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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 20:39:53 GMT
GOLDEN NEEDLE AWARDDec 9, 2018 5:30:12 GMT -5 the Scribe said: ronstadt.proboards.com/thread/5786/philip-linda-ronstadtThe great science fiction writer and futurist Philip K Dick was infatuated with Linda Ronstadt. Philip is becoming more popular in death than he was in life. I thought a thread to explore his life and obsession with Linda would be interesting to fans of both writer and singer. The world according to Philip K Dick Mirrored from DW Doc Channel Franko Blondee Published on Aug 12, 2018 DW Documentary Largely overlooked in his own lifetime, he’s now considered a visionary: sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick. His novels foresaw the tech mania of the digital age. Philip Kindred Dick published a wealth of novels and short stories that would provide the inspiration for classic science fiction films such as Total Recall, Blade Runner and Minority Report. Dick’s work has been compared to the likes of Franz Kafka, George Orwell and Isaac Asimov. His stories questioned what it is to be human, and what distinguishes man from machine. Dick suffered from agoraphobia and rarely left his suburban Californian home - but traveled through countless worlds in his mind, often with the help of amphetamines. In his 45 novels and 120 short stories he explored issues of relevance today: virtual worlds, totalitarian societies, environmental disasters and technologies that could enslave us. Delve into Philip K. Dick’s life and work, drawing upon a rare interview in which the author spoke frankly about his life. Also featured are conversations with author’s psychotherapist, his widow and his biographer, which combine to offer a compelling portrait of a man who spent his life writing about the "creeping sensation that all certainties stand upon sand.” Go beyond the headlines and watch a report that explores the individual behind one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time. Why Philip K. Dick matters The Verge Published on Oct 1, 2012 When sci-fi author Philip K. Dick died 30 years ago, his work was out of print, virtually unknown. Today he's more famous than ever. At the 2012 Philip K. Dick Festival, held in San Francisco, fans (including novelist Jonathan Lethem) explain the unique appeal of this visionary writer. More from The Verge: More human than human: how Philip K. Dick can change your life 'Dickheads' gather in San Francisco to celebrate the sci-fi visionary By jesse.hicks on October 1, 2012 11:01 am Read the full article here: www.theverge.com/2012/10/1/3424828/philip-k-dick-festival-science-fiction-change-your-life
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 20:41:08 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 5:32:15 GMT -5 the Scribe said: Meet Philip K Dick, the robot! Philip K. Dick Android Bring Me the Head of Philip K. Dick How a creative team of scientists and academics from Memphis created - and lost - an android superstar. by ED ARNOLD Philip K. Dick was one of the most influential science-fiction writers in history. He wrote prolifically until his death in 1982 — completing 41 novels and 121 short stories. To date, eleven of his works have been adapted for film, including Total Recall and Minority Report. Dick was the first science-fiction author added to the collection of the Library of America. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, later adapted into the film Blade Runner, Dick created a world in which androids were indistinguishable from humans. The androids themselves could be programmed to believe they were human. The University of Memphis group knew that creating an android of Dick would titillate science-fiction fans and push the bounds of what the young and talented crew could accomplish. The team in Memphis agreed. The institute would build the brain, and Hanson would provide the body. Graesser put Eric Mathews, on his way to becoming the associate director of the FedEx Institute, in charge of the joint project. Mathews began to look for a way to pay for the project, and after a few unsuccessful attempts at funding, convinced the FedEx Institute to invest $30,000 to build the android, a modest amount for a project of this complexity. To make the android even more realistic, the team wrote some of Dick's dialogue into a customized program, using the transcripts from hundreds of interviews and his many works of literature. The creation was not a puppet, however; the android had to be able to respond to questions on its own. Though Olney is proud to talk about his involvement with the project, he's still a bit surprised that it garnered so much attention. "A lot of the conversational stuff with the robot wasn't that interesting," Olney said. "What made