible density of VALIS, lucid and36: PHILIP K, DICK diret). It was at once a sequel to tho earlier book and an answer (ot, for while VALIS sa work of mitigated ‘The Divine Invasion is probably the most optimistic volumein Dicks canon. Evils defeated, Good victorious, with Good defined yet again ax people helping and cating for each other ~ "mutually," or arias inaction 1n The Divine Invasion ~ Dick's lst science fiction aovel, Timothy Archer being straight fcion~ the pattern Of Dick's recurring themes makes one more appearance. We have multiple realities, with Herb Asher’ transition {rom dream state on bis dome on distant planet, ad later from ervonie suspension) to living reality, and also the transition from an Earth governed bya Catholle-Commn- ist world state toa happlor world hallway through the book, The politcal satire recalls the Second Period, the urgency of the change of regime Now Wait for Last Your. “That the latest incarnation of VALS on Earth is born brin-damaged should not surprise the reader of say, Dr. Bloodmoney, in which Earth's salvation comes from small it's unborn twin brother, or anyone who recalls the Interally “special” status of “chickenbead” Jack Isidore (D0 Androids Dream) or the saltly hebephrenic in Clans of the Alphane Moon, The characters of Zina, Rybys, and Lind Fox are strong, postive femalecharacers answering the more negative women, associated with drugs or death, tf euch other late novels es Wo Can Build You, Flow My ‘Tears, A Scanner Darkly, and the willfully dying Sherri in YVALIS (Alo very positive, of couse, is Angel Arche in ‘Transmigration).” Evil in Tho Divine Invasions seen tobe the enttoic slugsishness Herb Asher and Rybys Romney (lazy. soppy. selfish) are both trapped in intially. In gost form Belial (Evil, The Accuser fate inthe book sable to assault Linda Fox. Continuing # caeerdong linkage of high human art and what is Good, and commercial mediocrity with what is 1N HIS OWN WORDS : 37 ‘Bad, Dick here has Good signal itself with Mahler, John. Dowland, and Linda Fox's voice, while Evil associated with soupy elevator music versions of "Fidder on the Roo!” and “South Pacific, Finally, end most beautifully, we have the resolution of, Dick's career-long ballet of policemen on the brink of becoming androids even as they fight them. Late in the novel Herb Asher is on his way to vislt Linda Fox tn Hollywood. He has met her through the stereo business.run by himself and the Prophet Elijah, another pair of small ‘businessmen in the Dick tradition, like the team of Louls Frauenzimmer and Abraham Lincoln in We Can Build You, Suddenly Hesb’s car fills full of elevato: music Justas he spent ten years listening to in eryonic suspension). A. robotlike policeman pulls Herb over, his face covered with ‘2 plastic mask "resembling a World War I fortification” (and also Palmer Eldrtch).” With great difficulty Herb is able to convince the policeman that he, Herb Asher, could Indeed be the “legal father of God,” and that the outcome of ‘crucial battle betwoen Good and Evil could indeed depend on his joining Linda Fox in Hollywood. Herb tells the policeman: od ee some response in you, someamountof human warmth.” fam not a machine, the cop sald” ‘As he lets him go, the policeman asks Herb Asher to pray for him, For all the power ofits ending, its willed epiphany of Archer's redemption, The Transmigration of Timothy ‘Archer struck this reader aa being somewhat limited by the author's holding back of his imaginative powers, writing as he was. a straight literary novel that was moreover about‘8: PHILIP K. DICK. deceased fonds of his. What comes through very strongly, besides the “carltas-at-last” message ofthe book (in ls ast ‘two books Phil indeed seemed to have found what he'd been looking forall of bis life) is the author's great skill at rolating naturalistic character and behavior. Never absent fromhis work, going back to stretches ofthe earliest stories ‘and novels (and particularly strong, of course, in the terary novels written in the 1950s). Dick's sift for por- {rayed realism came on very strongly Indeed in his Fourth Period, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Sald (last of the ‘Third Period works} being the last Dick novel to have any sense of strain in the characterization or dialogue (In this ‘case, with the book's various predatory females} ‘A Scanner Darkly and VALIS, inbetween the sordid or {ncrodible happenings, are brilliantly realized as novels of ‘character and dialogue. Andit is these strengths despitea disappointing handling of Bishop Archer himself, the original model for the character perhaps being too power- ful for Dick to capture in print and not overpowers thesis = thet ultimately carry The Transmigration of Timothy Archer through to its triumphant conclusion, Above all flse, the realization of the character of Angel Archer fulfills the claims Dick makes for er in this volume: she Is magnificent. ‘At the conclusion of late-1961' supplement to my. original essay (covering The Divine Invasion only), 1 predicted that Dick's two novels then under way, Timothy Archer end The Ow by Daylight, could be the beginning of a new cycle (a “Fifth Period”) for thelr author. We shall never know, but itdoes seem to be now that Philip K. Dick did continue to grow as an artist ~to continually raisform ‘himself Into something eternally fresh, even as he con- tinued to grapple with the saihe old eternal questions — 1 HIS OWN WORDS : 29, right to-the end of his Ife. Ita my hope that my interviews jith Phil Dick will be taken as something of « great author's last testament, a commentary on his workhe never had the time to write, ut, took the time to say. It sin thls splrt, es the amenuensis to 4 great men, that I present Philip K. Dick: In His Own Words. FIVE: Comment - by Philip K. Dick (Por whatever it's worth, and tome t's worthe great dea!, Phil Dick had this to say about my theories on hs writing, expressed during our first interview session in April 1963): PKD: really flt reading your plece)that forthe firs time! saw an organic evélution in my writing that noone had ever spotted before. There was a logic in the transformations from one period of my writing to the next. And in four periods is the correct division, not three, which is the conventional division of my writing, into three periods. ‘The early stuff, which Is Journeymen apprentice stuff — then the middle period, which isthe glorious flowering of a ‘great talent ~ and then the degenerate mystical crap of the lest period. because it doesn't ‘sive me much motivation to write, But your four division In which each one surmounts the previous one, is I think accurate, and secondly, it also is encouragement to me 10 proceed. For one thing, you find out as I recall that one of| the great basic evolutionary elements is that of character- {aation. In each period there's more emphasis on character. Now to be quite honest, this has helpod me in framing this new novel tha 'm working on now (The Transmigra- tion of Timothy Archer). I's obvious that whether 1 designed it this way deliberately it’s stil going to come outLIP K, DICK anyway that I'm going to emphasize character even mote than I've emphasized it before, based on the logic that you find in those four periods. Even if T don't know that I'm going to do this, this is going to happen. Character will predominate now, enormously. So that was very useful to me in approaching this contemporary novel I'm writing... The thing is, after read- {ng your article, I can see that if I wanted to emphasize something other than character [really have no power todo that, because the logicof the former works is always in me. Treally try to supercede each previous work. Like, I wrote Scanner continually thinking about Flow My Teats, that Thad to top that. And likewise with VALIS.. GR: Not so much tépping, as building on, Each work builds ‘on the preceding one. You know, I wrote it as a labor of Jove, ‘ceuse my jaw dropped when I read some of the stuff that had been written about you, this alleged “decline.” PKD: You see, that particular prejudice that they have doesnt give me any incentive for going on, because as far as they’re concerned I haven't done anything good (since 1966} 1's a formula feeling that critics heve agreed on, from reading one another. They read one another's writing, you see. And this is the stock view of my writing. Darko Suvin Is the one who expresses it most succinctly...which I don’t ‘want to hear, That's not what I want to hear. 1N HIS OWN WORKS : 41 ‘Notes for "Philip K. Dick and the Search for Caritas” (0). Philip K. Dick, “Introduction,” The Golden Man. (2) Jobin Brunner, “The Work of Philp K. Dick," New Wolds, No, ‘bo (eptember teed) p. 143 (3) Stenslaw Lem, "Sclence F Hopeless Case: With (2072) ia Bruce Gulespla ed. PillpK, Dick Electric Shepherd p70. ing of writing this, the maor Dick {ppenred since bis death was not yot avalible and wes working th the mage, payne Gillespe and George Turner eters In Gilespie’ anthology. and such ploces as Darko Sovin's “Artifice at ‘and World View: Philp K. Dicks Fou!” Sclence:Fltion later reprinted inthe Olander. Greenberg anthology 19K. Diek, 103). Dick took strong exception th ploce~ see CChaper Tol habook.Porthe recon, {dacoverd Suvi division of Discrete peed iter developing my on ourperod (6), David G. Hartel “atroduction.” Countar-Clock World (Bos ton: Gress Press, 1970), 12). Aet would arn fom my conversations with Phil, The Crackin Space is « work ofthe Second Period held up and ptnted later (@) ‘Thischronology was pleced ogether from Phils own published lcs, lterviews, tnd otters. The quote conceringthe 74 vslon {s'from the Caries Platt interview, Dream Makar (New York Berkley Books, 1990), pp. 19485 Lem. 6 ip. 00 (Go) Paul Willams, “he Tite Sires of Philp K, Dick.” Rolling Stone, November 6, 1875, p- #5. (a9 Thi... {22} Damon Klatt, im Search of Wonder (Chicago: Advent Pub- Iishrs nd od. 1067) p. 228. Dick pblied an incredible 113 short sores in 19525 listo ln tho pro-Solar Latory years of 1082: Bibliography, pp. 162-45, Tou Staths, trode (Ga) Dicks ancestry was Scotch-rsh."Horelover” fn VALIS fr ck for Philip. "at" German for Dick, [i0) Counter lock World, chapter ome: (G0) Flow My Tears, The Policeman42: PHILIP K. DICK. (1) Sete Mla tte: fye nthe Sky