The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick 1972-1973

423 Pages·1994·49.073 MB·English

by  Philip K. Dick

Books by Philip K. Dick
Solar Lottery (1955) Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
A Handful of Darkness (1955) (1974)
The World Jones Made (1956) Confessions of a Crap Artist (1975)
The Man Who Japed (1956) Deus Irae (with Roger Zelazny) (1976)
Eye in the Sky (1957) The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977)
The Cosmic Puppets (1957) A Scanner Darkly (1977)
The Variable Man (1957) The Golden Man (1980)
Time out of Joint (1959) VALIS (1981)
Dr. Futurity (1960) The Divine Invasion (1981)
Vulcan’s Hammer (1960) The Transmigration of Timothy
The Man in the High Castle (1962) Archer (1982)
The Game-Players of Titan (1963) The Man Whose Teeth Were All
The Penultimate Truth (1964) Exacdy Alike (1984)
Martian Time-Slip (1964) Robots, Androids, and Mechanical
The Simulacra (1964) Oddities (1984)
Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964) In Milton Lumky Territory (1985)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Ubik: The Screenplay (1985)
Eldritch (1965) I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)
Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Puttering About in a Small Land
Along after the Bomb (1965) (1985)
Now Wait for Last Year (1966) Radio Free Albemuth (1985)
The Crack in Space (1966) Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1986)
The Unteleported Man (1966) The Collected Stories of Philip K.
(expanded edition 1983) Dick (1987)
The Zap Gun (1967) Mary and the Giant (1987)
Counter-Clock World (1967) The Broken Bubble (1988)
The Ganymede Takeover (with Ray Nick and the Glimmung (1988)
Nelson) (1967) The Dark-Haired Girl (1988)
Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep? (1968)
Galactic Pot-Healer (1969)
Ubik (1969)
The Preserving Machine (1969)
A Maze of Death (1970)
Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1970)
We Can Build You (1972)
The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973)

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1972-1973
Introduction by Dennis Etchison
Underwood-Miller
Novato, California
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
1993
Trade edition: ISBN 0-88733-161-0
Slipcased edition: ISBN 0-88733462-9
Copyright © 1993 by The Estate of Philip K. Dick
Book design by Underwood-Miller
Printed in the United States of America
All Rights Reserved
An Underwood-Miller book by arrangement with The Estate of Philip K.
Dick. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic
or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without
explicit permission from the author or the author’s agent, except by a reviewer
who may quote brief passages. For information address the publisher:
Underwood-Miller, 708 Westover Drive, Lancaster, PA 17601.
Caution: These letters are offered for the insight they may provide into their
author; they cannot be considered reliable sources of information about any
other persons.
Special thanks to Allan Kausch for coordinating the preproduction of
these volumes.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Dick, Philip K.
The selected letters of Philip K. Dick
Includes index.
Contents: v. 1.19384971. -v. 2. 10724973 -V. 3. 1974. -v. 4. 1975-76.
-V. 5. 1977-79.
1. Dick, Philip K.—Correspondence. 2. Authors, American—20th
century—Correspondence. 3. Science Fiction—Authorship. I. Title
PS3554.I3Z48 1991 813’.54 “B” 89-25099
ISBN 0-88733-169-6 (v. 1 : acid-free)
ISBN 0-88733-161-0 (v. 2 : acid-free)
ISBN 0-88733-104-1 (trade ed. : v. 3)
ISBN 0-88733-105-X (slipcase ed. : v. 3)
Introduction
by Dennis Etchison
Philip K. Dick wrote these letters during tumultuous times. The sixties did
not really end until 1972 or so, when this volume opens, and the revolutionary
fervor of the previous decade had only just begun to ebb. Soon the New Age
movement would come into full flower, replacing the politics of confrontation
with a quest from inner peace and self-improvement. Let It Bleed became Let It
Be, and before long “crystal” meant what you gazed into or wore around your
neck for personal power rather than something you ingested.
The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick is, in its own way, a record of those times.
There have been other volumes of literary correspondence, some of them
fascinating—for example, Lovecraft’s lectures about writing and aesthetic
principles, and Anais Nin’s beautifully selfconscious essays, composed as if with
an eye on posterity—but perhaps none so candid and disarming as these. There
is very little ego-driven exhibitionism here. When Dick wrote about his growing
fame, it was almost always to agents or prospective buyers of his work in order to
generate a better income, or to impress his family and girlfriends as a way of
ensuring their love and good will. Some letters offered the opportunity to test out
(presumably in confidence) new ideas for short stories and novels that were not
yet fully formed, or (later) to discuss his ongoing philosophical opus, The
Exegesis—important source material for critics and biographers. But most have
more in common with the kind of notes we all jot to friends and relatives, filled
with the need to share the latest news about our daily lives, to speak openly and
personally, without fear that they will ever be made public. I cannot help but
flinch at the vulnerability and insecurity they sometimes reveal, and wonder
uneasily if the invasion of privacy is justified.