it interesting was that it was Philip K. Dick. It had this resonance." Olney describes the program as basic, but Mathews suggests Olney is being modest. "People don't understand how complex the problems are," Mathews said. "This robot listens to you; it then has to convert that speech to text. It then it has to parse the dialogue, pump it through a series of dialogue rules, and respond naturally." The android had two modes. A "chat bot" mode, which was essentially an interactive, scripted mode. The android was regularly asked, "What are you?" and the robot would respond, "I am Phil, a male Philip K. Dick android electronic brain, a robotic portrait of Philip K. Dick, a computer machine." The other mode was as much art as science. Using the massive transcript records, Olney's program would look for keywords and context clues to formulate answers to the scientists' questions. The android would then answer without prompting, which would occasionally spin the android into semicoherent ramblings that seemed nearly human. "There was a dimension to it that was really authentic," Olney said. "We have a video of this one conversation where we're talking to the robot about religion. There's a hilarious conversation, because they won't let up, and they won't change topics. Some of the stuff it came back with was surprisingly plausible." Dick's own children witnessed this firsthand. Because of copyright concerns, Hanson asked the Dick family for its blessing, even promising the author's daughters that they would have the right to kill the project if they didn't like what the team created. Just a few days before the robot was set to be unveiled, Isa Dick visited the FedEx Institute. "She had a moment with this robot that could've been a deal breaker," Mathews said. "We didn't know what it was going to say or how she'd react to talking to her robot father." Years later, Isa Dick told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, "It looked very much like my dad. When my name was mentioned, it launched into a long rant about my mother and this one time that she took me and left him. It was not pleasant." Still, Isa Dick approved the project. full article: www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/bring-me-the-head-of-philip-k-dick/Content?oid=3191917
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 20:42:19 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 5:37:23 GMT -5 the Scribe said: Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American writer known for his work in science fiction. His work explored philosophical, social, and political themes, with stories dominated by monopolistic corporations, alternative universes, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. His writing also reflected his interest in metaphysics and theology, and often drew upon his life experiences in addressing the nature of reality, identity, drug abuse, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences. Born in Illinois, he eventually moved to California and began publishing science fiction stories in the 1950s. His stories initially found little commercial success. His 1962 alternative history novel The Man in the High Castle earned Dick early acclaim, including a Hugo Award for Best Novel. He followed with science fiction novels such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and Ubik (1969). His 1974 novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel.Following a series of religious experiences in February 1974, Dick's work engaged more explicitly with issues of theology, philosophy, and the nature of reality, as in such novels as A Scanner Darkly (1977) and VALIS (1981). A collection of his non-fiction writing on these themes was published posthumously as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011). He died in 1982, at age 53, due to complications from a stroke. Dick's writing produced 44 published novels and approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. A variety of popular films based on Dick's works have been produced, including Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (adapted twice: in 1990 and in 2012), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). In 2005, Time named Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923.[6] In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._DickGlamourous Rags A Profile Of Philip K. Dick Twenty years dead and as fresh as tomorrow's headline, the sf writer Philip K. Dick is as popular with movie makers looking for handy plot hooks as he is with pop culture academics looking for a thesis topic. 