an: Ces, Pre (hy antl eres, “An interview with Philp K, Dc.” Sétence 2, chapter two. ta) Guach Potateie,chapersitesn {2t) Deus aa, chapter thes, {22} VALI, chapter ve. Tonce had Phi show me the actual Oh Ho, Abeaulifulitiebluepot, which tokopt carefuliyhidden ava. Thad ‘telly been mada for him as deseribd in VALIS. {23) Soe Chapter tof this ook. Alo, the Willams {stevie fn Kelling Sione and the Arthar Byron Cover Intrvisw tn Vertex {Penney 1074) go tno this question in ome deal (2a) Leverofitrodtlo, “The Androldand he Human,“ Cilesple, ‘op. elt..p- 50 (25) Dick was gute upset when Harlan Elisn' troduction to ha ory, “Paithof Our Fathers” i the anthology Dan {0967 impliog that he'd writen tana 9) he tol Cover hate ad writen bros for hima saying {Bick has been experi ing with allacinogene drags fn the a at delusionsAlsoin 1807 according the fl of eters at Cal State Fullerton, he forced en spology Ir & fan wo had liked bis name with areport about brain damage from smphetamines. By th 107475 interviews wilh Willams end Cover Fewasoatintheopen abouts drug uso, and by VALISin 08104 La the open about everthing else (20) ee the Ursula LaCuin aerial this book, Chapar i (27) Dick eter of June 8, 1069, cillesple, op. cl p- 32 {20) Dic, later of September 9 1970, Ibid p48 (20) Dick, “The Android ofthe Human, (30) Pronlplece, "The Thee Sgmata of uote dreely By Dick, Id, 66 fst) Dick "Afterword. The Galden Man, (22) See for example ober Cilbeath's Redemption and Doubt in Philip K. Dick's VALIS Wlogy." Extrapolation, Vol. 24 No. 2 (Summer 1085), p.208 (34) The fll stgntance ofthe recurring image ofthe World War I Fortleation mask o Dick's work relates fo the stores Dicks father toldhimorhisparcipalion in tba war Sethe second valumect this sles. (85) The Divine tnvasion, chaper eighteen, Ale Writing Science Fiction PART TWO In His Own Words:44: PHILIP K, DICK, CHAPTER 3 Why Science Fiction? The Benign Gods Moral Choices GR: Why do you like writing science fiction? PKD: Because it gives me. chance to be crazy and be paid for it. 1can write real weird stuff about real weird people doing real weird things where people walk through walls, like Charist did a the end of the Gospels. And give some sort of pseudo-scientific explanation fort, lke they reall dead, IN HIS OWN WORDS : 45 Can't do that in a mainstream novel ‘Lean play with the universe like it ally putty. Some- body ina letter once said that Phil Dick's universe is made of silly puty, and that perfectly sums it up. I love to just play games with time-space causality.I'smy old interest in epistemology. For one thing I don't really believe the universe ls real, I don't believe we're sitting here. I think ‘were brains yokod in tandem and we're being fed sensory- sight stimulation directly tothe brain, And they're writing down how we respond to various problems that arise. GR: Who are they? PRD: Well Iguess the gods. They're good, they’tebenign. If they weren't benign they would have executed us a long time ago, as (Abraham) Maslow says. But we're being tested, And we'rebeing tested in very small matters. I'snot the ig decisions that we're boing tested regarding. Because there we know we're being tested, we sense that. We sense ‘moral elements. It's situations that are so small that we don't even sense there's @ moral element involved. {really believe this very firmly, I'm convinced of i. The real test comes where you're not even conscious that there sa moral element jn the decision. You oan see this in other people. ‘A friend of mine was oncetellingmeabout a cat that they took way out in the country to get rid of, and dumped seven miles from town. A weellater it shows up with the pads all worn off Its fect it walked all the way back. And I said, ‘where's the cat now? and shesays Oh, we adit killed. The fact that she'd done something terrible didnt even occur to her. You soe, I foe] wa're being tested, all of us. ‘Where we don't see any moral element is where the test comes. If we see a moral element, we will probably makea deliberate choice. I's those litle unconscious choices, Tl give you an example that occurs to me now. I was at the supermarket last week, real late, buying a bunch of junk food for myself. And there was guy ahead of me46: PHILIP K. DICK Duylng a can of beer. It wasn't an old guy, he was kind of heavy set, burly guy in his thirties, And he was drunk. And be didn't have enough money for the can of beer. And ‘without even thinking about It tossed him a quarter, but it wasn't enough. I thought he was only a dime short, but he wasn't even close. Poor guy, not even close. He was 30 drunk, Thad to deal withthe checker as to how much was. needed. And he was moved, although admittedly he was very drunk, he was moved to ineredible emotion. He came back, told mehis name, shook hands with me, said it meant ‘lotto have somebody do that forhim. Sure hope he wasn't driving, ‘That's what we're going to find scored. They're going to shoot back on the screen replays of those things, where we didnt see the moral ssue involved. So in sense what I'm really saying is thot all life is a ‘moral issue. Which isa very Jewish idea. The Hebrew idea about God Is that God is found In morality, not in episte- mology. That is where the Almighty exists.in the moral area. It isn't just what I sald once, that in Hebrew ‘monotheism ethics devolve directly from God. That'snot it. W's thet God and ethics are so interwaven (that) where you have one you have the other. T think that In a sense that is my belief, yes, 1 do believe this honestly. 1 will not be scored, you will not be scored, for being smart. We will not be scored of anything tha ‘works for our sutvival. The payoff on that is survival. Aid ‘smart ultimately means doing the thing that you're going (0 survive better... IN HIS OWN WORDS : 47 CHAPTER 4 Caritas / A Beetle In Third Grade / Cockroaches Are An Exception / Seeing Things Five Different Ways GR: How did the concept of caritas first present itself 0 you? That our salvation isin helping each other? PRD: [really think ~ I've thought about this and it goes back to.an incident when I was in the third grade, where was tormenting « beetle. It was taking refuge in an empty Snail shell. He'd come out ofthe snail shell and I'd mash at40: PHILIP K. DICK him with a rock, and he'd run back into the snail shell. fd Just wait til held come out, ‘And he came out, and all ofa sudden I realized «it was {otal sator, just infinite, that this beetle was like I was. ‘There was an understanding. He wanted to live just like I was, and I was hurting him. For a moment ~ it was like Siddhartha does, was like that dead jackal In the ditch ~ 1 was that beetle, Immediately 1 was different. I was never the same again. Iwas totally aware of what I was doing, 1 ‘was just transformed ~ my essence was changed, 1 was like when Plato describes remembering the form, Fecovering the knowledge of the forms. It was a complete understanding of the life and aspirations ofthat beetle. nd the importance of hs life. His life was as precious tohim as ry life was to me. I've never lost the 1 make no distinctions between creatures and humans, and enimals and bugs. A bug's lifes as precious as my life fs to me. Because all life ie God. Cockroaches are the exception. 1 was telling allthis to Charles Platt and 1 was mentioning how I'd killed a cockroach, and he was just shocked. AndIsaid, well don't really include wasps and cackroaches. GR: Because? PKD: Because I don't like them. And he says, well that violates your very premise. And I say, ys, and!'m going to keep doing it.I said, what Ilove todo is eut a cockroach in half and watch the two halves eravsl away in different directions. And he just tured pale. ‘And I say, Charles, that just shows how far I've led you ‘on my empathy trip, that you would turn pale atthe thought ‘of me killing a cockroach, GR: I suffered a lot when I moved up to San Francisco, and hhad to star eliminating cockroaches. 'dalways let trapped fies out of window screens, and carried spiders outdoors, but when I got up there and they were crawling out of my 1N HIS OWN WORDS :49 read, 1 begon kiln them, PRD: Take rofuge a Zoroustbs contention tht bugs ike that were made by Abviman ie ei god of destction i Zoroasteriam and in Tho Cosmic Puppets). And not by Ormand. They are part ofa diferent domain. (GH: Good enough. 1 ike that. PRD: Fie and excrement and dir he says, were made by ‘abriman. T went fom that beetle on to a further series of revel tions which fially became excruciating. You mention in your article that VALIS shows the price of empathy, but the body ofthe writing, the corusshows the necesly- ‘Tot was one of the most marvelous stlementa Ti over reed ‘Your analysis of my writing is of tt as an organically bldg evolutionary pices, and your are sthe same ‘wey. Fist you analyze and then you syathosize..Some peopiocan analyze and some peoplecan synthesize. eat toelyze T can synthesig real good but I cant anelyze. 1 eve oo analytical powers whatsoever ean pet things together But I depend on what Jung calls my inulive focally; my gestalling factor. For instance, L Cannot analyze my own writing, even though I've written it inno way ean Tenelyzei. If people ask me what oxeof ty novels is about I ant tll them a thing. My faculty. thefacultyLuse,lethat Teanlooksl the thing five different ways. ean look atthe same cluster of things and se five diferent ways they can link together. “They ean add upto five diferent wholes. (Phil was famous forhaving soveral different ways of soaing the same event, as for instance the 1971 breakin al his house, which he tnalyzed several different ways In the Paul Wiliams Rolling Stone interview, or the VALIS evens)0 : PHILIP K, Dick, CHAPTER 5 Christian Beliefs / The Fallen World / C.S. Lewis / Charles Williams / Olaf Stapleton Benign Conspiracies / Tolkien sz201 a (ou'te familiar with the Christian belief; that God created the Earth and it was good, but Man fell, Lucifer - evil - took over, and the Earth is now under enemy occupation. The Earth is quarantined, but God breaks Periodically through the screen, put up by the enemy, who controls Earth IN HIS OWN WORDS : 51 PRD: That's the whole premise for The Divino Invasion. 1 adopt that premise entirely. 