Interview with PKD-Fest Organizer Lord RC Part 1

I'm starting to get excited about the PKD Festival this August in Colorado. I will be attending and hope to give two lectures, more on that later. For now, here is part one of an interview with David Hyde, aka Lord Running Clam, the only man brave enough to stand up to the tsunami of bureaucratic kipple associated organizing a festival like this. If you don't own David's book Pink Beam: A Philip K Dick Companion, your PKD collection is incomplete.

Q. Why did you decide to organize a Philip K. Dick Festival?

Lord RC: This is something that came to me slowly after I moved to Colorado in 2003. While doing research for my book, 'PINK BEAM: A Philip K. Dick Companion', I enjoyed reading about PKD's experience as guest of honor at the Metz Festival in 1977. I thought it was so funny when he changed his speech – which had already been translated into French – and went off on his own to the confusion of the French fans. And I knew that the British had had a couple of small academic-type festivals, so it was not unprecedented to have a Philip K. Dick festival. What is remarkable, however, is why hasn't there been a PKD festival in the USA until now?

The answer to this I didn't fully realize myself until after I announced the festival in December 2009. It involves time, of course, and some fannish PKD history. Back in the bleak days after Philip K. Dick died in 1982 his friend, the writer Paul Williams, founded The Philip K. Dick Society and published the Society Newsletter. The PKD Society established a place where fans could communicate with each other, back then we were few and far between. Philip K. Dick was not then the hugely successful writer that he is now. In fact, I believe it was due to the Philip K. Dick Society and its action to centralize the fans enthusiasm that in large part enabled PKD's great posthumous success. It was during the ten-year existence of the Philip K. Dick Society (1982 -92) that Dick went from sci-fi cult writer to a writer who was attracting worldwide attention beyond the science fiction realm. PKDS was such a solid foundation and the PKDS Newsletter such a healthy forum that it gave us an accumulation of PKD news, criticism and history combined with downright fannish commentary around which academic and general criticism formed.

After Paul retired the PKDS Newsletter in 1992, Greg Lee with Radio Free PKD and I with For Dickheads Only picked up the baton. Where there had been one PKD zine now there were two (and at this point we should certainly mention the many zines published throughout the years by fans toiling in the wilderness, as it were. I think a good example here would be the work of Bruce Gillespie in Australia with his PKD-focused zine SF Commentary which he has published since 1969).

Greg and I took PKD fandom up to the late 90s when we both retired our zines about the same time. The Internet was about to explode and that changed everything for any fan-based activity from sports to Barbie dolls to science fiction. I won't go into details here but with the advent of the Internet even more PKD fans were coming into the field. Like electric sheep they munched their way through the PKD info on the Internet and found themselves a part of an exciting movement that had its roots in an exclusive, cultish fandom. Everyone liked this and wanted to be a part of it. So they started websites of their own, traded books online and formed little PKD networks of their own and before you know it Philip K. Dick is what he is now, practically a household name.

So it all started with Paul Williams and his helpers at The Philip K. Dick Society and the fans who contributed to the Society newsletter.

The point of this long preamble to what is, apparently, a straightforward question as to why I decided to announce a PKD festival, is that if anyone is to call for a Philip K. Dick festival it is Paul Williams.

Now, with that said, back to my decision to do a PKD festival. Living in the mountains is what put the idea in my head. It would never have occurred to me in Indiana. Living up here at 9000 ft is not like living anywhere else, here there are not so many people getting in each others way, here we have some space, beautiful space. But it does take a certain amount of ruggedness to live up here, the winters are brutal and last for seven months. Such hard living engenders communal strength, we all help each other out and if one should break down on the roads here the first person who sees you will likely stop and help you out, there will be no speeding by and pretending not to see you as seems to happen everywhere else. So these small mountain towns form a loose community and the inhabitants get to know each other. Kinda like a village but spread along 100 miles of mountain roads!

With this background then the idea of a PKD festival took shape in my mind. I discussed it with a few friends as time went by and I built a festival in my head which, naturally, has changed quite a bit now we're putting it into practice. It wasn't until 2008 that I thought it could be done the way I wanted it done but I puttered about, waiting on I knew not what, just waiting for something to happen and another year passed and no USA Philip K. Dick festival. So the idea sat in my mind a little longer and it wasn't until Patti and I were stranded by a vicious snowstorm in Black Hawk in October last year that it occurred to me to just do it. I hadn't even been thinking about it but had made a decision somewhere in the depths of my brain and it had finally made it to consciousness.

Since then I've been in a bubble where I must accomplish a task – I must produce this PKD Festival on August 13, 14 & 15 2010 here in the mountains of Colorado.

But I've yet to answer why it has taken so long! It has to do with Paul Williams and the nature of a Dickhead. I knew in a vague way that Paul had been in a car accident in San Francisco in 1995, but I didn't understand until February this year that he was down for the count. No matter what he had been thinking and planning before his accident – and I like to think he was planning a PKD Festival for 1999! he would not now and never would be able to produce a PKD festival anymore. He's in a nursing home now requiring total care. And for all you PKD fans reading this I ask that you kindly donate some wherewithal to Paul's welfare fund at paulwilliams.com. Paul Williams is the 'official' PKD Festival charitable cause. We shall donate a percentage of everything to his welfare and all the proceeds from our Auction. Many fans will not be able to make the festival so I hope they can contribute via the link here.

