June 07, 2004

Philip K Dick Interview. Via Warren Ellis's badsignal mailout: "David sez, 'A friend loaned me a bunch of tapes, and one of them turned out to be an audio interview of Philip K. Dick, interviewed in his home. You can hear the television on and his kids playing in the background. Very relaxed and chatty. I transfered it to mp3s. Everything you hear is exactly what was on the tape..."

I haven't listened to it all yet, but its pretty good so far.

posted by dng 20 years ago
  • Can't wait to hear this at home. I read "The Man in the High Castle" and fell in love. Read the "Valis" trilogy and came to understand how illegal psychotropic substances influence the writing of fiction. Seriously, I think he's one of the most underrated writers the US has ever produced. I'll be listening to this very soon.
  • Seriously, I think he's one of the most underrated writers the US has ever produced Me too, despite the cult. And I trust you've read Martian Time Slip; it's right up there with Man in the High Castle. If not, you've got a pleasure awating you.
  • Phillip K. Dick was great. Sure, he wrote a lot of pulp stuff, but he was visionary with book after book in a way that people like Bradbury can only hope to be maybe once or twice in their whole career. I have the Crumb illustrated 'Phillip K Dick's Spiritual Experience' scanned somewhere. Maybe I'll upload it, if I can find a place to put it that won't take it down the first whiff of a C&D.
  • .. or whatever it was called.
  • I had this vision in my mind then that I would go up there and be introduced to Ridley Scott, and be introduced to Harrison Ford, who's the lead character, and I'd just be so dazzled I'd be like Mr. Toad seeing the motorcar for the first time. My eyes would be wide as saucers and I'd just be standing there completely mesmerized. Then I would watch a scene being shot. And Harrison Ford would say, "Lower that blast-pistol or you're a dead android!" And I would just leap across that special effects set like a veritable gazelle and seize him by the throat and start battering him against the wall. They'd have to run in and throw a blanket over me and call the security guards to bring in the Thorazine. And I'd be screaming, "You've destroyed my book!" That would be a little item in the newspaper: "Obscure Author Becomes Psychotic on H'wood Set; Minor Damage, Mostly to the Author." They'd have to ship me back to Orange County in a crate full of air holes. And I'd still be screaming. -- Philip K Dick on the film Blade Runner (also his last interview 1982). He did actually like the film btw.
  • "Several months ago I was approached by an individual who I have reason to believe belonged to a covert organization involving politics, illegal weapons, etc., who put great pressure on me to place coded information in future novels 'to be read by the right people here and there,' as he phrased it. I refused to do it." Dick talking to the FBI in 1972.
  • Maybe I'll upload it No need.
  • http://textz.gnutenberg.net/textz/dick_phillip_k_do_androids_dream_of_electric_sheep.txt i look at the gov of california and i just kind of freak. Dick was a great writer and I'm sorry so much of his stuff became big money after he died. I'm also sorry he missed life after tricyclic antidepressants. An anti-seizure medication might have made all the difference in the world to him and to us. I loved his writing. I want to read more.
  • One day soon I will learn how to make lovely clicks in context.
  • Try the FAQ, Pat, there's a how-to in there.
  • Reading Dick made me terrified, freaked out, awed, shocked, upside down and paranoid. Ubik made me laugh. Valis scared the living daylights outta me. And Minority Report was the best detective story I read in a decade (damned Tom Cruise...). I'm saving up some of his novels, so I'll have something to look forward to as I grow old(er). Think I'll tackle the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch soon.
  • elixir of ubique
  • I'll be downloading this when I get home, but I've always seen PKD as more of an 'ideas' writer and for that reason tend to prefer his short stories to his novels; although some are notewothy (such as 'androids' and 'a scanner darkly') many lapse into incoherence. I'd alway recommend people to start with the short stories. I didn't realise Valis was adapted into an opera in 1987. CD details and quicktime clip here.
  • Its the incoherence I like, quite often.
  • Point taken dng, I was really talking about structural incoherence, PKD seems to have real problems ending novels, and they're often powered by one idea, in the same way as the short stories. The brevity makes the stories more successful as vehicles for philosophical idea, which is the side of PKD I prefer. Even his biggest fans would admit he wasn't a technically gifted writer. The novelist Jonathan Letham wrote a great article on PKD's body of work for Book Forum, and admits responsibility for the posthumous rerelease of certain titles, as he was one of the few people with a copy of some of them.