'm familiar with the premise, it's your standard fallen world, Its an adversary situation, Tveneverheardit expressed so coherently, [findita very formidable statement now that I've heard somebody eay it in a reasonable way. Usually they just dilate forever on these obscure points, but you've phrased it beautifully. Let ‘me think, ‘cause! did writea book about that, my ast book. Shit! laughs) GR: Have you read C.S. Lewis? That's where I got it from. PKD: Well it’ funny, no Thaven', and the funny thing is that John Clute in reviewing The Divine Invasion men= tioned that i's so much like C.S. Lewis that essontially it's saying the same. (Phil went on to say that he had read a couple of Lewis* books and That Hideous Strength-"isstting over there, recommended by a Catholic friend.” Asking him about other favorite science fiction and fantasy authors of mine. 1 found that he didn't know Charles Williams at all, whose novels of everyday life shading into the supernatural l was very fond of. I had compared The Cosmic Puppets with a Williams novel in my essay. 1 told him Williams was associated with Lewis, Tolkien, and the other Oxford Christians). PKD: Do you suppose that ['ve independently rediscov- red theism? Thinking to myself, in my artless fashion, that I had stumbled onto a major new concept, and all 'm doing is reinventing traditional orthodox Christianity? GR: I's the same question as did van-Vogt create Slan, oF had he read Olaf Stapleton first? Do you like Stapleton? PRD: Very much. Last and First Man (1980), Ithinkit'sone of the greatest books ever written. GR: To me that was it fora long time, in terms of science fiction PAD: That is so good, that if you were a science fiction‘2: PHILIP K. DICK writer starting out, you can give up at thal polit, You can say, this Is the epitome of great science fiction. You can't exceed the expanse of his imagination. It's incredible. He was really great, I.tell you another book ! liked. it was The Man Who Was Thursday (C.K. Chesterson, 3900 GR: That's areal Phil Dick reality trip - everyone turns ut to be a mombor of the same conspiracy. PRD: That'sa lot of fun. !know Robert Anton Wilson, and ‘we both love conspiracy. We don't love it in the sense of ‘the normal conspiracy buff, who's convincod that there's all these demonic and malignant conspiracies to enslave mankind. An example is (William $.] Burroughs! convic- tion sbout the parasitic information virus which has afflicted our minds and made us all stupid. They've taken lover the planet. That's cool ‘Bob Wilson and I have this conviction that there are benign conspiraces going on, which ie kind of interesting psychologically. You can see the psychological dynamism going on, in the conviction of an evil conspiracy, a paranoid thing. But t's very hard to figure out what's going ‘on if you love the idea that the world is secretly ruled by very benign people, who are promoting health, happiness. and prosperity for all. What's the psychological roots of | that? Just naivetet (laughs). GR: I notice you make a couple of references to Tolkien in your work. (In A Maze of Death, The Lord of the Rings saga is a revered classic; Ben Tallchief plays a 3-D vistocord of il and confronts a Gandalf who seoms 10 address him. Talichiof considers him “a mythological character who probably never existed’) PKD: That was really before the Tolkien cult started. 1saw the cult coming. | reed the books when they came out, the IN HIS OWN WORDS : 8 English editions before they were available in America. (This would be in 1955-56). I had read The Hobbit (1938) ‘when Iwas a child; ithad come out and Ireed it asa child. ‘And I teally loved it. ‘Of course now I know he based a lt of It on (Wagner's) “The Ring,” "The Ring of the Nibelungen.” The curse of the ring, the power ofthe ting4 Pup K, DICK CHAPTER 6 Earliest Writing / “I Love To Write” / Charybdis / Borges, Flaubert, Beethoven / Idioms sane GR: How did you get into writing? PKD: My mother was a weiter, of she wanted to become @ Published writer. She used to write novels and short stories. She sold one shor story once, toa litle throwaway ‘magazine called Family Circle. She sold it for 40 bucks. ‘That's all she ever sold. But I got the ides that writing was very important. IN Hts OWN WORDS : 65 wrote my first novel when Iwas 19. I taught myself to touch type when I was fn junior high, or grammar school Sixth or seventh grade, I taught myself to touch type, from her book, which she had used in a course on typing. Took the book, learned to type. Wrote a novel, called Return to Lilliput, Wasn' very good. GR: Based on Swilt? PKD: Loosely based on Swift. Hada lotof submarines int GR:Sincethen, what havebeen your writing habits? Do you get lot of satisfaction from il? Ist something you like to do ~ something you can't help? PED: (laughs) “Can't help." Wind me up and I go to the typewriter. Is normal for me to waite, I's as normal for me to write ‘tis for some people to eat peanuts. Or goto the movies. Or take a drive in the country. Writing is -- I carry my clipboard with me, all around the apartment. I'm always and forever taking notes. Ilove to write. If 'm not working fon a thing to be published, [Just work on notes. Ijust take endless notes. Mostly philosophical notes, For instance research a philosopher, and Ill spend weeks making ‘comments on him. Just sitting there doing it. Can‘ sell notes, you know. Got a stack, 600,000 words of notes. It gets you fluent, where you can express your thoughts, {in written words. I's very important tobe able to do that, I's wonderful, Not a waste of time. And as you read-—reading is the other side of that, i's constantly reading. You catch tyzns of phrases that people use. I was reading this article on philosophy. and he says Hume believes such-and-such, and Locke believes he knows not what. What a wonderful turn of phrase! | came across a paragraph in the Britannica the other day, which I read to Paul (Williams) the other night. 1 ‘thought it one of the most amusing, paragraphs I'd everNN 158: PHILIP K, DICK read and it's not supposed to be funny at all, It's in a reference work. I'stalking about Scylla and Charybdis, the two threats (in Greck mythology) on either side of the stralt. If you veéttothe left, you veer into Seylla. If you veer to the right, Charybdis. The expression, “betwoen Scylla and Charybdis" means you're damned if you do and damned if you don So they're talking about Charybdis and it says “Charyb- ais, who lurked under @ fig tree, a bow shot away on the opposite shore, drank down and belched forth the ocean twice a day, and was fatal to shipping.” laughs). ! would ay T would think so! Belching forth the entire Mediterra- nnean twice a day would certainly make her fatal to shipping! Now you see like I read that, and Tadmire the fact that in that one sentence he's presented, or she's presented, everything you'd want to know about Charybdis, I now Ihave a complete conception of Charybdis in my mind, on the basis of that marvelous and terse sentence. She was lal to shipping.” Nothing more need be said about Charybais. We now know exactly what these guys en- countered when they encountered Chatybdis. -- She was ‘actually @ whirlpool So I'm reading, wting. Ive been reading (Jorge Luis) Borges (the Argentine fantastist). Paul sent me Hoge, Tm not lke you, when you said you ikea writer you read everything he wrote (which is what I'd told Phil about my discovery of him). I've had the idea Ive read Borges, and I've read one book. GR: Well, I have the idea I've read Flaubert and I've read ‘one book. PKD: Ill bet you read Ms GR: Yea, PKD: Flaubert probably had some other book he liked, and people did't road it. sme Bovary. IN HIS OWN WORDS : 57 GR: Yes, he did! Bouvard and Pecuchet, which nobody ‘would read. It's about these guys who collect a great dictionary. of misinforination PRD: Sounds like Borges, doesn tit? I's like Beethoven, his favorite piece of his own composition was Wellinglon's Victory, and he had to be forcibly restrained from conduct- {ng it on the platform. {At this point Phil offered me my choice of one of two sandwiches, which he'd already purchased in anticipation of my visit) PKD: | bought a sandwich for you and a sandwich for me, and you get to choose which one you want. But your choice {s limited to two. 1 a binary question. GR: Like your phrase, "Yes or no-choose one” which isin your work. I love that phrase. KD: My wife Annie used to say that GR: ...1 wanted to atk you about “grate.” Did you ever notice that? In just about all of your books, one character “grates” at another when he's angry. PKD: I noticed that in your article, and { thought, he's referting to something I've used repeatedly asanidiom. But 1'm not familiar with my own idiom. GR: Well, I noticed it because I read_all your books in @ concentrated period. The word “grates” on me, and there it ‘was in every book, at least once. PKD: It's funny the way you start (noticing these things). You can't get away from it. It does come at you forever. Like, one time I was reading over one of my manuscripts, tnd the word "said" suddenly struck meas occurring fartoo ‘many times, Iknow, theoretically, I'm trained to know that its okay to say “said,” and you should never try to say “expostulate ;" “ejaculate,” and all those other words for “said."