So, that was what I was waiting on. I was subconsciously waiting for Paul to make the announcement. But what bugs me is that I should've known Paul is in bad shape! But this is the nature of a Dickhead. In many ways we are alone, we do not know others of our kind. In 25 years of being a hardcore PKD fan I've probably not met more than a half dozen similar fans. Even my good friend, Patrick Clark (editor of PKD OTAKU and PKD Festival Fan Guest of Honor), with who I've corresponded for more than 15 years, I've never met. I'm looking forward to meeting him at this year's festival. That's part of what I want to accomplish with this PKD 'fest: bringing the fans together. So, I didn't know Paul, had only corresponded slightly with him and most of that before 1992. I thought he was ok. But I will say this, when I realized Paul was not able to make the call then I knew I'd made the right decision.

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! 

The 2026 Dick-Fest is Coming!

If there is one overarching change to the community of Philip K Dick scholars and fans that I've witnessed in my quarter centruy of participation it's that we've all met and discovered we like hanging out. This is the reason for the increase in frequency of Dick-Fests, which have multiplied from once a decade, to once every three years, to their now biennial cadence. 

Case in point, Dick-Fest 2026 (they're trying to take the more mature road and call it PKD Fest, but we know what it is) is scheduled for August 20-23 in Orange County!

Here's what you need to know: 

It's free. 

Now, having said that, there is a registration option that allows you to donate just $20 and walk away with a grab bag of PKD-related goodies. There is also a festival t-shirt you can buy. 

But basically, rank consumerism aside, you can show up at this Fest and listen to some talks about PKD, witness some of PKD's old friends and acquaintances (like Gregg Rickman and Bill Sarill!) wax nostalgic, take in the first ever Pink Beam awards wherein we stroke our many Dick-related achievements (Oh, grow up!). There's even a table reading of a Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch script (which of course you never really leave). 

Not only is the Point Reyes Reality Investigation Center a full-on sponsor of the Fest, but I'll be there talking about Phil's life in Point Reyes Station as well as selling PRRIC merch, including a special collection of t-shirts, more on this soon. 

You can thank David Agranoff, host of the DickHeads Podcast on YouTube, for his tireless efforts to assemble a ragtag cadre of authors and weirdos to talk Dick for a couple of days. 

Check out the Fest website here, replete with schedules, mailing list sign-ups, and more! 

But wait, there's more! 

On August 26 the Point Reyes Reality Investigation Center will be hosting a post-Fest-adjacent dinner in Point Reyes Station with special guest Bill Sarill, who not only surfed Dick's couch, but, according to a note of at the beginning of Dick's 1970 novel A Maze of Death, helped brainstorm the novel's theological dimensions during late night sessions "to develop an abstract, logical system of religious thought, based on the arbitrary postulate that God exists."

RSVP for the dinner here. ($25 donation suggested, but no one turned away for lack of funds).

Umberto Rossi Recalls His Festival Experience

Words and pictures by Umberto Rossi:

Let me tell you all that my notions about the geography of the Bay Area were awfully foggy. I didn't even know that SFSU and Berkeley were two quite different places. However, while I was waiting for rescue (a bold team made up by Ted Hand and Dave Gill) I took a picture of this street sign because it sounded distinctly Dickian. Yet I could not recall what role this Shattuck Avenue played in Dick's world. I did need some anamnesis then, but it wasn't coming!

Thanks to Dave and Ted anamnesis came: and there, on the other side of the avenue, I saw--well, not the light, but surely the Shop. The repair shop where Hollis' repairmen were busy fighting against Jory and the forces of evil (or is it entropy?). Now they sell role games there, but hey, aren't games PKD stuff? Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next, Bluff, etc.? Though the Game-Players from Titan weren't there, I knew I was in Philip K. Dick territory.

Records are such a powerful Dickian topic. It seems our pal Phil thought some media were less evil than others, maybe even intrinsically good. Radio, ok. TV, bad. Newspapers, bad. Vinyl, good! Let's not forget that in a happy season of his life he was a music buff and vinyl collector who worked in a records shop: isn't this a form of small-scale utopia? And this is where he discovered Beethoven and Bach, not to mention Dowland. Flow our tears, the Dickhead said.

There are firefighters everywhere, of course, also in Italy, but--US firefighters are something special. No, it's got nothing to do with Phil, it's more a matter of Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451, and book-burning firemen. However, this pumper parked near the building where I slept fascinated me. Now I realize that this very ordinary fire engine has something so deeply American in it, something that makes me think of Ragle Gumm and his nameless small town. Maybe it's part of a layout where Verne Haskell is busy reproducing Woodland, his town.

Ok, but the PKD fest was not just places--and what places!--it was above all people. Names printed on the cover on a book which suddenly turned into real people you could talk to. And here we have the biographer extraordinnaire, Mr Gregg Rickman, and supreme interviewer. I am still waiting for the second volume of his bio, and I can't believe it will remain forever on his PC. Even Brian Wilson managed to release Smile, after all. C'mon, Gregg, we've been waiting for it for so long and all this time has passed us by--it doesn't seem to matter now... (thank you, Peter Gabriel!)