'Blade Runner' - based on his 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' - is a classic of movie noir; the Schwarzenegger/Sharon Stone vehicle 'Total Recall' takes its basic situation from one of his short stories. More recently, both 'Impostor' and Spielberg's forthcoming 'Minority Report' are based on Dick material - what is there about this little-known figure which makes him so surprisingly central to popular culture? Phil Dick came of age in the sf of the 50s in the aftermath of Joe McCarthy and with atomic holocaust seemingly just around the corner. His work was always uncomfortable, obsessed with appearances and reality, with paranoia and compassion, fascinated with the little people who get crushed in the gears of even the justest society. An early short story 'Foster, You're Dead' shows us the corruption of a whole society from the fact that a child is bullied at school because his parents cannot afford to update their bomb shelter. Part of his enduring appeal is just this - he is one of the best sf writers of ordinary unheroic life. Both 'Minority Report' and 'Blade Runner' deal with one of Dick's stock figures - the loyal servant of a system on whom the system arbitrarily turns. Deckard - the Harrison Ford character in 'Blade Runner' - is an investigator who administers the tests that detect artificial human beings through their limited emotional register; Tom Cruise's character in 'Minority Report' is a policeman who arrests murderers before they can kill anyone - which is fine by him, until he finds himself accused of potential crime. Dick was less interested in the naturally rebellious than in that classic American figure the man forced by circumstances to make a stand. This was very much how he saw himself - as a radio DJ of moderately liberal opinions he came to believe that his house was being watched and his phone tapped. Many of even his close friends assumed this to be an example of the paranoia his fiction dealt in and which he courted by the consumption of lots of speed; after the revelations of Watergate, his claims became more plausible. His sense of the untrustworthiness of those in authority always seems a suspiciousness learned from experience and is part of a more general scepticism about the whole of reality; he makes most fiction based in conspiracy theory look superficial - he writes about people who maintain their sense of self as everything else gives way under their feet. He always believed that it is possible to make a difference; in his 'The Axis Won' novel, 'The Man in the High Castle', it is the quiet integrity of a Japanese antique dealer in San Francisco that saves the world from Nazi H-bombs. In other novels, a bumbling alien slime mould and a chatty robot cab are crucial moral agents. If there is sentimentality to some of this, it is better than the 'realistic' cynicism that is sometimes opposed to it. Dick needed to believe in happy endings, because he was naturally drawn to the nightmarish. The hero of 'Impostor' - described by veteran British sf writer Brian Aldiss as being ' the first Philip Dick story I ever read and one of the stories I have never forgotten' - is accused of being a robot bomb likely to explode if he says or hears the wrong sentence. Many of the novels deal with afterlives indistinguishable from the deepest depression except that they go on forever. Novels like 'Ubik' and 'A Scanner Darkly' - his prescient novel about the war on drugs - are, among their other real merits, among the best descriptions known of a bad trip. One of Dick's main strengths was this hallucinatory quality; his plots are compelling because they have the logic of dreams. His characters escape from drab reality into sharing the experiences of a virtual reality messiah, or by collecting robot pets of extinct species, and it all seems sensible to us and them at the time. One of the things that is most disturbing and radical about his work is that, in his non-sf realist novels, the characters are equally driven by the strange and seemingly trivial - cruelty and love are real, but most actual desires are figments. In 1974, quite suddenly, and well after he had stopped using drugs, Phil Dick had a religious revelation and spent the last eight years of his life trying to communicate it in novels like 'Valis' and 'The Divine Invasions'. After years of uncertainty about the nature of the real, Dick suddenly knew what it was. Perhaps the finest of his non-sf novels, 'The Transmigration of Timothy Archer' combines this sense of mystic certainty with a fine portrait of his dead friend, the Episcopalian Bishop Pike; its elegiac tone was a prelude to Dick's own death from neglected medical problems. A plump bearded difficult man, who claimed to have talent-spotted Linda Ronstadt, Dick was much loved and highly regarded not only in the closed sf field, but also by figures as varied as eccentric dramaturge Ken Campbell and the cutting-edge mathematician Ian Stewart. The opening out of his world to a larger audience is at once welcome and scary - what is it about the world of Posh and Becks, Osama bin Laden, Madonna and Tony Blair that makes seem so insightful a writer to whom all humans were only provisionally humane, the world itself only provisionally real? glamourousrags.dymphna.net/philipkdick.html
