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.