Can one think of a PKD fest without Jonathan Lethem? No, definitely not. But the presence of Rudy Rucker was unexpected. Let's call it a bonus. However, let's get accustomed to the idea that PKD Festivals will grow. There's no way to avoid it. I know someone doesn't like the idea, but hey, it was to be expected. Phil has got so many friends all around the world--can you tell them "stay at home"? I foresee a bigger fest in Southern California, and just try to imagine what will happen in 2018... 90th anniversary! (Well, I'm looking forward to the 2028 event... in Washington? A Million Dickheads March? Why not!)

Let's say these are the ghost of the last fest and the ghost of the next one! Well before the Fort Morgan event there was the now legendary Macerata conference in 2000... (there are also two events in the UK, but I leave comments about those to people who were there) I was one of the organizers in Macerata, and I will be in Dortmund with Stefan Schlensag and many others--let's say the EU branch of the PKD Church. The history of PKDom abroad goes on and on and on...

How could I ignore the Famous Director? John Alan Simon will, I hope, also direct the movie version of Time Out of Joint and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. In the meantime, we're waiting for the release of his ALBEMUTH dvd (or blue-ray). Or for the mystical apparition of his movie in cinema theatres all over the world. If he wins at Cannes (Academy Awards are unlikely) we will be there to clap our hands, on the side of the red carpet.

I wonder just how powerful is Dave Gill. Has anyone noticed that the movie theater nearby was showing Total Recall while we were busy talking about our pal Phil? He surely managed to have that film in this theatre.

 
Where does the borderline between scholarship and fandom lies? I don't know, I don't really give a damn. I only know that Lord Runnig Clam and Monsieur Henri Wintz, the mighty bibliographers, gave us PKD scholars such a powerful tool to investigate Dick's oeuvre... it will be on my desktop (physical, not digital) in the next years, helping me not to get lost among paperbacks, hardbacks, reprints, translations, etc. besides, they are such nice people!

The young scholar who gave us the Exegesis. Pamela Jackson, folks! Surely, like the Fairie Queen, she had a team of valiant knights to tackle the Monster, but it was quite a fight nonetheless, and the Exegesis panel managed to convey an impressive picture of the onslaught. However, PKD scholars everywhere can only be grateful to her for having managed the publication of this juggernaut of a book.

I can only think of Laurence Rickels, accomplished German cinema scholar and international academician, in black and white terms... echoes of Murnau, Lang and Pabst in the background. His presentation on the German integration simply amazed me. The apparition of Wernher Von Braun in a Disney documentary was something directly out of The Man in the High Castle and Gravity's Rainbow. One of the highlights of the festival, no doubt.

They say I'm a PKD scholar--hah! I'm just a part-time critic who struggles with novels greater than him, or a dwarf on the shoulders of giants. (A dwarf, mind you, not the Dwarf, that evil creature which rules the land of Mordor, whose capital is the seven-hilled Babylonian Meretrix...) But these are the real PKD scholars, folks! Erik Davis and Ted Hand, with their theological panel, really enlightened me. Moreover, Ted reascued me on Shattuck Avenue, where I might have remained stranded till PKD come...

Well, this is a detail of a house that isn't easy to photograph, for a complex series of complicated reasons. Let me just tell you that it's in Point Reyes Station, and that it didn't look the way I'd pictured it while reading Dick's stuff and Sutin and Rickman, but hey, does that really matter? Now it's branded on my memory, and I won't forget it. (On the other hand, the Marin County landscape, though much less bleak than Phil depicted it, is something I had somewhat imagined...)

And here is the mastermind of the event, Dr Gill hisself. How can I thank him? I can't, so let'd move to other issues. Such as the excellent food served in this restaurant, and the wealth of anecdotes on PKDom that he provided us with. Will Dave one day write the ultimate PKD biography? I am sure he has the chops to do it, because he is also a swell writer. Time will tell us. Joyce and Wilde had Ellmann, Phil might have Gill. I really hope so.

Get to Know the Fest Guest: Part 3 -- D.H. Wilson

Here's another in my semi-regular profiles of the scheduled guests for this year's Dick-Fest in Ft. Morgan, Colorado, June 13-16. In this post we'll meet, doctoral Dick-Head D.H. Wilson (the picture is Brett Weldele's rendering of DH as Gully Foyle from Bester’s The Stars My Destination -- not directly Dick-related, but we'll accept it). 

TDH: What are you gonna talk about at the fest?

Hello! I’ll provide an overview of the book I’m currently working on, The Biographies of Philip K. Dick: Infinite Regressions, for Routledge’s Auto/Biography Studies series. Here’s a brief description that I included in my proposal to the publisher: Philip K. Dick was one of the twentieth century’s most prolific, forward-thinking authors and a luminary of intelligent, idea-driven science fiction. His singular oeuvre, esoteric mythos, and chronically autobiographical novels and stories have generated a surplus of biographies in an effort to uncover his “real” identity. Most attempts to biographically render PKD in the light of would-be “truth,” however, are undergirded by a speculative conundrum that his characters and their author cannot escape themselves. Infinite Regressions will unpack this overarching thesis while functioning as an engaged overview of the biographical literature on PKD. PKD scholarship is vast, but my monograph will be the first comprehensive study to account for and interpret this material as a collective literary venture. I appropriated my subtitle from PKD’s Exegesis, an 8,000-page journal inspired by a hallucinatory breakdown that he experienced in the 1970s. Written between 1974 and his death in 1982, the Exegesis is an epic attempt to understand an ostensible trickster god, and yet every gesture towards definitive knowledge results in “an infinite regression of theses and countertheses.” Biographers fall through a similar trap door when they try to “understand” PKD, but that isn’t to say that their biographies aren’t productive or meaningful. As literary artefacts, they are largely meritorious. Ultimately, then, PKD’s biographies call attention to the inherent instability and variability of biographical writing, which has always evaded a grand definition.

