And We're Back! With a Fascist Dystopia... and a Contest!

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Well Dick-Heads, nothing makes a person return to the pursuits of their past like six months of sheltering in place. So here we are. Two specific things spurred me to return to blogging about Philip K Dick after about five years of very little research and, honestly, some waning interest.

The first was my SF book group reading We Can Build You on my suggestion. The novel blew me away on reread and stirred up what Hemingway would call "all the old feeling again." More on that later. The second was this insane thing with paramilitary/black-ops/anonymous federal agents disappearing people in Portland two nights ago.

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The images were startling, and yet, somehow, also familiar. Perhaps because we Dick-Heads were looking at them back in 2010 in John Alan Simon's adaptation of Radio Free Albemuth. RFA is now, by far, the most visually prescient Philip K Dick adaptation to have been made. Congratulations, John, you nailed it! If you haven't seen the film, it's available through Amazon Prime and is definitely worth checking out. The film seems especially relevant these days, and the independent production really captures the PKD vibe better than any of the Hollywood adaptations starring Tom Affleck or Ben Cruise.

So to celebrate, not only my return, but also the startling dissolution of at least the appearance of a functioning democracy, let's have a contest. Above and below are numbered pictures, some from Portland Thursday night, and some from Radio Free Albemuth. Be the first to correctly identify which images are from RFA and which are from Portland in the comments and I will send a copy of Anne Dick's memoir, the rare-self published version (no, not the super rare original edition).

Of course it may take a while as I'm basically locked out of my office, sheltering in place in what Phil Dick called "East Gak-ville," East Oakland.

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Honestly I'm kind of excited to be back at this. Over the last couple weeks I've been rereading some of these entries and I was struck by how much work I did here. I'm thinking now about some kind of book project, either a compendium of what I've blogged here, or perhaps the PKD book I've attempted to write so many times before. We'll see. Stay tuned for some stuff on We Can Build You, and a bunch of other stuff that transpired while I was attempting to raise the sunken cathedral of Heldscalla.

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Oh, and how about this quote from the novel, Radio Free Albemuth:

“One asks, Why should such disparate groups as the Soviet Union and the US intelligence community back the same man? I am no political theoretician, but Nicholas one time said, 'They both like figureheads who are corrupt. So they can govern from behind. The Soviets and the fuzz, they're all for shadow governments. They always will be, because basically each of them is the man with the gun. The pistol to the head.' ... However, Nicholas was no political theoretician either. In point of fact he had no idea how the coalition behind Fremont had formed; in fact he had no idea it existed. Like the rest of us over those years, he simply stood amazed as prominent politicians were murdered and Fremont rose rapidly to power. What was happening made no sense. No pattern could be discerned.  There is a Latin motto, when one is seeking to know who has committed a crime, that goes, Look to see who gains.”

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What have you all been up to? Let me know in the comments!