{But) I noticed the word "said" 17 times on one page!158: PHILIP K. DICK, ‘And from then on all I could see was the word “said,” every ose. ‘You just have to learn to live with it.'m sorry about the ‘word "grate." Ill never use it again, laughing) [IN HUIS OWN WORDS : 50 CHAPTER 7 “An Incredibly Conventional Writer’/ The Early Stories / The Form and The Craft / Markets of The Fifties / “Psionics” and John W. Campbell ae PKD: You were very ritical of my fist period — (GR: I think too much 80. PKD: But it's true, but its also remarkable, and [think you rade that point, that somebody who was an incredibly ‘conventional writer — which is what I was in that first period(0: PHILIP K. DICK My stories, for example, when I read them over, just ‘ppall me in that porlod. They're just eppallingly. bad stories. And not only are they bed, they're incredibly Conventional. You wouldn't think the mind that conceived ‘those conventional stories, would have made the quantum leaps up that I show later on. Without trying to be solf- laudatory, the fact of the matter is that there is no Indication in that early stuff thet there’ any unusual mind. at work, The mind seems to be completely conventional How I made those leaps, I don't know. GRx{t tell Phil that even his eatliest stories foreshadow all hs future growth, Icite 1954's delicate fantasy “Upon the Dull Eerth” and such chilling post-epocalypse tales as 1083's “Second Variety.") PRD: Stylisticelly i's handled very well too. It's @ very economical, non-pulp style, ‘My idea ofa good story of mine, one that I really think is beautifully written, is one that inaugurates my last period, ‘my most recent effusions GR: You might be on the vorge of « whole new period Christ, 'don't know....i8A Little Something For Us ‘Tempunauts” (1974). Which I think is very well written, very good. And I was influenced by John Sladek on that. Somebody had turned me on to Sladek. And I was just galvanized by the quallty ofhis style suddenly realized ~ ‘In fact, that's one reason 1 got back into science fiction Td kind of given up there, after those disastrous years 71 °72. Just living off (the royalties). It really was moot ‘question whether I'd ever write again. (Then) it wasn't ‘oot. I really wanted to get back to writing. GR: I wanted to ask you about the form and the craft of. science fiction, PRD: The craft comes in getting a lot of money. The form ‘comes in the form of the outline you vrte to get toa lot of IW HIS OWN WORDS : 61 money. And the sample chapters that you write, that you find you cant do any more of because thoy don’t go anywhere, So you leave it lay around for a couple of years and then they finally inquire, and then you sell them a book of used short stories instead, and they give you the same fioney for that. (laughs ) (Pauses, then seriously) The form and the craft of science fiction. Okay, I started off asa fantesy writer, I didn't start off as a science fiction writer. I wtote short fantasies for FASF (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). ‘And I only wrote sclence fiction because there was much more of a market (forit). And my early science fiction ‘was very bad. Iwasa very bad science fiction writer, but I was very good fantasy writer, but outside of Tony Boucher (Editor of F&SF) nobody existed to buy fantas ‘And I wrote ~ as Tom Disch has pointed out ~ the most, conventional science fiction imaginable, It all starts out with looking through the vid screen. “Captain! Look through the vid screen! Tbeliove I se a strange object” I's Just execrable science fiction But the market continued to get better for science fiction and worse for fantasy. Thal gave me two choices. One, writing en awful lot of bad science fiction - ‘cause I was getting acent a word from Planet Stories -or writhig better science fictionvand! chose the former.1 wrote a lot of bad sclence fiction, Finally my agent said, I wish you would write ewer but better stories. Now, when your agent tells that ~ you'e in trouble. Somewhere the transition occu, ad Twas able to write decent science fiction. And probably the transition occurs ‘with Eye on the Sky (1957), which in a way isa fantasy. GR: You found a way to incorporate fantasy into s.. PKD: Yeah. Because what must be taken nto account isthe state ofthe atin the early'S0s.Astounding still dominated the field, with hard-core, nuts and bolts science fiction, the2: PHILIP K, DICK. Hal Clement. stuff. The kind of science fiction that Ido, that I do well, was not publishable then. You see, the field was very limited at that time, as fa marketing. Ace Books was the only publisher of (sclence fiction) novels, I mean they really were, andthe defi of science fiction in those days, in the mid-S0s, was just {incredibly limited. There was allthis “pal” stuff that Jobn 'W. Campbell editor of Astounding) was promoting, and it hhad gotten to the point where he said psiontcs (telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, and other ESP powers) was the necessary premise for science fiction stories. Which is an incredible concept, that.every science fiction story must have todowith psionics. Noonehad ever suggested before, ever, in the history of science fiction, that there was one topic and one topic only. Whether i's space travel, time travel, or the end of civilization, He wrote me that psionics was a necessary promise in a science fiction story. Now that is realy narrowing the field down.And Horace Gold, at Galaxy, only wanted sociolog- Ical sciencefiction. ‘That was all he would publish. So you hhad your choice. Now Campbell said you not only have to write about psionis, but the “pis” the gifted) have to bein charge and they have to be good. They can nelther be ‘marginal nor can they be negative. And I wrote stories, and Thad psis in (them), but the psis were either marginal or negative. (Such stories as “The Golden Man" and“A World of Talent,” both 1954, feature conflict between the Nor- mals and the superior Psis, who include auch unappetizing specimens asthe doughy. obese "Big Noodle” in "A World of Talent,” gifted with “infinite parakinetic power and the mind of a moronic three-year-old.” Itwas first published in Galaxy). So they had tobe three things, pts, and they had tobe in IN HIS OWN WoRDS : 63, power, and they had to be good. Well, I'm telling you, that {s incredible..Our idea of what was possible in science fiction was so barren of variety, that was finally happened ‘was in 1959 science fiction almost ceased to exist ‘Virtually avery magazine folded. Most of the writers left the field. The pay rate went down to a half-cent a word, which Is what It had been during the Depression. For all intents and purposes (with inflation), it was less. was looking through the magazines at that time, and I Aiscovered there was only one new idea (that) had come Into existence since H.G. Wells. And that was the idea of the corporate mind, where a number of entities form one mind, they forma group mind. And that was developed ina story by Nat Schachner inthe 30s, in Astounding. So that preceded the wer. So since World War {I there wasn't a single new idea, ‘Because that whole psionics thing had been done by Olaf Stapleton in Odd John (1935), and (A.B, van Vogt’) Slam (1940) was a complote steal from Odd John. Thave no idea if van Vogt knew that or not, that he had taken the entire Idea of Slan.it'sall in Odd John. (Both novels are about persecuted superhumans). The whole ambience, therole of the superior mutant, you know, who ishated and fearedby all mankind, ‘Of course, that’s what Campbell was trying to overcome, was that prejudice against psionics, that acute reaction agalnst that.4: PRIUP K. pick CHAPTER 8 Donald Wollheim Alternate Titles Hard Science Fiction t's talk about Don Wollheim. PKD.ON yeah, ol Don Wollhetm. He saved science fiction when it was dying. He was the only one going in those temible years of the’Sos. The hadn't been publishing those ‘Ace Doubles I think the field would have ended. ft might have been resurrected in the ‘60s but I think there would ee IN HIS OWN WORDS’ 05 have been a total hiatus there. But he kept on. He never ‘gave up publishing scence fiction. Around’s9, when itwas 0 bad, he was after me to send him manuscripts. Hejwas soliciting manuscripts. He was sstrongand so cout that he weathered that out, When the magazines all folded ‘he weathered it out. The man has boundless courage and Jntegrity. He has what I would regard asa rather conserva- Live view of science fiction but the man is Just all gus. GR: You dedicated a book to him, I noticed, PKD: And I meant it too. I have nothing to gain, '™ not expecting more of Don. I sald that out of real feeling for him. The man has endured all these decades and has done 50 much for ths field. He did not abandon science fiction during those terrible days in the late ’50s. And everyone else did. The writers were giving up, the agents were giving up, the publishers were giving up. he stayedin business, He never gave u ‘GR: What exactly was his position with Ace Books? KD: He was thelr Sclence Fiction editor. He had someone over him who was A.A. Wyn, ‘GR: How did you get along with him personally? PRD: Very badly. He wrote vary abusive letters, but they ‘were honest letters. They woren' abusive for the sake of being abusive, He would just say, I think this is a tereible book, ora terrible story, or think you're going ina terrible direction. One thing he suid, after reading a mainstream manu: script of mine, he said you will never make. it as a mainstream writer. You simply do not have sufficient talent. Ho almost was right, infact he may be right. He says ‘as. science fiction writer you are an exceptional talent. As ‘@ mainstream writer you are just another failure ‘That hurt. ‘Cause I was really trying to sell those ‘mainstream novels. But he sald what he believed. But he did say as a science fiction writer you are an exceptional08 : PHILIP K. DICK. talent. This is very early on, in the early 80s. You'l be @ success in the field, you have what it takes. As far as tho mainstream stuff goes you have nothing GR: Was Solar Lottery his first published novel, by Ace in 4955) your first contact with him? PKD: The first science fiction magazine 1 read was Donald Wollheim magazine, Stirring Science Stories. But ‘Thad no contact with him until my agent sent Solar Lottery to him. And then he sent it back for major revisions. GR: You followed his advice? laughs) Liston, he was the only market, That was. GR: How did he change it? PKD: Oh, Idon' remembernow. Exceptithad tobeexactly 6,000 lines long. But that was a marketing thing end 1 understood that. Ace Doubles were very, very precise as to hhow long those books were. But he did want a lot of ‘changes made in that book, and a lot in The World Jones Made (1058), end wo had @ lot of fights about that. He ‘wanted that to be much more commercial put ia some of ‘what I call Iterary elements. GR: Like characterlzation. PKD: Characterization! All the good things. Hecouldn't see any point in that. As for as The Man Who Japed (1957) ‘goes, as Don says, i's the weakest of them all I guess t's ‘question of which isthe weakest, not which isthe best. But hedid like Bye in the Sky, and he did bring tout single because he liked it, but he didn't tell me thet. 1 learned that he had liked it because Tread an ad that he had written. And he retitled most of them. Solar Lottery, ‘World Jones Made. The Man Who Japed was my ttle. Eyo in the Sky was his title (A partial ist of Phi eriginal or workng tts) ‘The World Jones Mad. “Wom for Anotber” ‘The Coun Puppeta “A Glass of Darkness IN HIS OWN WORDS: 67 (Returning tothe topic of the idea drought ofthe late's0 PKD: There we were sitting eround in 1950, and nobody hhad any ideas at al. And I wrote Time Out of Joint ins ‘and we only got $750 for it. And wo couldn’ sell it I, we soldi to Lippincott as a “novel of ‘menace.” And Donald Wollheim read that -it got submitted to Ace by mistake - and Wollheim ~ Tvenever read such along, angry leer from an editorin, ‘He was incredibly threatened by that novel. He 1w everything that heconstruedas sclencefiction as going ddown the tubes with what that novel did. If it ever got into print, which he doubted it ever would, he sald the only thing salvagenble was the last chapter, where there was the ‘war on the maon, And I should build back from the last chapter. And the style was wrong, because it was essen- ‘dally pedestrian, he said. But we were stuck with the Sam Moskowitz-Donald ‘Wollheim idea of what constituted sclence fiction in those days. And I've always said the epitome of it was Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity (1953), It's incredible. 