TDH: What’s your connection to Dickdom?

Most recently, the Dickheads Podcast. In 2023, I became a co-host with David Agranoff and Langhorne J. Tweed, who started the podcast with Anthony Trevino in 2017. Such great fellas. I’ve been reading, studying, and writing about PKD for years, though, beginning in graduate school in the 1990s at the University of Massachusetts, where I was working on my M.A. degree in English. In an independent study with SF scholar Robert Crossley, I read The Man in the High Castle and “Faith of Our Fathers.” Thereafter I devoured his entire canon, as we PKD fanatics tend to do, and I remember trying (and failing) to emulate him again and again when I first started writing my own fiction.

TDH: Tell us about your new publishing endeavor.

Research and note-taking for Infinite Regressions is occupying most of my time right now, although I have a monograph on Stanley Kubrick’s futurist cinema coming out in November from Stalking Horse Press called Strangelove Country: Science Fiction, Filmosophy, and the Kubrickian Consciousness. Very excited about that one. As editor-in-chief of Anti-Oedipus Press, I should also mention that I’ll be spearheading a new PKD book series. Here’s the formal description on AOP’s website: EXEGETICS: PKD STUDIES is devoted to original, high-quality scholarship on and about Philip K. Dick, one of the science fiction genre’s most renowned innovators and a singular voice in twentieth-century literature. Books in the series include critical and/or creative explorations of Phildickian fiction, nonfiction, biography, cinema, and multimedia. Scholarly yet defiant of academic stodge, EXEGETICS aspires for the definitively New in the world(s) of PKD.

More details soon!

Get to Know the Fest Guest: Part 4 -- David Agranoff

Here's the fourth installment in our semi-regular feature, getting to know the speakers at this year's Dick-Fest (June 13-16th in Fort Morgan, Colorado). This time it's hardcore accomplishist and DickHeads Podcaster David Agranoff!

What are you gonna talk about at the fest?

    My research is focused on two aspects of Phil’s work. I consider myself an expert in Phil’s novel writing formula (as laid out in a 1965 letter to fellow author Ron Goulart) and Preview the research involved in my upcoming book Unfinished PKD: The Outlines and Fragments of Philip K. Dick by David Agranoff. It will be the first release of EXEGETICS: PKD STUDIES a series of PKD themed non-fiction books, a side line started by Professor D.Harlan Wilson, as a sub-press from his publishing company Anti-Oedipus Press. He was my dream editor for the book, and then we ended teaming up on the Dickheads Podcast.
    The talk will include deep dives into the materials I used to write this book about 17 outlines and fragments that Phil never got around to writing. So I am going to talk about how the research
was done, where treasures I found and what people can look forward to in the book. It is pretty impossible to be humble about this book. The outline for the novel Anti-Talent eventually morphed into UBIK. That research alone will change how Phil and his writing is taught. That Anti-talent outline which Phil never meant for anyone but himself to read, talks to himself, convinces himself into and out of plot directions, tells himself which ideas he is repeating and openly mentions influences.

How’d you get involved in Dickdom?

I have been reading PKD since the 90s, but I didn’t become a serious Dickhead until my homey Anthony Trevino (who I co-wrote a SF/Horror/Crime novel Nightmare City that is available from Grand Mal Press) pointed out that there is no podcast about Philip K. Dick called Dickheads, and what a shame that was. The idea was that we would read each novel in publication order. The show was co-hosted by Anthony, myself and our friend Langhorne J. Tweed. Six years later, Anthony left the show and Professor D.Harlan Wilson has taken his seat. We are almost done covering the novels. We also have done lots of bonus interviews, panel interviews and more. We were started I barely knew anything and now I am a bit of know-it-all.

What kind of Dick-related work are you currently involved in? 

    Still working on the podcast, I am a nerd for all science fiction history and I also write a column for Amazing Stories. I am doing the final edits on Unfinished PKD. I recently used the PKD formula to write a novel called “Great America in Dead World,” I will be figuring out a publisher for that in the next year or so. Keith Giles and I will be co-editing Dickapedia: A Philip K. Dick encyclopedia. That is a fun project and all volunteer, and in we are putting together a team of volunteers to help us do the research. Each team member will be assigned a novel. You’ll get your name on the back cover, and a bio in the book. Dickfest is a great place to work on those community ties if you want to get involved in that.
    I also just released my 10 th novel and it is very Philip K. Dick influenced. The novel is called People’s Park. It is a really weird novel and I hope people check it out. Bring a copy of any of my books to Dick fest I would love to sign it. I will have a few to sell. My holocaust revenge horror novel The Last Night to Kill Nazis is available nationally at Barnes and Noble so buy that and bring it!
    More importantly come to Dick fest and lets talk PKD! You don’t want to miss it!

