Dick-Fest Fundraiser in Full Swing

A who's who from Fests past... 

The organizing committee for the 2024 Dick-Fest in Ft Morgan is working feverishly to curate a totally Dick-tacular event for this June 13-16. Currently there is a fundraiser at GoFundMe, where the gang has already raised more than $1500 to help pay location deposits and grease the wheels of civic involvement. The organizers are determined not to charge guests for the events. That's right: the talks and other events will be free to all who attend. So please consider donating to and/or attending the Fest. We'd love to see you there. 

Lord Running Clam sez, “For me it’s all about bringing the PKD fans together. Making friends, meeting and appreciating the art and spirit of each person. Phil's last resting place is here in the heart of beautiful Fort Morgan, Colorado, next to his baby twin-sister Jane. So come and pay your respects to this great writer and celebrate his life and work with your friends this summer of 2024. See you there!"

This is the first Colorado Dick-Fest since Covid, as well as the first to take place in Ft Morgan, where the bodies are buried. The amazing list of guests and speakers is still growing, but here are the players scheduled to appear so far: 

Lord RC

Joanathan Lethem

Sam Umland

Henri Wintz

Andrew Butler

David Gill 

Blake Wilson 

David Agranoff

DH Wilson

Keith Giles

Jens Christoph-Nolte

Ted Hand

Josh Lind

Frank Hollander

Pink Beam University Presents: The Total Dick-Head's Guide to Philip K. Dick.

 

(click image to embiggen)

Big news, folks: I've decided to go rogue and teach a PKD course via Zoom. A combination of draconian cuts at San Francisco State University (resulting in my reduced teaching load this spring) and a post-Covid culture uses Zoom, makes this course possible at long last. I am also at work on a full-length biography of PKD, and you know what they say, "The best way to really learn something is to teach it." 

I'm really excited about this for a number of reasons, most importantly, look at that list of guests (which is still growing)! There has never been ANYTHING like this in the world of Philip K. Dick. Longer and more in-depth than an academic conference, more star studded than a university class, this is punk rock literary criticism, the perfect vibe for a deep dive into Dick. The QR code on the flyer will take you to the class syllabus. Class starts January 30th and meets twice a week Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The course starts at $185 for members ($195 for non-members). 

Stay tuned. Things will be livening up here on the blog as we prepare for a Dick-tastic 2024 set to include both my class and the 2024 Dick-Fest in Ft. Morgan, Colorado! 

UPDATE: The class has been picked up by Morbid Anatomy, an online school of ephemera! Folks who have already signed up will be contacted, click here for more info and to enroll. 

Revised Festival Schedule - Saturday September 22.

 

We've just finished scheduling the break-out sessions for Saturday Sept 22 at the PKD Fest. Click below to embiggen the schedule pics...

PKD Otaku #25 Now Out

Can you believe Patrick Clark and his band of merry pranksters have produced 25 issues of the best PKD periodical on the net? I know, it's unbelievable, but they've done it again. This time they even included an interview with me about the PKD Fest in addition to all the PKD goodies and insight. An interview with Anthony Peake? Wow, Nice work. Frank Bertrand has a nice interview with a British SF editor, and I love Andre's letter to the editor. One measure of Dick's greatness is his ability to inspire other smart people to do great related work, and PKD Otaku is all the evidence you need.

Download the pdf here. And check out all the back issues here.

Festival News

Lots of cool stuff happening with the PKD Festival to be held in SF this September. First, we've updated the website, so now you can head over there and sign up to be on the mailing list, that way you'll be in the know for the latest developments.

Next we've had two exciting confirmations:

Paul M. Sammons, author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner will give a talk on everybody's favorite replicant flick. Mr Sammons interviewed PKD a few times and is in a unique position to talk about this stuff.

Also, Rich Doyle, annotator and author of the Afterword in the Exegesis will be be presenting. Additionally, Rich will be rounding out our Exegesis panel discussion with Pam Jackson, Jonathan Lethem, Erik Davis, and me.

I'm on spring break this week so I'll have some time to work on the lodging arrangements and a Kickstarter project, so stay tuned.

Picture of the Day

You guys have probably already seen this picture, but I may have just lined up a Blade Runner-themed belly dance performance for the 2012 Festival/Conference so, in honor of that, I thought I'd post it.

There is a lot we know about this photo. I know I read about it in one of the volumes of letters (I'm guessing 74) and PKD talks about the event as well as this young woman at some length. Why I bet someone out there in the aether could find that information lickity split, and they would forever earn my (and all of our) respect as a serious Dick-head, because all of my volumes of letters are in my office, and I'm not. If you could just put that info right in the comments section that would be great.

That way, while you're doing that I'll try to figure out how to start taking donations and reservations for the 2012 Conference. Let's start making those travel plans! I can't wait to meet all of you!

A Tale of Two Conferences

I have been, lately, working pretty hard to get a Philip K Dick Conference scheduled for Sept 2012. I've laid lots of ground work, lining up a few of the bigger names, putting together a committee at SFSU, talking to my department heads, scheduling meetings and putting the infrastructure in place. This Wednesday will be a major day, as I am scheduled to meet with the dean of Humanities and I need him to get excited about this project.

In a somewhat Dickian twist (*say appearing at the very end of a chapter three and ensuring the reader turns the page and begins reading chapter four) I have been informed of another Dickian conference to take place in Dortmund, Germany in November of 2012. While this new circumstance was met by a cold, hard spot deep in my stomach, I have learned to revel in this pair of conferences, one on each side of the Atlantic, and can now see that these conferences will be fairly different and I'm excited about each now.

First of all, the Dortmund conference appears, from their call for papers, to be a fairly conventional academic conference with heavyweights like Norman Spinrad, Roger Luckhurst, and Umberto Rossi scheduled to appear. Their call to papers offers a nod to the scholarly contributions of Jameson and Darko Suvin. The organizers will even be collecting several of the presented papers to be published in a book. I am glad to see this kind of event taking place for two reasons: 1) this is long overdue and will be an awesome contribution to Dickian studies, and 2) because the conference I am organizing no longer has to aspire to such lofty goals.

Instead, I am hoping that our California conference will attract a broad spectrum of fans and scholars, while having a slightly less formal, more fun tone. Additionally, being in the Bay Area will allow some sightseeing of Dickian touchstones, Art Music, the Francisco Street house, etc.

We are still in the midst of the early stages of planning and though there has been an initial call for papers (which you can read, for the time being, over at the PhilipKDickFans site), we are still working on sending out more formal invitations and creating a dedicated website for our American fest. Additionally, for interested parties, I am pasting the Dortmund call for papers below.

2012 is going to be one hell of a Dickian year. Stay tuned for a Kickstarter link and a chance to buy some cool stuff, and raise funds for the conference.

Dortmumd Call For Papers (click to enlarge)