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 20:42:57 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 5:42:21 GMT -5 the Scribe said: this is something all dickheads will know: Which science fiction author's love for the works of composer John Dowland led him to include the title of one of Dowland's best-known songs in the title of one of his books? Philp K. Dick Dick had two professional stories published under the pen names, Richard Phillips and Jack Dowland. "Some Kinds Of Life" in Fantastic Universe, October, 1953 was published as by Richard Phillipps apparently because "Planet For Transients" was published in the same issue under his own name. The surname Dowland refers to Renaissance composer John Dowland, who is featured in several works. The title Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said directly refers to Dowland's best-known composition, "Flow My Tears". In the novel The Divine Invasion, the 'Linda Fox' character, created specifically with Linda Ronstadt in mind, is an intergalactically famous singer whose entire body of work consists of recordings of John Dowland compositions. Also, some protagonists in Dick's short fiction are named 'Dowland'. Flow I. (based on a theme by John Dowland) LeventeZone Published on Jul 22, 2016 Opening track from the new album "The Dowland Shores (of Philip K. Dick's Universe)". Based on theme from John Dowland's "Flow My Tears" (Second Book of Songs, 1600). Album info page: leventeth.wixsite.com/thedowlandshoresBandcamp release: levente.bandcamp.com/album/the-dowland-shores-of-philip-k-dicks-universeAmazon CD: www.amazon.com/Dowland-Shores-Philip-Dicks-Universe/dp/B00IWQ0UUOPhilip K. Dick's novel about a totalitarian police state, "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said", in its title makes a reference to Dowland's perhaps most famous composition. “...the supposedly real world has begun to feel more and more like a Philip K. Dick novel. [...] You might note that, alongside Dickensian and Kafkaesque, we now have an adjective to describe this state of affairs. Phildickian. And the world seems more phildickian every day.” (Jesse Hicks, The Verge, 2012) Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was an American writer, whose works, exploring philosophical, political and theological themes, have moved from a rather unique corner of “science fiction” into mainstream (including cult film adaptations like Blade Runner and Minority Report) and into courses on literature. In Dick’s exquisitely complex, often disturbing (and disturbingly prophetic) universe there are numerous veiled or direct references to John Dowland, the English Renaissance composer. While navigating through Dick’s unique and turbulent world, these references for me were akin to encountering safe shores of humanity, of familiar and cosy reality, where one could stop for a moment among the many turbulent flows and currents. This album is about those shores - the human, sometimes background or secondary, stories and undercurrents in Dick’s ever-changing labyrinthine universe.
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 20:43:32 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 6:07:01 GMT -5 the Scribe said:
Top 10 Philip K Dick Adaptations
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 20:44:05 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 6:10:25 GMT -5 the Scribe said: VALIS by Philip K Dick Linda Ronstadt , Republican presidents and Philip K Dick's VALIS… posted in Books & Literature, Language & Writing, Philosophy & Critical Thinking, Politics, Psychology, Religion & Spirituality, Science on July 26, 2004 by Limbic Last week a colleague remarked that singer Linda Ronstadt has caused a near riot in a Las Vegas casino after dedicating a song to propagandist Michael Moore. We had a brief chat about how polarised US politics had become and continued on with our business. On my way home that night, I was finishing Philip K Dick’s superb book “VALIS” which is mostly indescribable (read it, READ IT!) but is partly about the downfall of an evil republican president (ostensibly Nixon) brought about inter alia by a girl child prophet. Imagine my surprise when I open page 213 and read about the protagonist having a dream where he is being driven around by..you guessed it..Linda Ronstadt..who sings him a message. The message is cryptic and highly symbolic. The dream comes after the protagonist frets that the The Empire – recently set back by the downfall of Nixon – will make a comeback and they will have to wait until the child is an adult