What would Phil think about this? It’s presumptuous of me to venture an
opinion, since I knew the man only casually, but I suspect he would be
mortified, and not only by the airing of so much dirty laundry. Why his letters
and not someone’s else’s? The answer, of course, lies in the extraordinary
vii
viii THE SELECTED LETTERS OF PHILIP K. DICK
attention that is now focused on his work, and the amazing fact that he kept
copies of every letter, at least during the later years of his life, all of which makes
their publication irresistible. (Are there others out there who, inspired by his
example, are now dutifully saving every scrap of paper for the sake of a
postmortem study? If so they are probably out of luck, for it is unlikely that we
will find another collection of letters quite as brilliant and touching as Dick’s.)
The cult of personality surrounding certain artists seems to accrue in direct pro­
portion to the degree of intimacy they establish with their audience—how much
human weakness they are willing to expose, as well as the courage and dedication of
their careers. If it also happens that they are somehow denied the greater recognition
their talent deserves, the bond is made that much stronger. Think of Henry Miller or
Kenneth Patchen, who selflessly bared not only their genius but their pain, the fail­
ures along with the triumphs, the lapses in faith and all the more astonishing bravery
in the face of overwhelming odds. Other artists reveal very little of themselves in a life­
time, however superior their work may be; they are never embraced with quite the
same passion, which is why James Dean may be found in souvenir shops the world
over, but not Laurence Olivier. We respond most intensely to those who represent
not just what we would like to be but what we are, and it is the tension between what
is and what could be that moves us so deeply.
Dick revealed more of himself than he knew. He was full of contradictions:
gregarious and withdrawn, depressed and optimistic, hopeful for the future and
suicidal. I remember a story he told about an attempt to take his own life. He
swallowed an overdose of pills and sat down to wait for the end; but just before
he passed out, he saw the number of the Suicide Hotline next to the phone. He
did not remember putting it diere, but the part of him that wanted to live had
written it on a shirt cardboard and propped it up, in large enough numerals so
that he could read it even as his vision blurred...
This is Dick’s book, not mine, so my recollections are of no great
importance. However, for the record, for those who care about such things, I can
tell you briefly what else I remember:
The look of desperation on his face, one day in the seventies at a science
fiction convention, as he waited outside a Hugo or Nebula Award ceremony
because he could not afford a ticket. I was killing time in the lobby, too, for the
same reason; everyone else was in the auditorium. He came up to me with a
burning question. Did I know if Bob Silverberg, whose name had just been
announced inside, had ever won before? Dick, a former winner himself, wanted
to shake his colleague’s hand on the way out, but could not decide whether to
say, “Congratulations on your second!” or simply “Congratulations!” He was
afraid of committing a faux pas...
The quiet dignity with which he conducted himself as part of an otherwise
appallingly egotistical group of writers who had come to speak to a classroom of
fans at Cal State Fullerton, and the sweet, deferential way he asked CC (my
girlfriend Cecilia Palaski) and me to stop by his apartment afterwards. When we
telephoned to confirm an hour later, his wife Tessa told us that Phil had gone
THE SELECTED LETTERS OF PHILIP K. DICK
I X
on with the group to a Mexican restaurant nearby, but had thoughtfully left a
message for us with directions. When we arrived, Phil spotted us immediately
through the crowd with those wary, hyper-alert eyes of his, as though expecting
to see himself walk in the door at any moment....
He knew who we were because we had taken photographs of him at a
signing in Sherry Gotdieb’s bookstore, A Change of Hobbit (in its first
incarnation, above the Kleenco Cleaners on Westwood Boulevard) a few weeks
earlier—CC snapped it on her 35mm camera and I stayed up all night in our
kitchen, developing the negatives and making 8x10 prints—and he had decided
to send one of the enlargements, a cropped detail, to Doubleday for the back of
Flow Tears, the Policeman Said. Later he mailed us a check so we could buy
the book, because he didn’t have any copies, along with a nice....