1 was, reading a synopsis ~it came out asa serial in Astounding. 1 picked up the second issue, ‘cause It had my story. 1 looked at the synopsis and it says, for the first time in hhuman history it was possible to measure three gravita- tional fields at onct ‘What kind of premise s that fora novel? In 1972, 1was at the Wellscon in L.A. And got up onthe stand- Iwas called0 : PHILIP K. DICK. ‘on unexpectedly to speak, I thought it wasjust going tobea round table discussion - and I got up and started talking about science fiction, T mentioned Mission of Gravity. 1 said, conceived ofa sequel, where somebody forthe first time invents a tape measure that will roll up, instead of ‘walking around with a yard stick. So the synopsis would ead, “For the first time in human history it was possible to carry a yardstick rolled up in the form of @ tape measure in your pocket, and then you could measure everything that ‘you came across.” (laughing) You would meet your girl friend and you would measure her and she'd be five feet four, soafterthat you'd refertoheras “Five Feet Four." And 4 tree would be “Twelve Feet Nine.” ‘And that was the kind of ideas we were stuck with in 1050. And everybody was leaving the field I eft th and went into the jewelry business, working with my wife (Anno) CHAPTER 9 The Sixties / Ellison and Wollheim / Origin of Dr. Bloodmoney / Dangerous Visions / Hate Mail / Counterfeits sae PKD: The kind of stuff that I do now, there was no market forthat at all. Nobody would publish it. And for one thing, it didn't exlst, the kind of stuff 1 do now. GR: Did you create that market? PKD: No, no, no- Harlan Ellison created that market with70 : PHILIP K. Dick Dangerous Vislons (his 1967 anthology of original stories). GR: But that was what, '66,'97. Your (outrageous) stuf was 4. PKD: Right, I lied. Harlan didn't create that market. I sald that to make Harlan like me ‘cause he hales me 30. ‘Actually the big turning point for me then was The Man {in the High Caste (1962) GR: But thet was for you. What about the field?” PKD: There was no fleld at that time, GR: The field was zip circa 1959, PKD: Right. There was no use writing fora field that didn't exist. What I did was simply waite as good a book as when I wrote The Man in the High Gest uichased a3 science fiction, it was not advertised as science fiction. It was picked up by the Science Fiction Book Club, and that's why it got the Hugo Award. If they hadn't picked it up it wouldnt have won, {saw the ad that Putnam ran in The New York Times. In no way was it presented as science fiction. ‘GR: But there was a boom in the field in the ‘60s. PKD: Yes. And a lot of that was due to Harlan. He gets the credit. And there were a lot of new waiters coming in ‘that were real good. That was the other side. Herlan ‘couldn't get real good stories out of aturnip, There had tobe the wniters to do it, There wiere good people coming in. people like (Roger) Zelazny, Chip Delany, all the guys. GR: Tell me about Harlan Ellison. PKD: He's probably done more for sclence fiction then ny ‘other person in the field except Don Wollheim. And they ‘Were working at complete cross purposes. Don Woliheim's ‘working for conventional science fltion, Harlan’s work: Ing for experimental science ficion. And between the two of them they've done a lot to protect, preserve, and encourage the field. Because you could go one way or the other. You could go IN HIS OWN WORDS : 71, toward Wolheim or you could'go towards Ellison. Ellison in the Dangerous Visions series proved himself to be the greatest editorthat ever entered thefield. Hedidn'tjusttake stories that had been written, but he went to you and demanded that you do your best. ‘Now that was not the first time that was tried. The frst time was for something called “Project C." They had a lt of ‘money. Bill Kemp was one of the people involved in that. ‘They contacted me, and they told me, we want youto write the most experimental Science fiction story you can write, for this anthology. Virtually what Harlan asked for. ‘Well, wrote ther a story, which I don't even have now, ‘which they bought, and paid a lotof maney for and gaveme fan extra $50°bonus for because they said it was 80 good. ‘And then they found - and Y'm not saying this to make myself look good - they sald they're cancelling the project because they cannot find enough stories to make a colle: tion of. They said your story was exactly what we were looking for, We couldnt get enough to make up the ‘anthology and we have abandoned it; you can keep the money. It was quite a bit of money. ! didn't even keep a copy of the story. And do you know what the story tuned ‘out to be? It was the basis for Dr. Bloodmoney. It was. about Hoppy Harrington on his cart, It was a novelette version of Dr. Bloodmoney if you can imagine that Everything that was in the story went info the book so there's nothing lost ‘So Harlan Was not the first, he was the first successful one. Harlan was able to generate the response. And one of the wayshe did that was the letter that he wrote us, He was 80 forceful and so convincing that he brought us out of our torpor, al of us, For me it was like rolling off log, ‘cause wanted todo that kind of stuff, it was what Iwanted todo. 1 ‘mean it was just like, exactly the kind of invitation [craved and hoped for. More conventional writers found it difficult72: PHILIP K. DICK, Telieve, My impression in reading come of their writing in Dangerous Visions{was) that it was somewhat embarrass- ing to write a controversial story. They did not enjoy writing controversial stuff. I love it. I thrive on contro: versy. I mean, I have a bad altitude, as I've said many limes. I would like to waite an offensive story that offends everybody. Like my anti-abortion story (The Pre-Per- sons," 1974) [tdidn't botherme bit that itoffended alot of people. That dida't have any effect on me, to get hate mall. Alo is just recycle it into the comments I make later. 1 say I got a lot of hate mail it gives me ammunition. It's no use sending me hate mail, GR: Do you get a lot of hate mail? Love mail? PKD: I get some of each. 1 got mostly good stuff. But I get some pretty, pretty vicious leters from time ta time, And no wonder, look what I wrote about drugs, communism, anti-abortion stuff, God. If there's an area where people are in dispute Il find it and seek it out. GR: But that’s now. What kind of mall did you get in the "50s? PRD: didn’t get anything. [got no mail, got one leteron Eye in the Sky from a guy whose book I had read. Murray ‘Telgh Bloom was his name. He'd writen a book on numis- ‘matics, on counterfelting colns, that had read and he read, Bye in the Sky and sad it would make a wonderful movie. was the first fan letter lever go. Itjust so happened Ihad just read Mr. Bloom's book and was able to write back and say I had read your book on numismatics and it was an. excellent book. ‘As a matter of fact it was that book (which I have Identified as Money of Their Own: the Great Counter- iter, 1957) that gave me the idea about forgories. He said «really good counterfeit coin can never be nicked. So there ‘may be classes of counterfeiting that no one ever (catches). eughs) IN Hs OWN WORDS : 73 So that’s where I got the idea of what the Greeks called dokein ("to seem"), which is like the Vell of Maya, but originally meant a coin counterfeited so well that even ‘when the authorities detected it they continued to let it circulate, ‘They called it a dokeln, like you find in the Christian heresy Docetism. Docetics believed thet Christ's body was not really there, that there was no physical body. there only seamed to be a body. It was such a good imitation no one could tel the difference. It ate food; but it walked through ‘walls, a8 you find in the Gospels. Jesus entered where they ‘were eating through a closed door. Wel, that’s where the Dosceties get thelr idea. That's the Gnosties, the Christian term for Gnostics.174 PHILIP K, DICK CHAPTER 10 Harlan Ellison Reader Response Publishers and Agents Deus Irae Censored toazen GR: How do you and Harlan Ellison get along? PKD: Well, I've known Harlan since 'S4 and he was this twirp fan then, and he asked me fora story for his twitp fanzine. And I gave him an unpublished story and he never published it, ‘cause it wasn't good enough. (laughs) That's how we started out. IW HIS OWN WORDS : 78, He was this typical pushy twirp fan, with this grating volea that could be heard throughout the entire convention. 's ust as obnoxious as hell, you know. And later on he started waiting stories and I sald to Tony Boucher one day. "It seems like all the stories now aze being written by Bob Silverberg and Harlan Ellison.” And he said yes, and one of them is good and one Is terrible, And 1 said “Which is ‘good?" and he sald Bob Stiverberg. 