Get to Know the Fest Guest -- Part 1: Keith Giles

In preparation for the upcoming Dick-Fest in Ft. Morgan I will be featuring some of the guests on this humble blog as it rises from the ashes of the last decade. 

First up is Keith Giles, who goes WAY back in the world of PKD. Keith who was an early reader and commenter on this blog has since blossomed into a media mogul of sorts, with a series of popular books about Christianity, a podcast, and all sorts of other stuff. He's also helming Quoir Publishing which just put out an anthology which includes Tessa Dick among other PKD luminaries. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Keith will tell you all about it below: 

TDH: Can you tell us about your relationship to Dick? 

I've been a fan since roughly 1983, after BLADE RUNNER released and I bought the paperback version which, to my great surprise, was a completely different story called DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? After reading that novel, I decided to go back to the bookstore to find more PKD books. The next one was FLOW MY TEARS THE POLICEMAN SAID and by the time I got about halfway through that book I was a huge fan. 

I also lived for about 25 years in Orange County, California. This meant I had an opportunity to visit the apartment building where Phil lived in Santa Ana, and the hospital where he died. I also had the opportunity to hold signed copies of his novels in my hands at the local Orange Public Library. So, I never got to meet Phil in person, but I feel a close connection to him having lived in the same places he lived and walked the same streets that he did.

Since those early days, I've done my best to read nearly everything he's written, including all of his short stories and the vast majority of his novels. My Blade Runner and PKD vintage paperback collection is pretty obscene.

Most recently, I was asked to speak at the San Diego Comic-Con panel in 2023 which was a dream come true.

What do you plan to talk about at the fest? 

The topic I want to talk about at the DickFest this year is "The Exegesis and Quantum Science." This talk will include the influence of Valentinian theology and the Gospel of Thomas as well. 

 I believe there is also some talk about my joining a panel discussion with Ted Hand and Aharon Varady on PKD and religion.

TDH: Can you tell us a little about Quoir Publishing and the 'Augmented' anthology?

As of January of 2023, I became co-owner of Quoir Publishing. Prior to this I was only one of their published authors. So, even though I never dreamed of owning my own publishing company, the opportunity sort of dropped into my lap. 

Quoir is a publishing company by authors, for authors. That means we make sure all of our authors retain 100% ownership of their copyright and we offer 60% of the royalty to authors [compared to 10% or less offered by most other publishers]. We've been around for about 7 years now. Our goal is to publish great books and to promote and champion our authors and their work in every way possible.

Last year we published Volume 1 of aa brand new SF anthology called "Augmented" which featured some fantastic short stories by Tessa Dick, David Agranoff, Claudia Christian [Babylon 5], and many others. 

We're excited to publish more new SF titles in the next few months,including a new PKD-esque novel by David Agranoff called "People's Park" [March 2024], plus the SF novels, "So Eden Sank To Grief" by Eric Reitan and "RJ the Astronaut" by Jon Turney, both releasing in February, 2024.

TDH: Any other Dick-related stuff you want to promote? 

Last year Quoir was honored to publish Volume 1 of a PKD Short Story Anthology called "Sci-Fi Lullabies" and later this year [2024] we plan to publish Volume 2, featuring a Foreword by Tessa Dick. Volume 3 will come later next year with a Foreword by author and co-host of the DickHeads Podcast, David Agranoff.

Also, I taught a course at UTEP [UT El Paso] 2 years ago on The Gospel of Philip K. Dick and that I have an online course by the same name available here. 

There's more exciting stuff on the horizon for PKD fans to be excited about, but I can't talk about them just yet.