Now Read About Last Year (2010)

I wish I could find this scene from the blooper reel to the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact, during which Roy Scheider tries over and over again to get a ball-point pen to sit suspended in the air in a harness made of fishing line to try to depict the zero-g environment of space travel. Try as he might, the stupid thing will not stay. It's a nice metaphor for 2010, which felt at times like an endless blooper reel.

I thought we'd have seen both the Adjustment Bureau and Radio Free Albemuth adaptations in 2010, but neither materialized - though RFA made a strong showing at NYC's Gotham Screen Film Fest. Adjustment Bureau is now due out in Spring of 2011. So Inception was the closest we got to a PKD adaptation in 2010 - and it apparently was inspired by Scrooge McDuck. I actually plan on seeing the film this week and hope I can write something up about it.

Highlights of 2010 included:

The Philip K Dick festival was held in August 2010 in Colorado. Definitely my funnest vacation of the year. A great time was had by all of the dozen or so who showed up. (Does this mean we're only a year and a half away from the next PKD Fest scheduled for the Bay Area 2012?! Yikes!)

Word arrived that two new Exegesis volumes are headed our way.

The arrival Laurence Rickels's nearly-indecipherable book I Think I Am: Philip K Dick - a long-awaited examination of Dick's irv made by a shining star in the academic community which, like many things in life, straddles the line between clever literary analysis and opaque, post-Freudian academic wankery.

A new edition of Anne Dick's memoir Search for Philip K Dick, was released by Tachyon publications (with a new Introduction written by yours truly). A fun read, an important resource, and now... even easier to get...

Scott Timberg's pair of great articles about PKD: one about his time in Southern California and one about Anne and her memoir. The ratio between good, insightful articles about PKD and the glorified press releases we've read about PKD in the past is headed in the right direction.

Cornell University selected Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as their incoming freshmen read for 2010 and I made a fun trip to Ithaca to talk about the book at the local public library.

It was a great year for me personally. The New York Times article and my Introduction of Anne Dick's memoir are accomplishments I'm quite proud of, and I hope to be able to build on these in 2011.

What else is there to look forward to?

Another academic book about PKD! This one by Italian Dick-head Umberto Rossi who has been kind enough to share some of his work right here on this blog. I have high hopes for Rossi's book.

I can't think of anything else to look forward to... besides burritos and stuff. Oh and maybe this year we'll see Radio Free Albemuth in theaters in addition to Adjustment Bureau. That would be cool. If two PKD movies hit theaters this year, well, you know what that means: prepare yourself for the onslaught articles examining 'Hollywood's Fascination with the Unlikely King of Sci-Fiʼ...

This may sound insincere coming from a Total Dick-Head, but I couldn't do this without you, gentle readers, so keep those insightful comments and gossipy emails coming this year. In fact there's gonna be some really cool never-before-seen stuff.... in the very next post!

I almost forgot to mention that this blog has received the coveted Top Kidney Disease Blog award of 2010 from the prestigious Certified Nursing Assistant website, based (I'm guessing here) upon the number of times the word PKD appears (which for many, sadly, does not stand for Philip K Dick but Poly-cystic Kidney Disease). And this is like the most Dickian thing ever, right?! I mean this weird, grammatically-awkward operation, Certified Nursing Assistant is giving away awards based on a computer's misreading of subtle linguistic quirks! Oooh, and a banner!

(note this content was removed in 2013 when the nurses contacted me repeatedly and asked to have it removed. Why did you send it to me in the first place, I was tempted to ask). 

I heard a numerologist on right-wing radio (WTF?! Right?!) and she was saying that the eleven in 2011 is a door, and we can be whoever we want to be when we go through that door - and this is our year to do that. Phil Dick reminded us in his novels that time is door we can pass through in only one direction, no matter how hard we may try to do otherwise. So choose your two-thousand-and-eleven-door wisely dear readers.

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.

Get to Know the Fest Guest: Part 5 -- Gabriel Mckee

We're less than a week away from Dick-Fest 2024. In fact, you'll find some pretty detailed info and a schedule here, which is otherwise dedicated to our series dedicated to getting to know the presenters at this year's Fest. So, without further ado, is my interview with Gabriel Mckee: 

What are you gonna talk about at the fest?

 I'll be talking about ideas of control and freedom in the Exegesis, particularly as they relate to the concept of "astral determinism" in Hellenistic religion and philosophy-- the idea that human destiny is controlled by external forces (in particular, the stars and planets). The starting point of my talk is sections of the Exegesis where Phil is talking about the dreaded "Xerox missive," which took on a central importance in his understanding of what liberation meant. The idea of breaking free from the path that the universe has prepared for you-- metaphorized as "groove override" in the universe's eternal LP-- is an absolutely crucial one in the Exegesis, and the concrete example Phil is talking about is his reaction to the weird photocopy he got in the mail. After a career of writing about androids who think they're human, Phil found himself mired in anxiety over the idea that he was subject to some kind of external control-- but that he had pushed through and found himself experiencing a sense of freedom when he didn't look at the letter, didn't do whatever destructive thing it was that it was intended to bring about. I don't think it really matters what the true origin or content of the letter was; it's mainly important for having become a symbol through which Phil explored themes of fate/destiny/programming and freedom/choice/liberation.  I look at this through the lens of modern ideas--particularly Jay Kinney's concept of "agency panic"-- and ancient ones-- early Christian and Hellenistic texts about astrological control.

