New PKD Otaku #23 Now Available!

I feel as if, as I approach the summit of a cold and treacherous mountain, still a ways from the top, that I have seen a well outfitted group of experienced mountaineers headed towards me, having already made a successful climb. I can see the satisfaction in their eyes, and know that they are headed towards a warm bed and a good meal. And me, with so much mountain still to climb.

I feel this way because the good people over at PKD Otaku have delivered a massive dose of PKD, sixty odd pages of it. All of it, witty and urbane and smartly assembled. There are a few reviews of The Exegesis, easily the most thoughtful ones we've seen thus far. Lord Running Clam has indexed Dick's 1974 volume of letters, and the crew over there is taking names and kicking serious ass. It's a smorgasbord of Dickiana. We are indebted to the crew over there: Patrick Clark, Lord Running Clam, Frank Bertrand, Jami Morgan, and Nich Buchanan.

Their efforts give me great relief, as I have sort of dropped the ball. I mean I spent my winter break working on fiction and reading The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe, for the cosmic christ's sake!

Download your giant .pdf here.

2011: Now Read About Last Year

It's that time of year, dear readers, when every blogger, in order to have something to write about during the slow week after Christmas, looks back and reflects on the year just ending. Most people are talking about what a crummy year it was, and it was, if you were, you know, unemployed, or illegally detained, or swapped out for spare parts.

But for Dick-heads, the year was pretty OK.

Here, in no particular order, are the most awesome Dickian things to happen in 2011 (and some things to look forward to in 2012. I know it's not organized that well... not my problem):

Umberto's Book! - The Twisted Worlds of Philip K Dick, by Italian Scholar, Umberto Rossi, is, I think, the best secondary source yet published on Dick's work. Insightful, articulate, nuanced without being hyperbolic or pedantic, Rossi's work will be a boon to Dick thinkers for a while to come. I'd link to it on amazon, but I can no longer do business with amazon in good conscience, so buy it at whatever Huge Internet Retailer you currently support.

Adjustment Bureau - We got a Dick adaptation in 2011. Not to my tastes, but some people seemed to like it. I just think Dick's stories push the envelope, and these recent adaptations have fallen back on tired movie standards, and all that pushing, the feeling of it, is gone. There is, however, much litigation underway, along with a possible Adjustment Bureau TV show. According to IMDB, Ubik has a 2013 release date.

The Rebirth of PhilipKDickFans.com. Under new management, the fan site is up, running, kicking ass, and taking names. Check it out, and be sure to pick up your free 2012 calender. Also, did you know the entire back catalog of PKD Otaku is now available here?! You could circumnavigate the globe several times by barge and still not have time to read all the amazing PKD commentary in there. Also, House of Ubiquity is underway, but badly needs your support. Make it a New Year's Resolution to share a weird Dick experience with the world.

The Exegesis - The book that many Dick-heads had been waiting for finally arrived last month. Though reviews have been fairly negative, the book has been happily chewed on by Dick-heads for a couple months, and I would hope we will see some interesting study and insight come from this giant volume. Working on the book was, for me, one of the highlights of the year.

Radio Free Albemuth - While RFA continued racking up accolades and wowing audiences at select festivals, few Dick-heads have had a chance to see it. According to director John Simon, Radio Free Albemuth will see some kind of theatrical release in 2012. That's huge, as the movie is now vying with Barjo for the 'Best PKD Adaptation Nobody Has Seen' award. Stay tuned for details on when and where RFA will be.

Philip K Dick and Philosophy - a cool book that examines Dick's work (and the cinematic adaptations based thereupon). In response to every review that fails to account for Dick's philosophy in The Exegesis, there is now a book dedicated to the study of that very unity.

Image courtesy of Driftglass

We also have the opportunity to enjoy the most Dickian presidential election in history, which has so far pitted a womanizing African American pizza tycoon, against a theocratic foster mother to some 28 children, against The Three Stigmata of Newton Gingrich, against a pro-life Libertarian, all vying for the chance to challenge the first African American president, who's up for re-election.

Two, count 'em, two, big PKD conferences in 2012, one in Germany, and the one I'm working on in San Francisco. 2012 is going to be a big year for Dick-dom. I don't think we have yet reached the end of the Phil Dick novel we all seem to be stuck inside.

