Sunday, April 25, 2010

News Roundup


Getting back in the swing of things here. At least on this Sunday morning.

I think we should begin preparing ourselves for the restarting of the PKD-article machine to coincide with the release of Adjustment Bureau which imdb.com says will open in July. I will not be writing about or even linking to many of these this time, not unless they provide some new information, or suck so bad that they must be critiqued mercilessly.

But things are happening.

It looks like the Exegesis is happening! According to this article in Publishers Weekly, Dick's new high-power agent is shopping "Philip K. Dick’s The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, culled from hundreds of handwritten notes and journal entries by the late sci-fi icon; the agency calls it a work that “charts Dick’s attempts to reconcile the diverse strands of scientific, philosophical, and theological thought” that inspired his writing, and it is edited and introduced by Jonathan Lethem and Pamela Jackson." A close reading of that sentence should focus on the word 'culled,' which implies that this volume will include excerpts, which seems sensible as the corpus of handwritten notes fills two big file-cabinet drawers. But how will this differ from Sutin's volume of excerpts from the Exegesis? Of course that's no longer widely available. Certainly the publishing of new Exegesis material will provide grist for many, many mills.

Radio Free Albemuth has a Facebook page and the movie will have a special screening at the Sci-Fi London Festival next week. You can buy tickets here. I am very excited about the more widespread release of this film, and hope director John Simon can update us soon on when we can expect that.

The Philip K Dick Festival's website has been updated (and fixed, it was a little wonky for a bit). I'm getting excited about this and plan to attend and give a talk or two (if anybody's interested in carpooling or caravaning discuss in the comments).

Finally, Ben Loory, a committed PKD fan (responsible for Philip K Dick's Myspace page), recently had a story published in The New Yorker. It's great, and I think shows a bit of PKD's influence - at least enough to warrant mention on this page. Read Ben's story, "The TV," and then this really cool interview with him.

4 comments:

Mr. Hand said...

I saw a copy of Sutin's selections from the exegesis at Green Apple in SF going for $40 cheapest I ever seen it

LarryS said...

Radio Free Albemuth,hmm must look into that book-not that our library will have it in!

Refrigerator Heaven said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustment_Team has a decent article start on the short story (it gets vandalized anonymously fairly often though, so you might want to check history if it looks messed with when you see it). Needs a thematic analysis but the synopsis is good IMNSHO. A scan of the story from original publication in Orbit magazine with the art work should be up and linked soon. The illustrations are public domain also so they can be shared too. No ballerinas but pretty interesting illustrations by Faragasso. Also has a link to the Wikipedia article on The Adjustment Bureau.

tuffy777 said...

thanx for the updates