1 don’t like Harlan's writing. There area couple of things hhe's done that I think are masterpieces. I's really strange, “cause when Harlan is good, he isso good that he's better than everyone else, ‘Now Harlan can't fathom my attitude. He thinks it's tike Joanna (Russ) when she thinks am saying two things at once. But I have read things by Harlan that were ‘masterpieces. But the bulk of the corpus. the total opus, is as far as I'm concerned worthless, with exceptions of tremendous stature, GR: Which ones did you like? PRD: don't remember, “A Boy and His Dog” or something like that. The one where he buries the dog. The dog dies.(As the dog is far from being dead and buried nA Boy and His ‘Dog*. itis possible Phil was referring to Ellison's story“The Death Bird," C, Jerry Kutner suggests). Isald that in public, ata lecture I was giving at Cal State Fullerton. {said that story would be read for as long asthe English language i spoken. And I meant it. I mean it now. ‘Now, I'vehad people tell me st righton the couch where you're sitting right now and say, Ive tried to read your writing and I find It unreasonable. “Unreasonable!” Un- readable. laughs) All those things. And I say, that’s okay. ‘we canstill be friends as people. For all know, you're an artist and I don't like your painting. But le's leave it out of70: PHILIP K. DICK the conversation though. Let's agree that Ifyou don't like sy writing, a least let's not talk about it. Don't sit here and tell me why my writing 1s no good. ‘This one guy came by with his gitlftiend and she said (whiney voice)"Michael lent me one of your books and 1 coulda't get through it and I thought it was awful.” And I liked her areal lot. And I said please, Katy. She was sma enough not to push the polnt.Ithought she was really great. Now Harlan can't do that, If somebody doesn't like his writing, to Harlan that person is a monster. I know lots of people that I really like, who don't ike my writing. know lots of people that I really ike who don' read my writing and never heard of me. When I was inthe drug sub-culture none of them had heard of me. They never read anything. 1 ‘was perfectly happy. I don't give a shit. Nobody is universally liked. Henry Miller once: said Shakespeare was the greatest bore In the English language. ‘And I'm sure f he had ever met Shakespeare he would have told him so. 1 don't like people to be abusive about it. One woman, 1 lent her a book of short stories. She started one and simply threw the book across the room she was so repelled by it Whon it gets to that point, the author has a right — ‘Well, down at the savings and loan T gave a copy of ‘VALIS tothe chick in charge, and she said tried to read it, Dut frankly can't get through those morbid, self-indulgent things where everybody's sick and crying and killing ‘She says I read for enjoyment. And said "You have a brain, Madame, the size of a BB.” But ‘we'restlll good frlends. put up with what she saysand she puts up with what I say. And she's real cute ‘cause she ‘walks up to me and she says "You have allthis money and you'r still wearing those aveul old clothes? What in the ‘world is the matter with you?" And I say Tl take my account to Home Savings. Give mea pen. And shesaysn01 won't, IN HIS OWN WORDS : 7 Idon' havea lotofegotied intomy writing. Infact don't really care exactly ~ In meeting somebody. People always use the same expression: “He's your greatest fan.” Well what do I care? What difference does that make to mo? ‘That's his problem, That's his business, not my business We do not have a contractual relationship. Il tll you one LUme this really got to me, This one girl was really fond of = {infact she was my girlfriend in Canada ~ sald "Your letters are depressing, your books are depressing, and you're depressing,” Se I got out a dollar -she had a copy of some book of mine - what's the one Ursula liked so much? - Ganymede, no, Galactic Pot Healer. She found it depres- sing. I got out a dollar and said “Tl buy it back from you." ‘And her fesponse to that was “No, Illread anything." That id iitate me She'd Included me and my letters to her ~ I'd writen her these real soulful leters saying I can't live without you. ‘And she found that depressing, Pouring my heart out tothis dizzy broad, 1 don't judge people on whether they like my writing. In that case I'd bo this onegreat ego floating against the celling like a helium balloon. And therefore Id be vulnerable to ‘everything that everybody sald. If they sald something {g00d thé balloon would flost higher if they said something ‘bad the balloon would float lower. GR:'Weren't you that way when you started off? PKD: No, never have been. GR: How about the stuf you were really proud of = know you were depressed when you couldn't get Martian Time- Slip (1965) published. (See Chapter 22) PRD: Well that was 8 marketing thing. That was not @ reader response. The reader response has always bean good fon Martian Time-Slip. That's another issue. GR: You make a distinction then between marketing people, publishing people, and ~:78 : PHILIP K. DICK PKD: Oh yes. If you can't sell your book, that's really terrible. There's no way you can laugh that off. You can laugh off somebody saying I tried to read your waiting and ‘couldn't read it, because you know other people rereading {1 But ifno publisher will publish i, then you've written it Invain. And Idon' care if the publisher Ukesit. ust care if he publishes it. He may say I'm buying it because it has ‘commercial value. Name value. In fact, even if the pub- lisher says | thought it was marvelous, I don't even care for ‘an analysis of why it was marvelous. It's my agent (Russell, Galen} whose response I treasure as ar as the marketability, fend the literary thing as @ unified thing. For he's able somehow to judge them simultaneously. He's an agent, ‘which means he's got to sll it, but he's also literate man, ‘which means he's gotto judge it. Soheoperatesontwo axes simultaneously. I everybody waslike him, books would be sold according to their literary value. If you clone him and put him in charge of the whole field, the problems would disappear because the one ctterion would be literary ‘excellence, However you then have the problem of achieving that ‘excellence, because-he is very demanding. When he first farted reading the Angel Archer book, he called me up and id [can't read this. And that shut me down. There's no hope for this at al He's never really repudiated that view. He sald I did fin{sh it, 1did turn it over to Simon and Schuster and it was ‘okay. But he never raved about it. !mean Twasconvinced it had falled. I could see Simon and Schuster saying, “A 21 year old woman? That's got togo-Rewrite the book from the standpoint of a head of lettuce. Angel Archer has to go.” ‘They did't ask for any revisions. ‘That's the thing you always fear, The very thing you ‘wrote the book for, the purpose of waiting the book, is the thing they won't want. That happened tome onetime,inan IN His OWN WORDS : 79 oulline for Doubleday. The thing that Iwrotethe outline for the one thing that wae my raison d'etre forthe book -they ‘wanted it removed. That was with Deus Irae, where he painted with his tongue (quadraplegic Tibor McMastors ‘was to paint with only his tongue). That's why 1 couldnt ‘waite the book (eventually completed by Roger Zelazny} “There are actually quadraplegics who do paint with thelr tongues, and he (Tibor) had servo-assits, 60 It was rela tively easy.0 : PHILIP K, DICK CHAPTER 11 Academic Critics Scanner and Teilhard Darko Suvin sae (had been praising the critically neglected Counter-Clock ‘World to Phil PKD: You see, that's one ofthe reasons I was 30 impressed by your enalyals. In no way were you prejudiced in your praisal of a book by the conventional (ideas held toward) the book by prior critics. In other words, you approached IN His OWN WORDS: 61 ‘each book based on your own appraisal, not ona formula that had been devised by (others). (At this point Phil heaps praise on my writing, and of course this isthe one place the ape broke -kippled in the ‘machine, first time I listened to it.0h well, T have my memories) GR: I don't know what to say. PKD: That's true, and I'l lustrate it for you. {could show ‘you examples {Fishes out a echolaely journal) This is an example of the incredibly stupid, pernicious, affected, pompous, meaningless academic crap that gets witten. ‘This character studied Scanner (A Scanner Darkly), and all he does is wind up talking about Teilhard de Chardin. Because I quote from Tellhard In the goddamned book. Luckman reads a few sentences. So this guy leaps to the conclusion that the secret to Scanner lies in Teilhard de ‘Chardin. And then goes on to analyze Teilhard de Chardin. The reason Luckman quotes from that book is that it Dapponed to be the book closest at hand to me when I was, writing that page. I's of no importance what Luckman reads at that moment. I's just that he reads something that is not related to what's going on, that has no relevance to what's happening. So he's completely detatched from what's going on So picking a book at random was the way to do that, to completely detach the content of the book from the narrative. Now this guy assumes that’s the: key'to the goddamned novel. (The episode in question is in Chapter Bight of Scanner. I was going to try and defend the poor academic's initiative ~ who else but Phil would have ‘Teilhard de Chardin on Chris’ reality close at hand when ‘writing a novel about drugs? And it is Phil's sensibility that {informs the whole work. But Phil right, the quote has n0 relationship to the scene at hand other than wha he say’ it2 : PHILIP K, DICK has, a8 a marker of Luckman's disastociation from his fellows). ‘These people are crazy. They're simply nuts, {told Phil what had inspired me to writemy plece on him ‘was frustration al flading the critics {read dismissing his post'65 work as minor, and that they centered on the same few novels all thetime as his only important work: Man in the High ‘Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, sometimes Dr. Bloodmoney or Ubik}. PRD: What the critics and especially the academle erties hhave done (isto dismiss my later work), and they don't hay todeal with an ongoing process. That makes thelr work for them much easier. Bu thisis very destructive tothe author {nvolved, for the author very soon gets the impression that hhe has done his good, his best writing already, and he di it some time ago. He did it fifteen, twenty years ago. Thishas 1 very