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Philip K. Dick Speaks (Sorta)
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Jul 14, 2003 10:20 PM
from the well-assembled dept.
from the well-assembled dept.
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."
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Sad news ... Philip K. Dick, dead at 53 (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday October 22, @04:01PM)
Re:Sad news ... Philip K. Dick, dead at 53 (Score:5, Funny)
What is WITH that category picture? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday December 07 2002, @12:34AM)
Re:What is WITH that category picture? (Score:4, Funny)
(http://lexicali.com/)
Don't let him freak you out. Relax and have some Trania.
Re:Sad news ... Philip K. Dick, dead at 53 (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
(http://sparkless.net/)
What a wierd article. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The L. Ron Hubbard Inteview was .... (Score:5, Funny)
Credit where credit is due (Score:5, Funny)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654)
Uhm. (Score:1)
(http://exitflagger.org/)
Ghostscript Seance? (Score:5, Funny)
Insulting to PKD and his fans (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 26 2002, @11:59PM)
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.
Re:Insulting to PKD and his fans (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 26 2002, @11:59PM)
If anyone is really interested in PKD (on of my favorite authors) they can check out this great PKD fan site. [philipkdick.com]
If you like what you see, get a copy of "A Scanner Darkly," you won't regret it.
Re:Insulting to PKD and his fans (Score:4)
(http://www.redwolf.c...on/auth_sbszine.html | Last Journal: Tuesday September 06 2005, @08:29PM)
I think it was intended as a tongue in cheek comment... y'know, a joke? The author is probably as sceptical as you are about EVP etc. Lighten up.
Probably not a joke at all to the author (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 26 2002, @11:59PM)
Re:Insulting to PKD and his fans (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.welsh-buck.org/jbuck/)
If you think that PKD's writings are "strongly rationalist", you haven't read much of him.
Right.... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.astroreverb.com/)
Re:Right.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The man had an incredible insight into the social development of mankind as a whole.
He was the fictional equivalent of Alvin Toffler, (i.e. Future Shock), and Desmond Morris, (i.e. The Naked Ape).
It never fails to amaze me how often we lose sight of our collective image. It's things like this that make me slow down, and look around.
By the time we create an intelligent machine... (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://blog.intelligentdesign.com.au/ | Last Journal: Thursday March 11 2004, @05:32AM)
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.
So.. what's the deal...? (Score:1)
(http://krahd.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 06 2005, @06:59AM)
What I liked about the article is the "The reality slips and cartoon metaphysics of The Matrix" phrase. A great synthesis of the trilogy (which, btw, i happen to like a lot).
--krahd
Someone has to say it... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 24 2005, @09:37PM)
What's that mean - he's whispering from beyond the grave?
<Rimshot> Sorry.
=TKK
Thoughts on Philip K. Dick, The Matrix, Mysticism (Score:5, Informative)
(http://home.austin.rr.com/lperson/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 16 2005, @01:52PM)
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.
Re:Thoughts on Philip K. Dick, The Matrix, Mystici (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday February 15 2007, @09:19AM)
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.
Re:Thoughts on Philip K. Dick, The Matrix, Mystici (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Thoughts on Philip K. Dick, The Matrix, Mystici (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday February 23 2004, @04:55PM)
Re:Thoughts on Philip K. Dick, The Matrix, Mystici (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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.
Re:Thoughts on Philip K. Dick, The Matrix, Mystici (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.analogcodec.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 04 2003, @05:40PM)
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.
Re:Thoughts on Philip K. Dick, The Matrix, Mystici (Score:5, Informative)
(http://byzantine.no/alex/)
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."
Slashdot should add a "bat-boy" Icon (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.musecube.com/l0ungeb0y/ | Last Journal: Monday February 09 2004, @06:38PM)
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
If I mod down the article do all posts go down 1? (Score:2, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday December 09 2006, @10:46PM)
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? :-)
Bizarre Cool Stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bizarre Cool Stuff (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_of_our_Fath
Re:Bizarre Cool Stuff (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 26 2006, @05:27PM)
The title is available at the Science Fiction Book Club [sfbc.com], as well. If you like Philip K. Dick, pick up William Tenn's Immodest Proposals and Dimensions of Sheckley while you're there.
PKD repeats himself (Score:1)
PKD is amazing (Score:2)
(http://www.analogcodec.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 04 2003, @05:40PM)
If you like The Matrix, VALIS will throw you for a trip.
He seems bitter, like most great minds. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [washington.edu]. 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.
Making a man speak after he's dead... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday October 17 2002, @10:28AM)
would it have been so much to ask (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday May 05 2004, @01:25PM)
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
Hmmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
PKD Interesting as always, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.myke.com/)
I especially liked the ambulance analogy with respect to entropy. It could be an interesting debate trying to figure out if saving the man increased or decreased the order of the universe...
But rather than having Davis' questions, I would have preferred to see a transcript of the comments without editing. I feel like many of the "questions" to be leading to an interesting/profound reply was undoubtedly not related to the question that was "asked" by Davis and I'm sure he ended up cutting something out that could have been much more interesting/profound.
PKD's genius lay in his ability to look at questions which have no answers - but asking questions to pre-recorded PKD comments seems like a rigged game of cosmic "Jeopardy".
myke
Burroughs Cut Up recordings (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.yogurt66.org/)
Amazing! (Score:4, Funny)
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!!!!!
"Minority Report" a dark movie? (Score:2)
Uh... let's recap. In 1993 Spielberg [imdb.com] directed a film called Schindler's List [imdb.com]. A little darker than Minority Report [imdb.com]. I won't mention the content of "Schindler's List" for fear of invoking Godwin's Law [faqs.org], but suffice it to say that a movie featuring mounds of burning bodies and people shot for sport just might be a dark movie.