How’d you get involved in Dickdom? 

PKD was one of the first SF authors I read when I started getting into the genre toward the end of high school. A friend lent me a copy of VALIS and I was instantly obsessed. It got me interested not just in science fiction, but in religion and theology as well. I was active on the old Jazzflavor email list and ended up studying religion as an undergraduate and going on to a master's from Harvard Divinity School-- along the way writing Pink Beams of Light From the God in the Gutter: The Science-Fictional Religion of Philip K. Dick (University Press of America, 2004), and the PKD-adjacent The Gospel According to Science Fiction (Westminster John Knox, 2007) shortly thereafter. When I heard that Jonathan Lethem and Pamela Jackson were working on an edited version of the Exegesis back in 2010, I knew I had to be involved-- and am grateful to Erik Davis and Rich Doyle for helping to facilitate that. 

What kind of Dick-related work are you currently involved in? 

I've just finished a major non-PKD project that I have been working on for several years: The Saucerian: The Unbelievable Life of Gray Barker, a biography of a prolific UFO book author, publisher, and showman, which is due out early next year from MIT Press. I'm contributing smaller pieces to a couple other PKD projects, including George Sieg & Michael Barros's edited volume The Esoteric Theology of Philip K. Dick (forthcoming from Lexington Books) and Keith Giles and David Agranoff's Dickapedia. I've also been an active collaborator in the Zebrapedia project since its inception, and have been talking to Rich Doyle about ways to enhance the online Exegesis interface-- I hope to have some more news to share at the Fest about coming developments there. 

PKD-Fest 2026 -- Get Your Ass to Orange County!

It's time once again for yet another Dick-Fest! Has it been two years since the last one already? Well, no, but it will be. This summer Dick-Head podcast host and overachiever David Agranoff is taking the reins and looking to bring the Dick-Fest to a wider audience with more events! Paul Shelton, who I met at the last Dick-Fest and who has since become a good friend and colleague, has put together a video, replete with some of the "PKD at Disneyland with Norman Spinrad" footage people have been searching for for years!

More info at the Festival website: https://www.philipkdickfestival.com/

Including a call for papers.

Looking forward to seeing you all there! 

Semi-Weekly Amalgamation of PKD Links

It's been too long, dear readers. This blog has been at the back of my mind, while I've been busy with the first weeks of the Fall semester, getting the band's album done, and working on my own fiction. I dare say, I was feeling a little burned out on PKD, friends! That is, until this morning when I picked up Rickman's To The High Castle, a biography of PKD I haven't read in awhile, and I was struck by all the great info in there. It's a much rawer bio than Sutin's, and it leaves you with a distinct impression of PKD that somehow the Sutin bio flattens a bit. Like any totalizing lens, the stuff about molestation gets old, but again, the interviews, particularly with Vince Lusby, impart a fuller sense of PKD. We really must do something to recognize all of Rickman's many contributions - hopefully at the PKD Conference next year.

So, without further ado (if, in fact, that is ado above which I have already written) let's get to the link round up. Radio Free Albemuth continues to be the big PKD subject the Internetz are tubing about these days, as the film continues to blow minds at festival showings here and abroad.

The Australian Arts Portal tosses another shrimp on the barbie, writing, "What finally distinguishes Radio Free Albemuth from all previous adaptations is that this film has soul, and I am pretty sure that Philip K. Dick would agree. You don’t have to be a fan of Philip K. Dick or science fiction to enjoy this film. Radio Free Albemuth should be mandatory viewing for anyone who is interested in vital, independent cinema. If you get the chance to see it, don’t miss it."

Former Los Angeles Weekly film critic Michael Dare writes: "The lack of chase scenes and pumped-up CGI lunacy is actually one of the charms of the film. It's low budget because this is all it takes to tell the story, which is intellectual, political, musical, and scientific, in fact, everything good science fiction should be. The fact the SyFy channel has degenerated into one cheesy monster flick after another, as though nothing has changed in the science fiction world since Creature from the Black Lagoon, instead of featuring films like this that stretch the human imagination, is just appalling. No wonder they changed their name. They're to science fiction what Sunny Delight is to Orange Juice."

The other big news is RFA won the Best Feature Film at the Renovation Film Fest, following the Hugos a few weeks ago. I talked a big game about going, but, of course, wussed out at the last minute, opting instead to stay home and slave over a short story. Regular reader Mr Hand went, however, and wrote up some short impressions of the film - all of which I agree with.

With all this hoopla we should be seeing RFA in wider circulation soon.

You may have noticed the old Palm Tree Garden website has left the internet realm. While this is a loss, one of the principals has started PKDTV.net - which makes this blog look like a clunky old webpage from the 1990s with all its fancy links and so forth.

There's also this really cool PKD aggregator site. Sorry to keep you in the stone age over here on the Dick-Head folks.

