I only have time to throw a few links up here today. I hope over the weekend to write a more substantive post, but I just haven't had any time for Dicking around lately. Regardless, here are a few important articles from around the Intertoobz:
Here's an interesting article about Dick's friendship with roommate Jack Spicer posted at Strange Horizons - sure it's from almost a year ago, but I hadn't read it.
Then there's this io9.com story that suggests PKD's Man in the High Castle is a work of brilliant prescience, predicting our nation's current fall from grace. The article of course overlooks how similar the Allied and Axis powers were DURING WWII!!! (I think that was one of the points PKD was raising with the book)
And the Fortean Times has an article delving into a few of Dick's weirder letters of 1975, specifically his paranoia over the cracking of his safe in San Rafael, and it's possible connection to an anti-American conspiracy involving a new strain of syphilis. One could write a lot of articles about weird letters Dick wrote in 1975.
6 comments:
Quote; "The article of course overlooks how similar the Allied and Axis powers were DURING WWII!!!"
What?!!! The Axis were aggressor nations. The Allies defended weaker nations and themselves. I don't mind a little revisionism and moral relativism - yeah, sure America interned Japanese, firebombed Dresden, etc., etc. But we weren't Nazis, were we?
He sure was one strange character, and americans seem to love conspiracy theories don't they!
Anonymous, I was sure when I wrote that someone was gonna chime in with your point - and it is a valid one. We weren't Nazis. But both countries harbored incredible racism and xenophobia, both committed war crimes, and the thing that's weird about Man in the High Castle is that, tho the Axis powers won world war II the same societal problems associated with modernity are present. It's almost like the characters are expecting things to be different in America after our defeat, but things are still sort of the same...
what, no explanation of the picture? thanks for the articles. the fortean one is "timely" for me as I've been thinking about your MA thesis on "Dick's paranoia"
Just reading through SELECTED LETTERS vol. 5 for a performance I did last month (posted the letter I used for source material over at my blog), and in researching, found an amazing, apologetic letter to NIXON, of all people, in which Dick begs the former president's forgiveness for all the disparaging emotions Dick had felt about him while he was in office. Bizarre.
for Mr. Hand. The photo is possibly from '72 LA.Con, originally taken for Crawdaddy (12/72) (The woman could be Wanda Kendall mentioned in several letters c.Oct'72)
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