Get to Know the Fest Guest: Part 2 -- Blake Wilson

In preparation for the upcoming Dick-Fest 2024 in Fort Morgan this June, Total Dick-Head is running a series of interviews with fest guests. This week it's Blake Wilson. 

TDH: Can you tell us a little about how you got interested in Philip K. Dick?

Blake Wilson: I can literally point to the first PKD I read: it was Phil's 1981 letter to David Hartwell (editor, Timescape Books) outlining his would-be next novel The Owl in Daylight. It was published for the first time in issue #13 of the late great fanzine Forced Exposure, which came out in the winter of 1988. I was an avid FE reader in the late 80s, mostly due to the excellent writing and music coverage by Jimmy Johnson and Byron Coley. I liked a lot of the music they liked (Sonic Youth, Big Black, Swans, Mission of Burma). They also loved PKD and his name had popped up in some earlier issues, but the letter was the first thing I read. I was fascinated. I had to find out more about him. The problem? Nothing was in print––at least nothing I could find, and used bookstores weren't turning up anything. I kind of forgot about him until I received a piece of junk mail a year or so later from the Quality Paperback Book Club, one of those "book of the month" subscription deals. Lo and behold! There it was: the first omnibus edition of The VALIS Trilogy! Brand new! I ticked the box and agreed to join. I may have literally taped a penny to a postcard and sent it back, which is how those clubs worked back in the day. VALIS arrived a few weeks later. I read it. It blew my mind. I still have that copy, dogeared and heavily penciled, held together with more than one layer of packing tape. The next QPBC mailer offered The Nag Hammadi Library by James Robinson, which would have blown right past me but for the PKD book I had just read....my first "PKD moment," perhaps? So I added that to the growing collection, which soon included the fruits of intensified used book scouting in Sacramento, San Francisco, Berkeley, and the rest of California. I also somehow ended up on Mark Zieising's mailing list, so I was able to score a brand new copy of Dark Haired Girl directly from him. When Sutin's biography and the Vintage editions started coming out in the early 90s it suddenly seemed like PKD was everywhere. The so-called "mainstream" novels all appeared around this time as well––for better or for worse. It was somewhat of an embarrassment of riches to be in the middle of this PKD “revival” as it were, but very exciting. 

TDH: Tell us a little about your PKD-related publications and endeavors... 

Blake Wilson: I currently have two book chapters in print. One of them is in the book The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy (Open Court, 2017) and it gets into what I take to be PKD's politics and how they weave their way into the book and, less subtly, into the TV series. The other is in Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy (Open Court, 2019), and it's about "ethical" cops: Rick Deckard (Phil's version and the movie version) and K from 2049. I've got two more book chapters in the works. Both are about religion. One of them, "Perturbations in the Reality Field: Logos, Gnosis, and Aletheia in Philip K. Dick's Late Works," should be coming out any day now in a book edited by Richard Feist called Jesuits in Science Fiction: Reason and Revelation on Other Worlds (Vernon Press). The latest is called "The Conquest of Death and the Divine Afterlife: Philip K. Dick's Life and Fiction of the 1960s," and it will be appearing in the The Esoteric Theology of Philip K. Dick (Lexington, I think). I know several folks at DickFest are publishing in this book and I'm really looking forward to the discussions. I've also given a few conference presentations where I shared the stage with you, David. On the horizon: I'm gearing up for an article or two on PKD's ethics. 

TDH: What do you plan to talk about at the PKD Fest? 

Blake Wilson: Dunno! Probably something about religion or ethics. Or religion AND ethics. 

Thanks, Blake! See you in Colorado!