The Shifting Realities of Phillip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings

by Philip K. Dick

Book Overview

"What Kafka was to the first half of the twentieth century, Philip K. Dick is to the second half."--Art Spiegelman, author of MAUS Philip K. Dick was both our most brilliant science fiction writer and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679426442
• ISBN13: 9780679426448
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 350 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

(Not So)Altered States

Being interested in speculative reality and philosophy, this was a must read. I was not disappointed. Philip K Dick writes, "All responsible writers, to some degree, have become involuntary criers of doom, because doom is in the wind...and the doom stories are intended to call attention to reality." This is made all the more relevant by the fact that the human folly that gave way to encroaching doom(war) ~ as the interviews and essays complied for this book run anywhere from twenty five to fifty five years ago ~ is far more manifest and pervasive in our own perceived time. That much closer. Part five: Essays and Speeches, deals with schizophrenia, LSD and Gnosticism. He delves into the Jungian concept of synchronicity regarding his own life, and the inexplicable coincidences in his novel, "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said"...(also see the movie, "Waking Life")..of "fiction mimicking truth, and truth mimicking fiction." What he refers to as "a dangerous overlap, a dangerous blur." Take a look with *open* eyes at the society we've created and you realize that the "dangerous blur" is scarcely acknowledged it is so routine, so deeply solidified. 'Entertainment'(of the mindless sort) has proven to be the ultimate vehicle for Big Brother totalitarianism, so to speak. The final section, Exegesis, at times feels like listening in on a discussion, a contemplation, within his own conscience, on the matter of God/Cosmos: "Creator: time past. Holy Spirit: time is. Christ: time completed." Overall, a fascinating and unique read.

A modern Gnostic master.

While I've read this entire book cover-to-cover, I have probably read the last half (Part Five: Essays and Speeches, and Part Six: Selections from the Exegesis) at least four times. That's where the real philosophy is. Or perhaps I should say the real mysticism. Actually, P.D.K.'s thought was a combination of philosophy and mysticism, not unlike the works of Pythagoras or Plato. Indeed, I would not hesitate to place him in such exalted company. Dick's Gnosticism is the Gnostisism of true revelation, of epiphany and theogony (of union with the divine.) Yes, some people arrogantly write this off as the rantings of a "schizophenic", but then they would no doubt apply that same meaningless, garbage diagnosis to every great mystic teacher or shaman. Here you get the revelations of his novel ,_Valis_, developed and fleshed out in a much more satisfying manner. Indeed, unless you are fortunate enough to track down a copy of his mythical _Exegesis_ this is the best expression of his thought that you will find. One last note, as much as I agree with the gnostic idea of a transcedent God (or Logos, or Tao) breaking through into our material "Black Iron Prison", I do have a problem with his concept of a Yaldaboath (i.e. deranged, lesser, creator god.) You see, human materialistic, hyper-rational, civilization functions as such a lesser "god." Have we not made money, science, and ego into idols that are worshipped in their own right to the exclusion of the the true transcendant God? You simply do not need to posit the existance of such a supernatural demiurge, devil, or "Moloch" (as Ginsberg called it.) Human ignorance and evil are quite up to the role. (...)

The Universe Was His Sandbox

THE SHIFTING REALITIES OF PKD is a perfect title for this material. It was in his speeches to college students that PKD exposed his mental terrain--holding little back. Here he discussed his two obsessions: What is reality? & What constitutes an authentic human? This material shows how Dick used his sci-fi novels to poke holes in simpler cosmologies. Dick made the universe his own sandbox. In THE ANDROID & THE HUMAN he says that free will may be an illusion. Were humans also controlled by tropisms that are so evident in the growth of plants? He sounded out his greatest fear as ?The reduction of humans to mere use--men made into machines, ... what I regard as the greatest evil imaginable.? Dick saw the time to come when a writer would be stopped not by unplugging his electric keyboard but by someone unplugging the man himself.In MAN, ANDROID & MACHINE Dick found a hopeful theory at the end of his dark tunnel. In this essay he discussed Teilhard De Chardin?s Noosphere, ?composed of holographic & informational projections in a unified and continually processed Gestalt,?--a summation of the globe?s intelligence. Dick never worried about the label ?made in a laboratory.... the entire universe is one vast laboratory,? he writes. Here he also lays bare his own reality--one composed of a series of crystallized dreams. He cites Ursula Le Guin?s THE LATHE OF HEAVEN as his model for ?understanding the nature of our world?. He adds: ?I myself have derived much of the material for my writing from dreams.? PKD challenged the reader to pry beneath the facade of daily existence and knead the silly putty of the dream world into some recognized shape.

Views of Reality from the Master of Unreality

Dick's perspectives and introspections are frightening. I read this book everyday on the bus to school until I was mugged and it was stolen from me. The imagination and oeuvre of Dick's work are close to the perfect example of Edward Wilson's Consilience, the unity of everything. One has but to see the dark eye within to know how that dark eye looks back. Brilliant.

Something for everybody

There is a place in this collection of essays where Dick says "What helps for me-- if help comes at all-- is to find the mustard seed of the funny at the core of the horrible and futile." That sentence in particular carries the feeling that drew me so deeply into Dick's subject matter whatever he happened to be writing about. When he discusses the death of a dear friend by cancer and announces that he believe the spirit of that friend came to inhabit his cat it is-- on the one hand-- funny. It is also-- on the other hand-- clearly what he truly believes; so it's like so much of what Dick writes-- strange and moving and humorous and lightened with that quality of perceived truth that so few writers manage to convey. This volume of essays covers everything from biography to notes about the conversion of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" to "Blade Runner" to possible sequels to his novels to musings about the gnostic revalations and how they relate to Dick's idea of the universe. One of the most thought-provoking books that I've ever read. My one caveat (warning) being that this is perhaps not the best introduction to Dick and I suggest reading at least one or two of his novels (ideally the Divine Invasion books) before attempting these waters.