Archives of the old PhilipKDickFans.com site are now available for perusal. Just one glance and it will become clear how much we lost (or almost lost). There's a treasure trove of old stuff waiting to be rediscovered there.

Also, Norman Spinrad has made his essay "The Transmogrification of Philip K Dick" available at scribd.com.

Like I said, I've been hard at work on my band's new album, which you can check out online here.

Just a bit of fair warning. I am still working on the same short story, preparing it for submission (while I have tried to mimic many of PKD's writing strategies, I cannot match his pace), so posting will be a bit light here until I send the story off.

William Sarill Chronicles His Dick-Fest Experience

William Sarill, the name sounds vaguely familiar, right? Perhaps you've been reading Maze of Death and remember the little introduction by Dick explaining that the novel is borne out of late night discussions of religion with, you guessed it, William Sarill. Or maybe you've been looking at that picture of PKD and Nancy (the one where it looks like PKD's got a ponytail), that was taken by William Sarill. No doubt Sarill was one of the more interesting grain patterns to step out of the woodwork for the PKD Fest, peppering the crowd with anecdotes and insights about Phil Dick and his work. Now Bill has written up his thoughts for the Boston Phoenix. Read it here. And check out that awesome illustration (I pasted it above). It's quite a nice article about PKD, written by flesh and blood.

Sarill writes: "It's that spiritual yearning for answers that drew me to him in the first place — that and an appreciation for his wonderfully weird ideas and the occasional brilliance of his characterizations, so unlike those of other science-fiction writers of his era."Amen, brother.

If you're not in our Facebook group, you've missed a bit of hullabaloo introduced by Bill, regarding Dick's time rooming with Duncan and Spicer. I don't think we've talked about this. Interesting, eh?

Perhaps we can liven up the comments section with a little old fashioned debate.

PKD Fest Article for Boingboing

Even as you read this, preparations are underway for one of the largest gatherings of Dick-heads in history. Luckily, the Dick-heads, in this case, are fans of Philip K Dick, the counterculture’s favorite science fiction writer and disheveled prophet whose dystopian futures seem more and more prescient with each passing year and whose literary reputation is on the rise ever since his inclusion in the lofty Library of America collection.

The Philip K Dick Festival is scheduled to take place in Blackhawk, Colorado (along with two other nearby towns located along scenic Highway 119) August 13, 14, and 15 of this year, and is being organized by veteran Dick-head Lord Running Clam (aka David Hyde) whose book Pink Beam: A Philip K Dick Companion is an indispensable resource for serious fans.

Tentative speakers include:

Anne Dick (PKD’s third wife, author of The Search for Philip K Dick), Erik Davis (PKD scholar and author of Techgnosis), Jason Koornick (Webmaster Philipkdickfans.com, producer ‘Next’, David Gill (SFSU, PKD blogger: Total Dick-Head), Sam Umland (University of Nebraska at Kearny), Marleen Bar (Fordham University, author of several books on SF)), and others.

Planned activities include: PKD book and panel discussions, android hunting workshops, scenic drives, a visit to PKD's grave, meeting and greeting fellow Dick-heads, and experimentation with time-binding drugs.

Check here for regular updates from Lord RC.

If you have any questions or would like to make a donation, email Lord RC.

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.

PKD Fest GoFundMe Live, Featuring Total Dick-Head Discount

 A GoFundMe page has been established to help defray the costs of the upcoming Dick-Fest in Ft Morgan, Colorado, June 13-16, 2024. What's more, I'm donating one seat in my upcoming Zoom class, The Total Dick-Head's Guide to Philip K. Dick, which starts January 30th. Just be the first to pledge $100 to the GoFundMe page in the comments of this post, and I you will be enrolled in my 16-week course with guests including: Jonathan Lethem, Gregg Rickman, Tim Powers, Linda Levy, and more -- a $195 value!

The funds will be used to make deposits and pay cleaning fees for the facilities we'll be using for the fest.

Make sure you leave an email in your pledge comment, or email me at thetotaldickhead(at)gmail.com. 

Regardless, Get Your Ass to Colorado!  

PKD Fest Website is Down!

Fest-goers and Dick-heads, I've just discovered the philipkdickfestival.com website is down. We are working to get it up and running again. If you want to register for the fest go here.

PKD Otaku Moves, Continues to Rock

One of the coolest people I met at the PKD Fest was Patrick Clark, one of the founders of PKD Otaku, a fanzine producing meaty PKD content on a semi-regular basis. It's definitely a cool resource. Patrick emailed me yesterday to say the site has moved. You can now download their latest issue #20, or any issue in their back catalog for that matter, here: http://pkdotaku.gezeitenreiter.de/

PKD Otauku #26 Out Now!

Editor Patrick Clark has done it again. With the amazing graphics work of Nick Buchanan, PKD Otaku issue #26 looks more professional than ever. There's also a pretty interesting piece on The Exegesis (remember that?), Laura Entwistle's memories of the PKD Fest. My favorite thing in the issue, however, is the yearbook picture of PKD first-wife, Jeannette Marlin, uber-fan Frank Hollander tracked down when he was in Berkeley for the Festival. Download a copy and enjoy...

Ashra and Cluster were at Metz with Phil Dick in 1977!