Thanks for reading in 2011, let's hope we all survive 2012. It's a bit Dickian, this whole thing about a Mayan doomsday prediction for this year, right?

All I Wanted For Christmas Were Links, Links, Links!

I've been away; now I'm back. Before we look back on the year that was, let's stroll through the internets for a moment to see what people are saying about the world of Dickiana.

I know a lot of you have had weird Phil Dick-style, pink-beam-esque mystical experiences of your own. I know this because you write me emails about them. Well, now we all have a place to share our inexplicable Dickian synchronicities: a new blog called The House of Ubiquity dedicated to "Mystical and Mysterious Encounters in the World of Philip K. Dick." Someone has already posted a super interesting entry about a dream involving the drugstore in Ubik. That site's not going to work without your input, so get on there and start talking about how weird you are.

That was the one really cool thing I had to blog about. Sigh.

Did you see that Adjustment Team was one of the best SF movies of 2011 according to ScienceFiction.com? Go here and you can learn that and other fascinating things. For my money Moon was the best SF movie 2011. You're probably saying to yourself, 'but that movie came out a long time ago!" But it, in my opinion, so far outshines any of the entries in this year's list (*admittedly I haven't seen a whole lot of these), that it deserves to win every year until something better comes out.

I found this weird site where people ask and answer questions, and they have some weird questions, like this one:

I have just finished reading VALIS, and I remain puzzled by something. It seems to be made clear that Horselover Fat is, in essence, an alter ego of Philip Dick - a separate personality of someone experiencing multiple personality problems, or just a literary device to cover talking to himself. Anyhow, Horse clearly does not have an existence of his own.

Admittedly, it's not exactly a question, and if it were, it wouldn't be a good one, but answer is pretty insightful. Read it here.

Reader Mr Hand turned me on to this crazy blog where PKD gets compared to Ken Wilbur, who I looked up, and is not really anything like PKD, except they both had esoteric ideas. And the blog entry is really weird because it's super reverential about Wilbur and kinda snarky about PKD, but the whole thing is set on a background composed of Dick's book covers. Sample sentence:

"Philip K. Dick, on the other hand, was a sprawling disaster of a man, who wrote bizarre science fiction stories."

Never gets old, does it guys?

Anyhoo, there's this piece about Lethem and Vonnegut and Dick's Exegesis... Sample sentence:

It's a shame then that the book is more or less a flood of babble. Dick's religious experience—some have called it an undiagnosed stroke—may have filled his head with concepts, but it surely didn't bless him with coherence.

Oy.

Ever wonder about Portuguese States of America from Radio Free Albemuth? Well it's not without historical precedent, at least in the world of weird, esoteric maps, as Big Think explains:

In one of those parallel universes, there exists a country called the Portuguese States of Africa, spanning southern Africa from its Atlantic coast all the way to the Indian Ocean. This country, a transcontinental Lusophone giant perhaps one day to rival Brazil, is based on more evidence in this world than PKD’s possibly merely psychotic visions. It was envisaged in this Mapa Cor-de-rosa (the ‘Pink Map’).

"The Pink Map," huh? Read more here.

Tessa Dick sold an autographed copy of Flash Gordon from Art Spiegleman. It went for what I consider to be a pretty good price.

SFF Audio is contending (with a fair amount of corroborating evidence) that PKD's short story "Upon the Dull Earth" is now in public domain.

That's it for now. Stop reading! Get some fresh air. Maybe tell your loved ones that you appreciate them.

Happy Birthday, Philip K Dick

Can you imagine what Dick himself would make of today's review of The Exegesis of Philip K Dick in the New York Times appearing on what would have been his 83rd birthday? First, what would he think about its publication? I can't help but imagine that he'd be pretty pleased with himself. What would he think about the review? Well, it's impossible to say, but it is - I think - really important to notice that this review (done by none other than Charles Platt, a writer intimately familiar with Dick's work and weirdness) fails to say anything concrete about WHAT IT IS DICK IS THEORIZING ABOUT IN THE EXEGESIS! Sorry, but it kinda bugs me. Sure Dick is wondering what the heck happened during 2-3-74, but I would argue the Exegesis is much more concerned with fairly conventional theological questions: 1) If God is real, why is there so much suffering in the world? 2) Are our minds accurately perceiving the world around us, or are our instruments of perception faulty? Are our minds clouded by the seemingly important stuff like, you know, rationality, and all of that? 3) Does God exert direct control over our lives or is he a detached, uninterested observer?

