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Philip K. Dick Speaks (Sorta)
futileboy writes "Erik Davis put together this posthumous interview of Philip K. Dick from some tapes he found (he explains how it came together in his introduction to the interview). It comes off pretty clean."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Sci Fi writer Philip K. Dick was found dead in his Berkeley home. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
sulli
RTFJ.
Funny, because "pretty clean" isn't really something I'd ever describe PKD as having been.
Abrubtly cut short when he was asked about the marked improvement in his writing style and ability since his death.
Interesting application of Ghostscript
At least now because of Mr. Hubbard, when movie critics die, they known for sure what movie is going to be playing on a continious loop in Hell's Metroplex. Poor Gene Siskel...
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Oh wow, "Electronic Voice phenomenon?" Spare me. All this page needed was a midi playing "Age of Aquarius."
PKD's writing are strongly rationalist with an intelligent approach to figuring out the strange phenomenon in his life. I think its insulting to turn him into a new age "John Edwards" bullshit spiritual medium commodity.
> Subsequent research proved, however, that all of the quotations have already made an appearance somewhere in Dick's fiction, letters, or essays.
No shit. Maybe because the "voice" he heard on the tape was nothing more than the subconscious projecting quotes hes read elsewhere onto nothing more than tape static and other ambigious sounds from the original recording.
Maybe next week slashdot can expose how Ozzy put all those satanic messages into his albums.
Interviews with ghosts.... next thing you know, Slashdot will be reporting that some financially unsound software company will be suing... I dunno, IBM saying that they own Linux or something like that.
... we will have done so much speculating about how it will behave that the poor thing will probably just have a nervous breakdown and explode. Imagine being born and being presented with a huge book psychoanalysing your every emotion and impression in detail. The pressure to go crazy and enslave mankind would be enough to make you go crazy and enslave mankind.
I am much more interested to hear what sci-fi authors have to say about near-future technologies (e.g. the stuff in this article about surveillance systems) than what they have to say about what things will be like when the earth is ruled by superintelligent robots.
Girl: Remember when those cyborgs enslaved humanity?
Fry: Uh... yeah, that rings a bell.
Read Pynchon.
"psthumous"?
What's that mean - he's whispering from beyond the grave?
<Rimshot> Sorry.
=TKK
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
Personally, I'm not offended by the obviously fictional framing device (lame though it may be), but it would only be fair to have references to all the interviews that these replies have been lifted from. After all, "fair use" implies that you're using the materially fairly. Not providing credit where credit is due isn't fair at all.
Also, the comment about Dick's ideas infusing The Matrix is true as far as it goes, but misses one important point. Dick was an SF writer firmly grounded in the field, and would never have made as obvious and asinine mistake as violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics the way The Matrix's idiotic "humans as batteries" backstory does.
Finally, the "spirit voices" tap shtick is especially lame considering the very sophisticated Gnostic sources and theories Dick turned to after his mystical "pink light" experience in 1974. Dick may have been wrong in the later mystical leanings that informed works like Valis, but he was never a believer in the type of fraudulent spiritual hucksterism that continues to rip off "new age" believers even today.
Suggested reading: Philip K. Dick: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, Time Out of Joint, and (after you've read the rest) Valis and In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Really though, this is straight out off the super market tabloid rack.
/. just sank to new lows. I mean c'mon couldn't roll out the Bill of Nine or an SCO rant so we had to troll the readers with "bat-boy" fodder?
from the article:
"I was experimenting with electronic voice phenomena. I was recording the analog noise between tracks on a scratchy old copy of Karl Muck conducting Parzifal with the Bayreuth Festival Chorus onto a cassette tape. Then I would cut, splice, and process the tape in various ways, and then listen to the results. On the third attempt I heard a voice that I recognized, from a tape once available through the Philip K. Dick Society, as belonging to the late science fiction writer. More incredible was my discovery that, by recording my own questions on the same cassette tape, I was able to initiate a genuine dialogue with this mysterious voice. Subsequent research proved, however, that all of the quotations have already made an appearance somewhere in Dick's fiction, letters, or essays. Nonetheless, the conversation seems worth presenting"
Jumping crack-heads on pogo-sticks batman!