before they can expect help. What he does not realise is that the child has just been killed in a freak accident. The dream is a message from the messiah child. Linda Rhonstadt is a symbol of her as an adult. What had the little girl told us? That human beings should now give up the worship of all deities except mankind itself. This did not seem irrational to me. Whether it had been said by a child or whether it came from the Britannica, it would have struck me as sound. Kevin drove me home; I went at once to bed, worn-out and discouraged, in a vague way, I think what discouraged me about the situation was the uncertainty of our commission, received from Sophia. We had a mandate but for what? More important, what did Sophia intend to do as she matured? Remain with the Lamptons? Escape, change her name, move to Japan and start a new life? Where would she surface? Where would we find mention of her over the years? Would we have to wait until she grew to adulthood? That might be eighteen years. In eighteen years Ferris F, Fremount [Nixon then, now Bush? Ed], to use the name from the film, could have taken over the world—again. We needed help now. But then I thought, You always need the Savior now. Later is always too late. When I fell asleep that night I had a dream, In the dream I rode in Kevin’s Honda, but instead of Kevin driving, Linda Ronstadt sat behind the wheel, and the car was open, like a vehicle from ancient times, like a chariot. Smiling at me, Ronstadt sang, and she sang more beautifully than any time I had ever heard her sing before. She sang: “To walk toward the dawn You must put your slippers on.” In the dream this delighted me; it seemed a terribly important message. When I woke up the next morning I could still see her lovely face, the dark, glowing eyes: such large eyes* so filled with light, a strange kind of black light, like the light of stars. Her look toward me was one of intense love, but not sexual love; it was what the Bible calls loving-kindness. Where was she driving me? During the next day I tried to figure out what the cryptic words referred to. Slippers. Dawn. What did I associate with the dawn? Studying my reference books (at one time I would have said, “Horselover Fat, studying his reference books”*), I came across the fact that Aurora is the Latin word for the personification of the dawn. And that suggests Aurora Borealis—which looks like St Elmo’s Fire, which is how VALIS looked. The Britannica says of the Aurora Borealis: “The Aurora Borealis appears throughout history in the mythology of the Eskimo, the Irish, the English, the Scandinavians, and others; it was usually believed to be a supernatural manifestation . . . Northern Germanic tribes saw in it the splendor of the shields of Valkyrie (warrior women)” Did that mean—was VALIS telling me—that little Sophia would issue forth into the world as a “warrior woman”? Maybe so. What about slippers? I could think of one association, an interesting one. Ernpedoeles, the pupil of Pythagoras, who had gone public about remembering his past lives and who told his friends privately that he was Apollo, had never died in the usual sense; instead, his golden slippers had been found near the top of the volcano Mount Etna. Either Empedoeles, like Elijah, had been taken up into heaven bodily, or he had jumped into the volcano, Mount Etna is in the eastern-most part of Sicily. In Roman times the word “aurora” literally meant “east.” Was VALIS alluding to both itself and to re-birth, to eternal life? Was I being— The phone rang. Picking it up I said, “Hello” I heard Eric Lampton’s voice. It sounded twisted, like an old root, a dying root. “We have something to tell you, I’ll let Linda tell you. Hold on.” A deep fear entered me as I stood holding the silent phone. Then Linda Lampton’s voice sounded in my ear, flat and toneless. The dream had to do with her, I realized; Linda Ronstadt; Linda Lampton, “What is it?” I said, unable to understand what Linda Lampton was saying. “The little girl is dead,” Linda Lampton said. “Sophia? How?” I said. Mini killed here By accident, The police are here, With a laser. He was trying to—* I hung up. The phone rang again almost at once. I picked it up and said hello. Linda Lampton said, “Mini wanted to try to get as much information—” “Thanks for telling me,” I said. Crazily, I felt bitter anger, not sorrow. “He was trying information-transfer by laser,” Linda was saying. “We’re calling everyone. We don’t understand; if Sophia was the Savior, how could she die?” Dead at two years old, I realized. Impossible. I hung up the phone and sat down. After a time, I realized that the woman in the dream driving the car and singing had been Sophia, but grown up, as she would have been one day. The dark eyes filled with light and life and fire. The dream was her way of saying good-bye. www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/linda-ronstadt-republican-presidents-and-philip-k-dicks-valis/