I think the review I'm waiting for will at least acknowledge that the 'endless theorizing' is broadly addressing these questions. And that Dick is taking part in what I consider almost conventional theology. Once you set these parameters, the book (and Dick's exegetical work) make a lot more sense. Charles Platt calls Dick's philosophizing 'tiresome.' I guess I would agree to the extent that it is exhausting to think about this serious stuff, and the diary-like entries make sussing out the outlines of Dick's theories all the more difficult, but you wouldn't call Spinoza's or Hume's work tiresome, or if you did, you would hedge the complaint by saying 'for the average reader' or whatever.

I, for one, am enjoying watching Dick's 900 page meditation on the nature of the Universe collide with our society's predilection for ease and convenience. I enjoy watching real religious faith, in all its complications and doubt, set against the easy faith of modern, mega-church Christianity with all its feel-good intolerance. And I really appreciate Dick's hardbound reminder that the tough questions you ask yourself are the most important, and if reading Dick's Exegesis prompts others to ask these questions, the way it has for me, the endeavor is an obvious success. Even if it wears us all out and exhausts us.

A Tale of Two Conferences

I have been, lately, working pretty hard to get a Philip K Dick Conference scheduled for Sept 2012. I've laid lots of ground work, lining up a few of the bigger names, putting together a committee at SFSU, talking to my department heads, scheduling meetings and putting the infrastructure in place. This Wednesday will be a major day, as I am scheduled to meet with the dean of Humanities and I need him to get excited about this project.

In a somewhat Dickian twist (*say appearing at the very end of a chapter three and ensuring the reader turns the page and begins reading chapter four) I have been informed of another Dickian conference to take place in Dortmund, Germany in November of 2012. While this new circumstance was met by a cold, hard spot deep in my stomach, I have learned to revel in this pair of conferences, one on each side of the Atlantic, and can now see that these conferences will be fairly different and I'm excited about each now.

First of all, the Dortmund conference appears, from their call for papers, to be a fairly conventional academic conference with heavyweights like Norman Spinrad, Roger Luckhurst, and Umberto Rossi scheduled to appear. Their call to papers offers a nod to the scholarly contributions of Jameson and Darko Suvin. The organizers will even be collecting several of the presented papers to be published in a book. I am glad to see this kind of event taking place for two reasons: 1) this is long overdue and will be an awesome contribution to Dickian studies, and 2) because the conference I am organizing no longer has to aspire to such lofty goals.

Instead, I am hoping that our California conference will attract a broad spectrum of fans and scholars, while having a slightly less formal, more fun tone. Additionally, being in the Bay Area will allow some sightseeing of Dickian touchstones, Art Music, the Francisco Street house, etc.

We are still in the midst of the early stages of planning and though there has been an initial call for papers (which you can read, for the time being, over at the PhilipKDickFans site), we are still working on sending out more formal invitations and creating a dedicated website for our American fest. Additionally, for interested parties, I am pasting the Dortmund call for papers below.

2012 is going to be one hell of a Dickian year. Stay tuned for a Kickstarter link and a chance to buy some cool stuff, and raise funds for the conference.

Dortmumd Call For Papers (click to enlarge)

Now Wait For The Next Adaptation

Word leaked in Variety today that Now Wait For Last Year has been called up out of cold-pack to become the next hot PKD-product in Hollywood (Here's the Cinemablend story). On the one hand, cool! Wait For Last Year is a good novel with lots of neat stuff to recommend it as a Hollywood blockbuster: it's got war, action sequences (I remember someone almost gets thrown out of a helicopter), it's got a love story, and the most substantive moral statement ever made by an autonomic cab in any Dick work (and that's saying something!). On the other hand, I mean, wow! Is there anything they're not going to make into a PKD vehicle? Is there an option on the story of Dick's typewriter yet? Is this just Autofac-style commodification for commodity's sake?

One thing's for sure; the lawyers have, no doubt, double checked that the novel is still under copyright.

