Thursday, July 5, 2007

Welcome to the Future


To all those recent reviewers who argued PKD was "lousy at prognostication" check this out. Uber Dick-Head and author of Techgnosis, Erik Davis, sent me a link today for a database at Technovelgy (apparently it's where science and fiction meet - and all these years I've been thinking they happened upon each other in Bukowski's toilet) that lists gadgets from future fiction.

You can look at a list of Dick's futuristic contraptions and see the relevant passages where he mentions them. It's not a short list.

Some of my favorites PKD are:

Death Rattle File: A safe programmed to self-destruct in the event the owner dies (I'm sure Cheney's got one of these)

Luxvid Eyes (Jensen Wide-Angle): Eldritch's top of the line x-ray specs (Not to be confused with Tally Isham's blueZeiss Ikons in Gibson's "Burning Chrome").

And of course I love the Scramble Suit.

If you still don't believe Dick could see the future, check out Robert Silverberg's essay "The Days of Perky Vivienne."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

D'oh, I was going to do a similar thing and have a 'Dicktech' bit on my site. Oh well. I might just do it anyway, as a backup or something :)