I must admit to an ambivalence about driving out to see him, as he
suggested. CC was exactly the sort of shy, darkly mysterious girl he liked to write
about in his novels (a character in Flow M} Tears was even named Pris, which
was a nickname CC had chosen for herself once, years before, about the time
the East Village Other ran a photo of another Pris on their “Slum Goddess”
feature page—synchronicities abound!), and I was afraid that he might take too
much of a shine to her, as he had at the bookstore. Nonetheless I revered the
man and wanted to know him. I wish now that we had gone out more than
once, and that I had never cashed the check, but we were poor, too....
I remember a fan at that bookstore signing, who asked: “What is your
theme?” I cringed for Phil at such a pretentious question, but he fielded it easily,
saying, “The Nature of Reality.” Then he gazed across the room and his eyes fell
upon a small painting Sherry had put over the doorway, of a man struggling to
walk on an undulating, dissolving checkboard floor. “Like that,” he added
admiringly. I believe the artist was present, who offered it to him as a gift. Phil
took the painting but insisted on making time payments....
I remember seeing him onstage at some convention or other about the same
time, where he improvised a hilarious anecdote about Richard Nixon trapped in
a men’s room of a gas station with a pay telephone on the wall and only one
dime in his pocket; the yarn, spun out on the spot, drew cheers and an ovation
from the audience....
And I remember a phone call in the seventies, on a day when I was about
to leave for Fullerton with my roommates, Art Cover and Gus Hasford, to spend
the afternoon at his place. Phil canceled, claiming that he was not feeling well. I
had just read Deus Irae, and before hanging up I told him I thought I could
guess which parts had been written by Zelazny and which by him. Whether I
was right I don’t know, but he was kind enough to say that I was. We never
made the trip on that day or any other....
These memories aren’t much, but they are all I have, along with the stories
and novels, which have influenced me since the fifties.
Kierkegaard was right. Life can only be understood backwards, but it must
be lived forwards.
X THE SELECTED LETTERS OF PHILIP K. DICK
And now there are the letters.
As you read them, please don’t overlook Phil’s sense of humor. He was a
complex man with many sides, but if you listen to his voice (some tapes may still
be available from The PKD Newsletter or the Pacifica Radio Archives) it is
unmistakable. There was the delightful, energetic quality of the satirist in his
head-tripping, as if he was determined to keep talking, like Lenny Bruce, until he
discovered where the trip would lead. There is also plenty of this in his novels. It
was his method to use entertainment as a vehicle for probing the deeper issues
of philosophy and theology that drove his fiction. He was, after all, a science
fiction writer, and extrapolation was his stock in trade.
Some of his trips have been dismissed as evidence of paranoid
schizophrenia. This seems to me to be a depressingly humorless assessment
made by people so literal-minded that they are unable to recognize irony—a
failing that is the surefire mark of a second-rate intelligence, and one lacking any
creative imagination of its own. He knew that what he was saying often sounded
absurd, but he was spinning out threads and testing dieories; that is the way
creativity works. And when he began to see connections between apparently
unrelated events, he was using the same talent for observation, analysis and
original thought that distinguishes any gifted artist.
To describe this process as “schizophrenia” is a way of labeling for scientific
convenience, but it does not address the larger issue of what that state of mind
really represents. My own take is that to perceive connections where there appear
to be none is the first step in penetrating die veil of illusion, the Brownian
movement of phenomenology that makes up the universe. When this kind of
exploration focuses on matters that are quantifiable by physics, it may lead to a
Unified Field Theory. When it involves other kinds of pattern identification, or
apperception, there is danger in following only a certain thread to the exclusion
of others, until it becomes for you the whole yarn. While the number of times
your cat twitches its whiskers may bear some relationship to tomorrow’s weather,
and the CIA may really have its fingers in a great many more pies than the New
York Times chooses to report, that is not to say that your cat controls the weather
or that the CIA caused your washing machine to break down. The greater truth
is more likely that all things are connected or interrelated. The I Ching is a
wondrous mathematical construct; but don’t forget that a true master can read
the pattern of leaves outside the window or the shape of the laundry in the
corner just as well as the yarrow stalks. God is in the details. There is a roadmap
in the lines of your palm, but it may also be found anywhere else—absolutely
anywhere—if you care to look deeply enough. Study a grain of sand, any grain will
do, and you can reconstruct the world.
And that may be the real value of this publication, the final justification.
Perhaps if we examine one life closely enough, in all its particulars, we will learn
about every life, including our own. A man’s letters are as good a place as any to
begin. What we have here might even be a new form of novel, a life itself as the
ultimate work of art, more precious because it is the first and only draft.