Exegeting the Exegesis

I've been itching to dig into something a little deeper, dear readers, even as the end of the semester does its usual number on my brain. Articles about the Exegesis are starting to appear now that people have had a couple weeks to digest it (by the way, I'm not sure that's even possible in two weeks, but that's not stopping people). Anyway, the article that got me thinking was in the Spectator by Andrew Mckie, one of our regular readers from beyond the pond. In Did Philip K Dick Dream a Message From God? Mckie writes:

"Judging by these journals, however, what Dick thought was much more dangerous. He maintained that, in 1974, he had received a message from God telling him the modern world was a fraud, a simulacrum laid over a reality that had not changed since the first century AD. He understood, or came to understand as he wrote about his experience, that this might be a delusion, and that it might be understood as a metaphor – but, uncomfortably for modern sensibilities, only in the way that St Paul or St John the Divine might have been regarded as deluded, or that the Gospels should be read only metaphorically."

Yep. Here we go. As one of my friends said, pretty soon they're gonna have to stop saying Dick was 'casting endless theories' and they'll have to start talking about what those theories consist of. And when they do, hang on, because it's going to be a wild ride. Mckie contextualizes for us:

"But in one respect, PKD is out of step with the times. The Baudrillardians are happy to have him point out that time is an illusion; that the authorities are out to get us; that God can talk through cheesy television advertisements; and that, with the endless refractions of different media playing the same message back and forth, nothing is quite as it seems. But they are happy for him to do so just as long as it is a fun metaphor making an important point but not to be taken seriously."

It's the G-word folks - God, a relic that science fiction has been devoutly wishing to extinguish since the genre's inception. Indeed, Dick's religiosity later in life put him at odds with any number of science fiction writers including Ursula K LeGuin, Norman Spinrad, Kevin Jeter, Thomas Disch, and many others. While the highbrow literary atheists can tolerate Eliot, and the Fantastics put up with Tolkien and CS Lewis, Science Fiction has, as a genre, remained at odds with the theological, in fact this opposition is, in many ways, a science fictional religion in its own right. The Kids in the Hall have an amazing skit about this (watch it here and click to the 2:30 mark).

I can remember as like a twelve-year-old reading Asimov's Foundation Series in which characters say the word "Galaxy" in place of the word "God" and understanding, almost immediately, what was going on.

So the other day on Facebook, I saw that Radio Free Albemuth posted a link to Mckie's piece and almost immediately someone commented: "Wow that's such crap. Dick was incredible, but his having a stroke doesn't mean that god exists." When you think about that statement, it becomes clear, pretty quickly, that it's believing in God at all that's 'crap.' And here's where the rubber's gonna meet the road: the Exegesis is hardcore theological speculation, an endeavor that many in our current milieu feel to be pointless, and what's worse, the sign of a degraded mind.

But to take the God out of the PKD, is kinda like listening to punk rock quietly: what's the point? I'm not getting all deist on you. I actually am pretty open minded about the whole thing. Recently, I asked a class of students to raise their hands if they thought Wilbur Mercer, the savior character in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was real, and I was amazed when not a single hand went up.

PKD always gives you an out. Deities in Dick's work are almost always made manifest by the characters, rather than appearing in burning bushes or whatever. I mean there's always the chance that Horselover Fat is just a deluded idiot, a fool on a fool's errand, and so you can dismiss his devoutness as misguided. But then, like the commenter on Facebook, you have to invent some kind of physiological explanation for 2-3-74: temporal lobe epilepsy, a series of small strokes, amphetamine psychosis, etc. Sure those are possible, perhaps they are even more likely than the notion that Dick really did see God, and God really did talk to Phil Dick, but you cannot explain away Dick's enthusiasm for belief.

My impression of The Exegesis is that it signals a shift in Dick's interests as a writer. In fact, it may be the earlier composition of the novel Ubik that marks this change. Before Ubik, Dick's central pre-occupation as a writer seemed to be entropy and withdrawal, but with Ubik there is suddenly a focus on redemption and renewal, and, in The Exegesis, Ubik becomes short hand for this kind of salvation. In this way, Dick's career then comes to resemble the layout of TS Eliot's modernist masterpiece, The Waste Land, wherein Eliot first catalogs the numerous ways the landscape has been made lifeless, dull, and dead, before ending with a meditation on rejuvenation through love and empathy (yeah, it matches that closely!).

So here's my prediction: watch for a lot more reviews to focus on Dick's "endless theorizing" in part because the theories are difficult to understand, and in part because Dick's religious attitude is so thoroughly at odds with our secular reality.