Every Dick-Head worth his salt knows the story of Philip K. Dick's trip to Metz, France in 1977. You've probably even seen the video of PKD's famous (or infamous) speech which combined some wild 2-3-74 speculation with some translation problems, creating some of the first public speculation about PKD's sanity. 

What very few of you knew is that the legendary Krautrock bands Ashra and Cluster performed at the very same convention. My guess is that PKD didn't see either band (I am in the midst of working to confirm this). But that doesn't mean it's not cool as hell. 

I mean Metz in 1977 would be a pretty good time travel destination. You could see Phil Dick and Harlan Ellison's clash of egos which Phil's guest at the convention, Joan Simpson, characterized perfectly for Larry Sutin in the Divine Invasions biography:

“Phil was very antithetical to Harlan. Harlan is very cocky, glib, cool, and here is Phil going clunk clunk clunk. Phil was not a very debonair or self-assured man. Snuff falling out of his nose, ninety-two spots on his tie--you know. And Harlan thought Phil treated people very badly because he wandered away, got lost, had people support him rather than be master of his own ship. Anyway, they got into this huge debate. Phil does very well in those kinds of situations. Here is Harlan banging his chest, and Phil was more a philosopher. Phil was just great--more dynamic and sexy than I'd ever seen him be.”

I would pay Star Trek's Q, quite a bit of money to take me to see that. 

And the fest was a who's who of science fiction greats. Check out this picture! 

(click to embiggen): Can you find: Philip K. Dick, Frank Herbert, John Brunner, Roger Zelazny, Christopher Priest, Robert Scheckley, Stephan Wul, Théodore Sturgeon, P.J. Farmer, Richard Matheson, Ian Watson, Norman Spinrad, Thomas Disch, Robert Silverberg?

I found that picture as part of a larger slideshow about the Metz convention here. Do yourself a favor and run through the rest of the pics. 

You can listen to at least part of Ashra's performance here: 

Wikipedia describes Ashra as... "a musical ensemble founded by Manuel Göttsching in 1976, initially to facilitate his solo career although other members were included later on. The band's name is an abbreviation of the name of Göttsching's previous band, Ash Ra Tempel. The name was changed as Göttsching's music became less psychedelic and more oriented towards electronica." 

Here's at least part of Cluster's show: 

Wikipedia describes Cluster as... "a German musical duo consisting of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, formed in 1971 and associated with West Germany's krautrock and kosmische music scenes.[2] Originating from the earlier Berlin-based group Kluster, the duo relocated in 1971 to the countryside village of Forst, Lower Saxony, where they built a studio and collaborated with musicians such as Conny Plank, Brian Eno, and Michael Rother. With Rother, they formed the influential side project Harmonia. Cluster disbanded in 1981 but reunited twice, from 1989 to 1997 and again from 2007 to 2010"

For those unfamiliar with Krautrock I encourage you to read about the genre in the wikipedia article linked above. For a long time I have wanted to write a piece of PKD canon about the members of the Krautrock band CAN in the parallel universe where the Axis powers won the war.. 

Hat tip -- Sean Nye!

Update: Philippe Hupp who was at the fest in Metz writes in to say, "Phil Dick didn't attend the concert - too many people wanted to interview him. The phone in his hotel room kept ringing, so I moved him to another room. I don't remember him mentioning the bands, I guess he was too busy..."

Stuff I'm Doing, Update

The posts here have been few and far between as I've had quite the summer. I've got a bunch of stuff to post over this coming weekend and then, next Wednesday, I'll be hitting the road with Erik Davis for the two-day drive to the PKD Fest in Blackhawk, Colorado. I'm starting to get really excited. According to organizer Lord RC the Sundance Lodge in Blackhawk will be almost completely full of Dick-heads. Can you imagine?

I'll be giving a couple of talks at the Fest (festival schedule here). On Friday, Erik Davis and I will be speaking about our experience reading The Exegesis. (Oh yeah, I never mentioned I was doing that did I? - That's because I can't talk about it very much, but yes, I am one of the scholars working with Pamela Jackson culling the folders for material to publish in the two expected volumes) On Saturday I'll be giving a talk about the limits of identity in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. This'll be very much like the lecture I give my students when we talk about the book. Hopefully both of these will be available as a podcast at some point.

Speaking of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Cornell is really going all out in promoting the book as the Freshmen novel this year. In fact, the local library is making the book a community read. The big news is that they've contacted your humble blogger and invited me to give a talk. They're even paying the tab! I have to remember not to let all this go to my head, but it's very exciting. There was an article up about the event, but I can't seem to find it now. Hopefully it wasn't all a dream or an implanted memory.

Finally, I just finished writing a new introduction to Anne Dick's memoir, now being reissued by Tachyon Publications, and due out as soon as next month. If I were you I'd be scooping up copies to Anne's self-published edition, seeing as how the first edition, now incredibly rare, commands a pretty penny.

So things are going really well for me. I've decided that the next step is to write a book on PKD. Having now read both Rickels's I Think I Am: Philip K Dick and Eric Carl Link's Understanding Philip K Dick, it's clear to me that we're still missing a detailed, fun to read guide to Dick's life and writing. Rather than wait for someone else to write it, I'm going to try my hand at it. Hopefully the project won't keep me from regularly updating this blog. But, again, this is a great time to contribute guest posts!