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 20:44:47 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 6:13:44 GMT -5 the Scribe said: INTERVIEWS
1979 Philip K Dick interview
Hour 25 - Philip K. Dick - Interview
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 20:45:19 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 7:12:38 GMT -5 the Scribe said: Ten Strange Moments in the Life of Philip K. Dick AUG 08, 2008by ANDY MARINOin LITERATURE PKD Philip K. Dick wrote about fifty thousand novels and short stories during his lifetime, thanks to a specially formulated motivational diet of amphetamines and a severely heightened sense of paranoia. In recent years, Hollywood has strip-mined his work to churn out films of varying quality, from slapped-together junk (PAYCHECK) to lovingly faithful adaptations (A SCANNER DARKLY) to slick blockbuster star vehicles (MINORITY REPORT). According to IMDB, two more of his novels and a short story have been adapted and are currently in various states of production. That means eight feature films since 2001 will have been based on his fiction. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to assume that even the most unadventurous consumer of pop culture in America has probably been exposed to the mind of Philip K. Dick in some tangential way. Even at its most hallucinogenic, his work always maintained a touch of the autobiographical. Like many authors he wrote aspects of himself and his friends into his characters, but more importantly he took situations from his life – bizarre interactions, flashes of insight, paranoid freakouts – twisted them slightly or sometimes not at all, and came up with some of the most relentlessly insane stories of all time. This list represents some of those situations; there are many more. Anyone curious should check out a fantastic book about PKD’s life entitled I Am Alive and You Are Dead by Emmanuel Carrere. 1. His twin sister Jane died a few weeks after their birth. His name was engraved alongside hers on a headstone. A blank space was left for the date of his own death. 2. As a child, he began having the recurring dream that would haunt him throughout his life: he’s in a bookstore, frantically searching for a story entitled “The Empire Never Ended”, driven by the knowledge that it contains the secrets of the universe. He digs through a pile of magazines, but wakes up before he reaches the bottom. This happens over and over again. Fast-forward to 1974, when he’s in his forties. He begins to have a different recurring dream about a hardcover book with a blue jacket and the word Grove in the title. Convinced that the secrets of the universe are once again being dangled before his subconscious eyes, he spends his waking hours searching for the book. Finally, he comes across The Shadow of the Blooming Grove, a thick hardcover book that matches the one in his dream… but instead of the secrets of the universe, its pages contain the biography of President Warren G. Harding. 3. He once flailed around his dark bathroom, frustrated that he couldn’t find the light cord. Then he remembered the switch was on the wall. This reinforced his impression that something was out of place in his daily existence, and inspired the novel Time Out of Joint. 4. He relied on the I Ching, an ancient Chinese fortune-telling method, to plot his Hugo Award-winning novel The Man in the High Castle. 5. He became convinced that his third wife, Anne, had murdered her first husband and that he was next, so he had her committed to a mental hospital. Soon, he became convinced that he was in fact the crazy one and tried to have himself committed in her place. 6. He saw a giant robotic face in the sky, which followed him for several days. A priest told him it was Satan. This incident inspired him to become a Christian. 7. His book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch was instantly hailed as the quintessential LSD-experience novel. He became regarded as a sort of psychedelic guru, but he hadn’t yet taken acid. When he finally tried it he found the experience terrifying and never did it again. 8. After his home was burglarized and many of his personal possessions and manuscripts stolen, he spent years formulating complex paranoid theories about the perpetrators. Eventually, he became convinced that he had done it himself, even though he had no memory of the actual incident. 