pernicious effect on the author's drive to go on ‘working. GR: Has that depressed you? PKD: No, ‘cause I don't pay any attention, But f you did pay attention to it~ I mean, Darko Suvin Just flat out says he hasn't gotten enything out of anything I've written since Man in the High Castle. He thinks that I peaked about 1969. It isnt even a bell-shaped curve, you know. [Just fell right off the chart think it's the worse news. writer can ge, that hedid his best work fifteen years ago, and is obviously never going to do anything good again as long as he lives. (Suvin’s essay, “Artifice as Refuge and World Vie Philip K, Dick's Foci,” appeared in Science-Fiction Stu- dies in 1975, and was reprinted in the Olander-Greenberg anthology Philip K. Dick in 1985, Phil's character it is essentially corect: “I. believe ‘major works, from The Man in the High Castle to Dr. 1N HIS OWN WORDS : 83 Bloodmoney, have been written.” And this in 19781 Suvin does quolify this somewhet by hoping that Dick, “in the ‘middle of his life's path," will prove him wrong by a “chang(ing)..startlingly.” Suvin, as an academic lest, i upset that Dick abandoned the political concerns of his early ‘60s books in favor of the "solitary anxieties” of “unexplainable ontological puzzles" in his novels after 11068, In this Suvin pre-echoes Ursula LeGuin's expressed concern that Dick wae “trying to solve probably unresolv- able metaphysical problems. Phil, es quoted above and In this book’s chapter on LeGuln, more than adequately responds to his “eminently sano" critics. I would go further to say that unlike Suvin with his search for “significant humanistic literature” and LeGuin with her wholesome parables, Dick achioved greatness by plunging into the depths of his, and mine, and your, “solitary anxietie.” There is, afterall, more to the ‘universe than being poliucally correct and adopting healthy sex roles),CHAPTER 12 Multiple Viewpoints / Will Cook / Exploring All Possible Viewpoints James Joyce Third Person Female (Phil explained how his favored “multi-focus viewpoint id not appear in his early science fiction, or in his early literary novel). PKD: You've got to realize that they (most of his literary novels) were written before Time Out of Joint, they were ‘written before that. They came around the time that I wrote IN HIS OWN WORDS : 85 ‘The World Jones Made (and dating back to his first plinge into writing, in 1951) ‘They're really very early novels, and I had no control ‘over viewpoint then. 1 only got control over viewpoint because of a chance remark, a friend of mine, a Western ‘walter named Will Cook ~ who's now dead, who dropped ead from overwork at the age of 48, which made a profound impression on me (laughs). Shitt Is this the rewards of creative endeavors, to drop dead at the age of 446? Iwas then in my 208, you know. thought, when Iget to be around 46, I'm going to slow down enormously. But he found out that I varied my viewpoint, and I didn't even know of the concept "viewpoint." Iwas so naive and so amateurish, So [asked him what my viewpoidt was, he says, ometimesit's third person omniscient, sometimes it's third person interior, something Ukethat. I's like suddenly being equipped for the first time with such concepts as ontology. And Isald, "Gollee!"Ijustfathomed what he was saying. So 1 said, well, are there any other kinds of viewpoints? He said, Oh, yeah! there's first person, you know, and he explained to me all about viewpoint And I just memorized everything he said. T thought, “Goddamn! This sreally great! lean do ll kinds of things | didn't know." In Solar Lottery, there's a scone in the first chapter, where I could not fathom how to Bandle the viewpoint. I literally did not know about interior third person versus omniscience, Sol washavinga hell of aime, ‘So he clued me in to all that stuff So once I got into the viewpoint problem as a problem. I Aecided to explore all the possible viewpoints that might exist, not just the ones that were conventionally used. Like he said, there's just three viewpoints, really. There's third person omniscient, there's first person ~ there's actually first person real interior, like James Joyce did in Ulysses: | knew that. Like you're almost getting down‘n the uncon- ere/ \/ (9 : PHILIP K. DICK. scious. ~ And then there's third person interior, vers third person external, And he explained the difference to said, Well, silt 'U bet Ian think of another viewpoint (laughs): Like having e whole lot of people walking eround with interior viewpotnts, you know. That's where I devel- ‘oped the multl-focl third person Interior, was I ried al the logical possibilities. 1t was almost random, 1 was just entranced by this viewpoint. sald, the key to vweiting, the key to fiction writing, is viewpoint. ‘Cause 1 had read Ulysses, and really loved it, and really studied it, and really studied it very carefully. And it made a big Impression on me. I realized, thats the thing.that makes Ulysses great is the viewpoint. Joyce had found a new viewpoint to write from, that no one had ever found before {t's much deeper inthe psyche then anybody else's. Tm sure everyone knows this. But to me it was 0 revelation. Like the lst part, the last chapter of Ulys ‘with Molly Bloom's stream of consciousness, ‘And then I had really studied Finnegan's Wako, end I hed noticed that Finnegan's Wake ends - I've never seen this pointed out anywhere - with a third person interfor female viewpoint, deep within the psyche of a woman. ‘And much more beautiful than Ulysses. As beautifulasthe tending of Ulysses i, the ending of Finnegan's Wake is ‘even more beautiful. So 1 go, this is the ultimate viewpoint; third person {female very interior. Which is what I'm trying todo in this. goddamn novel (Timothy Archer) that I'm working on now. I's sensitive, is tender, i's comprehensive, you iknow what I mean? i's idiomatic, It allows the greatest latitude in terms of the character development. It permits the greatest development of character imaginable. That's the advantage of that point of view. It's not valuable in terms of an overview of the actions of the plot. That's 1N HIS OWN WORDS : 67 where the omniscient viewpoint Is useful. But the third person interior tunes you Into the thoughts of the person beautifully. That to me is ideal. always wondered what Joyce would have written had he lived longer? What possibly could have followed Finnegan's Wake? Could you imagine what he would have ‘been faced with to surmount that, in terms of evolution of| your books, from Dubliners to Portrait of an Ar Ulysses. So he's siting there, he's written Finnegai ‘Wake ~ What now? What the hell am I going to do now? {chuckles} Go back to the sparse prose style like Dubliners. Write two columns parallel on the page like (Samuel) Delany did ia Dhalgren (1973). guess it’s @ good thing he died after writing Finnegan's ‘Wake, because there's no way ~ ! GRzIt satisfied the academics. Now, a female viewpoint is better than male, in terms of sensitivity? PKD: Yeah, well because of the practice against men being sensitive emotionally. I's @ way of overcoming the image that men have to maintain. In other words, this sa form of | chauvinism, I's an anti-masculine cheuvinism, i's not an tnti-feminist thing: that mendo not have sensitivefeelings, that men are "tough" and “strong.” Like if you have a man thinking those thoughts, he's a wimp. So it don't work.8 : PHILIP K. DICK CHAPTER 13 Themes and Motifs: Hard Science Counter-Clock World Galactic Pot-Healer Aliens / Desmesnes Neanderthals Policemen azn GR: Do you do much scientific esearch for your books? 1 was reading Martian Time Slip the other day, and you had. this party of Bleekman dying for lack of water, and this satelite registering thelr location “at gyrocompass point 4.65003" on Mars, Did you look this upon a Martian globe, or check this with your scientific friends ~ ? IN His OWN WORDS : 68 PKD: No. I made it up. GR:Do youresearch things? 'mnot much Intohard sclence at all, which is probably why I dont like hard science fiction, but Twas reading the other day that there were three types of gravity PKD: Small, medium, and large. (laughter) GR: But I read somebody somewhere that said your science was generally accurate, PKD: My scionce Is accurgte? Christ, 1 don't even know hhow many planets there are. ‘GR: Because they {hard science fans) will complain bitterly about Counter-Clock World. You ask them to believe "six {impossible things in the first chapter.” (Most ofthe carping about this novel, to which Phil responds here, Is in Bruce Gillespie's anthology Philip K. Dick: Electric Shepherd). PKD: Fine, le’ see them write a book with time moving backward. Start with the final punctuation and devolve back to the opening world. GR: But I love Counter-Clock World! PED: There is no way thet you can have people with time moving backward and write a coherent book unless you hhave people violate their promises. Some things still have to procede forward ia near time, Thank you, Tm glad you liked it T liked. the litle opening seript, the opening chapter quotes from Erigena and Aquinas. I spent more time gathering those litle quotes together -- they're not just random, they're not easy quotes to find. They're pretty damned embedded in the corpus of Christian mystical thought. They're just very good, I was noticing that the other day. You can almost reconstruct medieval mysticism ut of Erigena’s quotes.90: PHILIP K. DICK (We were talking of his writing himself into a comer on bis latest novel). GR: Isthishow you wrote your other novels? Some of them seem like they were made up as you went-alofg, in great spurts of Invention. PRD: That's correct, especially with Galactic Pot-Healer. GR: Oh, realy? That's a great favorite of mine. just sort of Improvised? PKD: Oh, completely, O!’Brunner, John Brunnerseld ome one time about Galactic Pot Healer, that got away from ‘you completely, didn't it? And Isaid, yeah, it completely got away from me. Bt it didn’t get away from me tn the senso that it w running ahead of mo, that Iwas trying to catch up with it. ‘mean, Iwas the one who was dragging italong behind me. 1 ‘was winging it, but I was the one who was doing the work. That novel did not write itself. That was a véry difficult novel to write. Because once I established that kind of soaring