What crack are the editors smoking and please pass it because my reality distortion field is waning and I need a hook up before the shakes set in.
The page is only "text" from this supposed "interview" and none of the cut-spliced-processed audio is to be found.
This is utter crap, if the audio was present it would at least have some artistic merit and therefore interest of value, but there is nothing but the rantings for those who wear shiny foil hats squarely screwed to their brows and interview excerpts readily available on Google!
Mod me down for being a troll, but
It is not far enough out of context to be funny or slanderous, but not in context enough to be worth the paper is is written on... oh. Never mind.
And why can't I mod down the whole artical, isn't this a heirachical database? :-)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
It kind of goes to prove that old adage (variously attributed to C.S Lewis or Aurthur C. Clarke) science fiction is the only genuine consciousness expanding drug. (Trust me, I have checked).
Mind you, I think someone should have told P. K. Dick that before 1982.
Favourite Quote: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Can we plz change the picture that is associated with sci fi? Everytime I see that weird looking face, I get a little freaked out.
I still remember one of the first PKD things I read.
Some guy meets a chick at a party who gives him some drugs. Then he watches the president on tv and sees a monster with writhing tentacles. But everything else looks normal.
Comes to find out, the drug he was given was an anti-hallucinogen. Everyone who gets it sees some hideous thing when lookig at the President because there are already drugs in the water. But everyone sees a different hideous thing when on the anti-hallucinogen, but everyone sees the same thing on the hallucinogen....
I'm pretty sure this is PKD. Something in my head says there's a slight chance it was Phillip Jose Farmer, but I don't think so.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Also, the comment about Dick's ideas infusing The Matrix is true as far as it goes, but misses one important point. Dick was an SF writer firmly grounded in the field, and would never have made as obvious and asinine mistake as violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics the way The Matrix's idiotic "humans as batteries" backstory does.
Actually the original script apparently had a (slightly) more plausible explanation - the machines used humans as components in a sort of huge neural network, and the point of the matrix was to keep the conscious parts of the brain occupied while they use the rest as needed (ties in nicely with the whole humans only use 10 percent of their brain thing.) But apparently that was too complicated for the average Joe Moviegoer so they dumbed it down to the stupid batteries thing. Blah.
Do a google search on the author and you'll find he's pretty serious about mysticism. Hell, his bio on frontwheeldrive decribes him as practicing alchemy. I'm afraid this is not a joke.
(ties in nicely with the whole humans only use 10 percent of their brain thing.)
Nice indeed, unless you account for the fact that the "10% of the brain" shtick is completely false. It's a popular myth that has been propagated endlessly in science fiction.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
as obvious and asinine mistake as violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics the way The Matrix's idiotic "humans as batteries" backstory does
Yeah, cause when I walked out of the theatre after seeing it everyone was talking about it's obvious flaw and whether or not the Second Law of Thermodynamics could be circumvented by machines with greater intellect.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
I think that Morpheous was incorrect about the need of humans as batteries. I think he was told that, but that isn't really what's going on. That's why it doesn't make sense. I think we will see what humans are really for in the next series.
If they follow the VALIS storyline, neo will end up as the next Morpheous, looking for the real One. And that's where it will end, and there will be no more movies.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
Actual quote from linked article:
I do seem attracted to trash, as if the clue lies there.
Feh, most great minds are. His waning years sound rather like the trials of Kurt Vonnegut. Disillusioned with the fact that his recent literature has not been well recieved, he blames it on the population rather than himself. It's a shame though: Kurt Vonnegut's earlier work was revolutionary, just like Philip K. Dick's writings.
Phil would have liked that plot.
I have a problem with literary journalism of this sort; we have absolutely no idea as to the context of the excerpted quotes. I could've dealt with this i he had actually created an audio interview; he did piece it together from recordings in the first place, after all. THAT would've been great (I love hearing authors talk). All this is is a transcription of an interview that never happened with no technical or historical reason for it to be interesting. I'll pass.
Triv
So the building blocks of the cosmos are not matter or energy, but information.
The universe is information and we are stationary in it, not three-dimensional and not in space or time. We ourselves are information-rich; information enters us, is processed and is then projected outward once more, now in an altered form. Since the universe is actually composed of information, then it can be said that information will save us. This is the saving gnosis which the Gnostics sought.