Too much techno-spin on PKD's worldview here (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
wtf, unplussed? (Score:1)
(sigh) - "speed ruined heart" - That's a myth. (Score:1)
(http://hometown.aol....omepage/profile.html)
It was actually massive doses of thorazine, as opposed to just methamphetamines, which his publicist and friends claimed, because Dick was diagnosed as a schizophrenic many, many, years ago, complete with religious hallucinations and electro-convulsive therapy. It was easier to sell his books to a public that did not understand schizophrenia, but was familiar with drug-induced hallucinations.
The writer missed a key movie:
"Screamers" (1995), from the screenplay written by the Dan O'Bannon, based on the Philip K. Dick story "Second Variety". This movie envisions that robotic sentry devices would evolve into human look-alike androids, which are intelligent but deadly anti-personnel weapons, mimicking humans so well that they can fall in love.
"Screamers" is a key predecessor to Jim Cameron's "Terminator" series and to Dan O'Bannon's own "Alien" series, where the weapon is a lifeform. "Second Variety" was anthologized by the "Spectrum IV" book.
All of Dick's stories feature characters that represent the female duality of good and evil. Prissy/Rachel in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"/"Bladerunner", Lori/Melina in "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"/"Total Recall", and Jessica1/Jessica2 in "Second Variety"/"Screamers", Anne Lively/Evanna in "Minority Report", and the Chancellor/Maya Olham in "Imposter" (2002). It is reported that the female characters represent his obsession with his fraternal twin sister, Jane, who died shortly after child birth.
All of the male protagonists are confused as to their own identity, as to whether or not each is a real human - or a synthetic memory implant, android, or clone. That confusion persists through every story.
Add to this "Paycheck" (2003), starring Ben Affleck, which will be released later this year -- and Hollywood will have milked almost all of his written works, except for the novel "Valis", where Priscilla/Prissy reappears and Philip K. Dick is an active character, who has conversations with God. That might be tricky for Hollywood marketeers to sell to today's public.
What's interesting is that a lot of Dick's plots were originally explored by A.E. Van Vogt. The difference is that the "identity confusion" theme really was informed from Dick's own personal experience.
Hopefully, the residuals will go to support his former wives and his kids. It is well known that Dick would burn through his advances, and begin his next book in anticipation of the next advance check. In his lifetime, the publishers never sent him a residual check.
First post correcting 'First Spelling Mistage Post (Score:1, Offtopic)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:First Spelling Mistage Post (Score:1)
"Grammer Syndrome."
Re:Ask Slashdot... (Score:2)
Answer [theonion.com]
Re:Mr. Dick (Score:1)
(http://ibeentoubuntu.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday December 05, @07:12PM)
Re:First Spelling Mistage Post (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:Well, if Clinton did it, it must be ok? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Wednesday May 09 2007, @08:30AM)
Clinton was a great president, but he was stupid with regard to being honest about what he did with Monica. He should have just admitted that he had a little piece on the side (nothing wrong with that). George Bush Sr. was a monster, but at least he wasn't a dictator. Did you notice how during the elder Bush's term, people could actually make fun of him and get away with it without fearing for your life or your job? Now with Baby Bush, you question him or make fun of him and you can lose your job or possibly your life. Reagan was just a fucking puppet. Poor thing had no idea what he was doing. Carter was another great president, but he had the problem of having the wrong kind of intelligence for the job. He probably would have made a better scientist of prof, than a president. Ford. Well... Ford. All I can say is Chevy Chase.
Sadly the US government is becoming less and less relevant and the corporations gain more power over our lives every day. All that needs to happen now is for the repugs to get rid of taxes completely and the US government will die. It will probably be bought out by the corporations and then this country will be a real mess. Pay access for everything and never a chance to be debt free unless you live in the woods like Kozinski. To make matters worse, there probably won't be any woods to live in as the necons will want to pay everything in sight... so they can charge you to go there. Think about it people. How many more bills do you have now than your parents did? They are grooming us to become a "pay for play" nation in every regard. They started with simple things like car leases. Then they moved onto cell phones. Now it's hitting everything. Pay per play music videos on "The Box" and the over-the-air version of MTV2. Pay per play video game consoles like the Phantom. Pay per play movies and music coming soon to an ethernet jack near you. It's a fucking travesty! The capitalists are always on about how the communists were all about the elimination of the concept of personal property. I would say that this is also true of the neocons. When you buy that cell phone, do you REALLY own it? Can you use it without paying for it eventually? As you do when you actually buy and pay for something you really own? What about DRM controlled pay per play music? Do you really own it? Like the CDs you could buy a few years ago? Can you listen to the new DRM controlled music as many times as you want without having to pay every time or pay an exhorbitant fee to get that right? Wake the fuck up people!!!! THEY are grooming US. Not to be an equal part of the capitalist system, but to be slaves to it. Although you neocons always make the mistake of thinking that I'm a commie or a socialist, I will tell you that I am not. I am merely pointing out a flaw in capitalism that many people are either too scared or too oblivious to see: As long as humans are greedy, capitalism is no better than communism. As it develops further, you can see the grip it is getting on our personal lives. It's not yet too late. Think about this. Carefully.
Re:GNAA LOOOOOVES Dick (GNAA Early Post System) (Score:1)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 15, @02:03AM
(#6440292) Una comedia misógina de ciencia ficción:
extraterrestres de una civilización de otra
galaxia llegan a la Tierra y descubren que
nuestro planeta está infestado de mujeres, por lo
cuál proceden al exterminio de las mismas
ESTA LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS!!! ESTADO UNIDOS!!! HABLE ESPANOL???? NOOOO!!!! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! OJE!!! AQUI, HABLEMOS INGLES!!!! INGLES!!!! USTED PEDAZO DE MIERDA!!!!