quality, you know, where they just move so rapidly, it was very hard to maintain. I was afraid I would fall back into that opening sort of dreary monotonous thing that he's stuck with the book's hero on Earth), aid lose the ‘whole point of the book that way. 0 once I took off, I had to keep It going. In @ way the book got away from me, but ina way Ihadto.catty the book all the way to the end. liked that book. You know, you mede some interesting, points (in your essay), like sometlines books, like the Books of the Kalends (in Galactic Pot Healer) tll the truth, and sometimes they lie. Which is avery interesting point. And sometimes aliens -- what'd you say? GR: Sometimes they can be trusted, like Morgo Rahn Wile {n Frolix 8, end sometimes they cannot be trusted, like the e Players of Titan. The whole question in - can this lien be trusted? The one the astronaut, IN HIS OWN WORDS : 61 Isreturning inside of, and Morgostrying toreassurehim of bis goodness. PKD:1 would essentially try to vlewallens asbenign, justin reaction to the sort of thing (Robert) Heinlein did in The Puppet Mastors (1953), where you mistrust the allen merely on the basis that it’s an alien GR: That goes back to The World Jones Made, where everyone gangs up to destroy the innocent “drifters” (helpless alien blobs that land on earth) and asa result the Earth is isolated, quarantined, PKD: I was amezed. | read The World Jones Mado recently. [hadn't read itn years, and [realized something that Ihad completely forgotten. wrote that ata time when Twas still writing mainstream experimental novels. And that shows up in The World Jones Made, the attempt todo something other than “mere science fiction," as I regarded Wat the time so001 GR: The notion of feudal desmesnes, vast tracts of land controlled by one person, recurs a lot in your books (The Game Players of Titan, The Penultimate Truth). PKD: That was- when the Roman Empite brake up - Rome had actually become somewhat decentral fallen into obscurity, and the wealth had all p France. And there were these huge, huge estates called desmesnes, where the wealthy Roman citizens would go and live, and these formed the basis forthe feudal barons, castle. in the Middle Ages. When Rome ell the desmesnes {in France continued on, and they became the basis for England and France (eventually). 30 why do you have them in your books? jecause they're symbols for capital. The feudal barons ~ their vast holdings. Holdings expressed in terms of land. The American South was that way, those planta-2 : PHILIP K. DICK tions were like desmesnes (without) the fortified castes. GR: You like to use aboriginals, “primitive” type peoplesin several of your works (The Simulacra, Martian Time- Slip, et). PKD: Yeah, and thats in that unpublished one, The Man ‘Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike. (Neanderthals) had noincisors, they were all molar, ‘cause he chewed seeds a Tot, like sheep do. Tjust have always felt very sorry for Neanderthal Man, 1 think he got a bad break. He was essentially a timid creature. He wasn'ta huater, He usually lived on fruits and nuts and berries and herbs and bugs, and animals killed by other animals. He was'in no way a fresh predator, and he got aced out by Cro-Magnon man, who was an expert hhunter...the tools that Neanderthal Man left us are so primitive compared to Cro-Magnon’s tools. ‘figured that Neanderthal with that mandible, with those teeth hed a lot of trouble talking. It must have been very difficult fot them to articulate jst because ofthe mandible. GR: Policemen recur as figures in many of your novels, usually rather sympathetically (Flow My Tears, Do An- droids Dream, The Divine fnvasion) PRD: You see, I figure that if | write about cops asif they're real nico, then when I'm stopped on the freeway they're ‘going to be real nice to me. GR: So how many policemen have read your books? PKD: Well they have orread the book, and they have to stop me, 50 that's a population of zero. Its an ambivalence | have toward authority. [ would really like to make frlends with the police. Im afraid i | start depicting cops the way 1 look.at them, (A) it will |N Hs OWN WORDS : 59 appear thet I'm paranoid - God knows that's true about ‘cops, I am paranoid about cops - end (B) will antagonize them just that much more. So I start to write about them because I am just obsessed by cops as images of the dehumanized creature. And then I start to humanize them, really out of motives of fear. I start to create a dangerous cop, and then I think this is scaring me, Il make him real nice, He just looks dangerous. Underneath he's got a heart of gold would like to come toa modus vivendi withthe police. ‘would really like to bury the hatchet with the police. 1 just don't know if t's ever golng to be possible for me. 'm head fof « committee In this bullding (bis apartment house), and Ive got.two cops on my committee, and the first night 1 ‘walk n and saw two copssitting there, just about dropped dead. And they made me head ofthe committee too. And I ‘wes wearing my Halght Ashbury Free Clinic T-shirt, and everything.94 PHILIP K. DICK CHAPTER 14 Fans and Fellow Writers Disch and Spinrad Michael Moorcock and “The Skull” Robert Silverberg “Life is Predicated on Human Love” (comment by Robert Silverberg) aware GR: How have you gotten along with the fans over the ‘years? I gather there's a whole subculture of them I know vry little about. KD: Well, lused torun with fans at conventions, but they ‘were all into the conventions, and I'm not into conventions, 80 I don't tend to see many of them anymore. Fans always notice misprints in your books, where you spell a word wrong or get a name wrong, and they ‘memorize all these things and they come up to you and say “On page 34 of Deus Irae you have Hagia Sophia spelled with two g's, and It only has one g ‘cause T looked it up. ‘What do you say to that?” and I say “Well, If you're so smart, why don't you write the novels" — no, | always say “Youre right." [always agree when they find something in ‘one of my books. "You said on page 12 that she had red hair ‘and on page 98 you said she has black hair." I say "You're right. You're absolutely right.” Ist eompletely agree with ‘any error, fault ~ like one guy came up to me end said “In Man inthe High Castle you left the second umlaut off Gotterdammerung, "Have you no further words to say to me about that book, sit?""No," he says, "that's it." says thank you and goodbye. GR: I wanted to ask you about your colleagues ~ you're {rlends, I understand, with Tom Disch and Norman Spinrad. PKD:I met Spinrad as a person before I read much of his ‘work, and liked him asa person; Lalsoliked his work. With Disch I started out reading his writing and contacted him to Jet him know how much I liked his writing So the two are @ reversal, mirror images. | forget when I mat Spinred. It was at a convention. GR: You have really funny short story, which you haven't hhad reprinted, set al a science fletion convention, PKD: Yeah, yeah, "Waterspider" (1964). A lot of the conversation in there did occur, like the conversation between me and van Vogt; that literally transpired between us. It's relly funny because after it came out, I got a letter from van Vogt and he said that I had figured out what he ‘would have said, but actually he had said all that tome. But tw tiis OWN WoRDS :¢ \(3 PHILIP K, DICK he didn't remember because I was nobody to hirh then. It ‘was 54 (when they conversed), GR: Do you know Michael Moorcock? PKD: I don't know anything about him. 1 know he's in this area here - he's in L.A. - and I have his phone number. Spinrad gave It to me. He's written some very nice things about me. I don't know his writing at all GR: Call him up some time. if he likes your stuf. PKD: Well, I should, shouldn't I? But you see, then I'm in the position where I haven't read his stuf. read one story by him, about Jesus being a mongolotd idiot, ("Behold the Man,” 1966. It appeared in the same Issue of the British magazine New Worlds, No. 166, September 1966, that John Brunner's groundbreaking praise of Dick’s novels appeared in, and was later expanded to novel form. Itdeals with an extremely unpleasant, neurotic scientist being transported back in time to ancient Pale- stine, in search of Jesus, and winds up with the character “becoming” Jesus and being crucified, without any gain of nobility in his character. It is considered a seminal "New Wave" taboo-breaking work - Dick at that time being praised as a precursor of that 1960s rebellion}, GR: I hated that story. PRD: | did to0. It was too long, too. The point could hive been made in about half the wordage. And i's dumb idea. 1’sevidentby the third word that the guy himself isgoingto ‘tum out tobe the Savior. And I wrote that once, in a story called “The Skull” (If magazine, September 192, not reprinted), which is one ofthe fist horror stories of rhine ever published, the first one (of mine in) Ifmagazine. twas about aguy sent back in time to kill the Savior inthis case, of an unspecified religion). And he's given the Savior's skull, And he goes back in time, and he's standing there ‘elting ready to walk out into that world, in the costume of | | 1IN HIS OWN WORDS : 67 that time period, and he's holding the skull, and he suddenly sees that I's his own skull. He realizes that he is the Savior. And he tres to get back into the future quick enough, but he is already back in the past when he discovers it, and gomebody sees him and says "My God, ‘you've been resurrected!" It's to late, they've seen him, as the resurrected Savior. Ina way, my story seven more subtle, Just by being back there - he missed the time, he got there after the guy had ‘boen killed - (he guarantees the religion he'd been sent to prevent) ‘GR: Do you know Robert Silverberg? PKD: Oh, yeah, sure. I've known Silverberg for years. Silverberg always comes up to you and says your beard is cut wrong. That's the wrong style. Or that git’... too ‘young for you. He assumes a worldly-wise, sophisticated stance, as if he knows everything, and the truth of the ‘matters that Bob isa very tender, loving and gentle person, ‘a very sensitive person who's been hurt very badly. He told ‘me that once, I don’t know if I should talk about it, but he

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