Did anyone read the recent Scientific American article about the holographic theory of the universe, whereby we're all not actually 3-dimensional, we're like information "painted" on another, 2-dimensional surface or somesuch....it also had something to do with the thermodynamics of black holes. I don't pretend to fully understand it, but it seems to be an actual tie-in the Dick's remark about us being made of information.
I belong to the ______ generation.
This is the guy who at one point used the phrase "negative ions" in a story.
If anything, Dick is a writer of speculative fiction. Science never figures prominently in his stories in the same way it does in the hard SF works of Clarke, Niven, Bear etc., and for good reason; while Dick was keenly interested in technology (his works are littered with characters strangely ranting about the inner workings of radios, cars, etc.), he did not have the mind of a visionary technologist, and at heart he was always a philosopher. Dick wrote incessantly about the nature of reality, but it was almost never about atoms and quarks, and almost always about the human experience.
In this Dick has much in common with Vonnegut, Brunner, Disch, Sturgeon, Lem, Bester, Orwell, the Strugatsky brothers, and many others who sits on the thin, mostly political line between mainstream literature and science fiction. Some, like Vonnegut and Lem, have long been embraced by the literati, and Dick would have been amazed and thrilled about the extent to which he has, in later years, been critiqued and accepted by the mainstream as a genuinely visionary thinker.
One of my many favourite PKD quotes, one that illustrates how well he uses future technology as commentary on the so-called human condition, follows.
- The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."
(From Ubik, 1969).He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you."
"I think otherwise," the door said, "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this [apartment]."
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to this door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
"You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt's money-gulping door.
"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."
On the other hand, "Faith of our Fathers" was published in 1967, while "8 O'Clock in the Morning" was published in 1963.
On the third hand, Nelson's first novel, "The Ganymede Takeover," was co-written by PKD.
--In this life, or the next, I will have my vengeance.
http://www.philipkdick.com/frank/sf-letter.htm
Then again, I think I would be hard pressed to call something like "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer" SciFi ;)
Did anyone else notice that his technique for the interview is based off, or strikingly similiar to that used my William Burroughs cut up
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
I have rather strong reasons -- nuclear reactions proceed in nanoseconds. Human brains react in milliseconds at best. Secondly, the circuitry that you'd need to process the raw data from the reactor into something analog the brain could deal with, then do the reverse to control the reactor would be more complex than a purely digital system that didn't use brains at all. And if you really did want to put brains in the loop, use something simpler like cockroaches or goldfish that don't need to be entertained.
Subsequent research proved, however, that all of the quotations have already made an appearance somewhere in Dick's fiction, letters, or essays
Wow! Then this must be for real! How could he possibly know things that have already made a public appearance?!?
Does this guy have a 1-900 number? I must call him at $4.95/minute, so he can amaze me by telling me things that I already know!!!!!
Phil Dick may or may not have been bitter, but this quote does not reflect it. He did not look down on trash. One of his other quotes was that, "It may seem that I trust nothing, but it's just that what I trust is so small." Furthermore, he was steeped in California culture. He once wrote Lem, "You have to understand, trash is all that we have here." His relationship to trash reflected more of what might be called a Buddha nature than bitterness.
Did you ever think maybe the machines are LYING to the humans about why they keep people alive and run the Matrix?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
With that said, however, there's a little bit of an (unconscious?) agenda in this "interview" I think. He turns some of PKD's ideas about the world and religion and spirituality into ideas about technology, which really isn't fair or reasonable. Short example:
NO! This isn't PKD talking about technology emerging into consciousness, a la Terminator's SkyNet. For PKD, the prototype of living information was the Torah and the Dead Sea Scrolls, not some piece of technology. It's a very Hegelian view of consciousness and history here, that there's a sort of transcendent and fundamentally spiritual consciousness consisting only of ideas which forms the true substance of the Universe and the medium of history, but the information there isn't bit and bytes in computers; it's ancient Gnostic explanations of the spiritual relationship between God and man and the world.So that's my one gripe about the article. By trying to make PKD's usually incoherent ramblings coherent, he turned some really strange ideas about God and universe into easier-to-digest ideas about technological development. Aside from that, it was pretty clever.