9. He idolized Linda Ronstadt and sent her fan letters. One night, he was awakened by her hit song “You’re No Good” coming from the radio. Terrified, he began to scream; Linda Ronstadt was telling him he was no good, adding, at the end of the chorus, “Die, die, die.” He interpreted this as a message from anti-Christian forces from the year 70 AD. 10. He believed that a benevolent entity was communicating with him through a series of visions and dreams. He named it VALIS: Vast, Active, Living, and Intelligent System. Manifesting itself as a beam of pink light, VALIS told Phil to take his young son Christopher to the hospital because the boy’s life was in danger. This turned out to be true: the child had a hernia, and an immediate operation saved him. Philip K. Dick died in 1982. He was buried next to his twin sister. www.popten.net/2008/08/ten-strange-moments-in-the-life-of-philip-k-dick/Was Philip K. Dick a Madman or a Mystic? By Kyle Arnold | Jul 08, 2016 In The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, Kyle Arnold delves into the complicated psyche of one of the 20th century's most important writers. At the center of the subject is the profound vision Dick experienced in 1974, which he referred to as "2-3-74." Arnold, a psychologist at Coney Island Hospital and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, explains the experience and its significance. In February of 1974, Philip K. Dick was home recovering from dental surgery when, he said, he was suddenly touched by the divine. The doorbell rang, and when Dick opened the door he was stunned to see what he described as a “girl with black, black hair and large eyes very lovely and intense” wearing a gold necklace with a Christian fish symbol. She was there to deliver a new batch of medications from the pharmacy. After the door shut, Dick was blinded by a flash of pink light and a series of visions ensued. First came images of abstract paintings, followed by philosophical ideas and then, sophisticated engineering blueprints. Dick believed the pink light was a spiritual force which had unlocked his consciousness, granting him access to esoteric knowledge. In the following months, the visions continued. Scenes of ancient Rome appeared, superimposed over Dick’s suburban neighborhood. A local playground seemed a Roman prison. Where there was a chain-link fence, Dick saw iron bars, and where there were children playing, he saw weeping Christian martyrs about to be fed to lions. Dick saw pedestrians dressed in Roman military uniforms, stone walls, and iron bars. “I hadn’t gone back in time,” Dick wrote to a friend, “but in a sense Rome had come forward, by insidious and sly degrees, under new names, hidden by the flak talk and phony obscurations, at last into our world again.” Dick supposed time had stopped in 70 A.D., the year the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by a Roman siege. Everything that happened afterwards was an illusion, and the world was still under Rome’s dominion. Dick believed the Roman Empire was embodied in the tyrannical Nixon administration, and responsible for the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. His own role was that of an undercover Christian revolutionary fighting to overthrow the Empire. That was why the delivery girl had flashed him the fish sign. Some of this information, he claimed, was provided by three-eyed extraterrestrial time travelers who entered his bedroom through a portal of pink light. Dick fictionalized these experiences in his sci-fi novel VALIS. There’s considerable difference of opinion among Philip K. Dick enthusiasts about what it all meant. Was it a psychotic break or a religious experience, and how would one tell the difference? Dick knew that what he called his “divine madness” would come across as mental illness. By his own admission, he grappled with paranoia, and self-depreciatingly called himself a “flipped-out freak.” The paranoia was probably the result of speed. A prolific author who published 34 novels during his lifetime, Dick used amphetamines to maintain his productivity. Friends recall that his refrigerator was stuffed with bottles of amphetamine pills jammed next to pre-made milkshakes. Dick gulped the pills by the handful and washed them down with the milkshakes. He called them his “happiness pills” and “nightmare pills.” When his addiction went into high gear, so did the paranoia. While walking in the country, Dick had a vision of a “vast visage of perfect evil” spanning the sky. “It had empty slots for eyes –it was metal and cruel, and worst of all, it was God.” And yet, the divine madness of 1974 was different. Although it included paranoid elements–the most obvious being the nefarious Roman Empire lurking beneath appearances–there was more to it than that. Dick felt guided by tutelary spirits. Following their advice, he took better care of his health and made clever business decisions. In one instance, a hallucinated voice urged him to seek medical care for his infant son for what turned out to be a hernia. Dick’s judgment improved. He felt more alive. In a sense, his divine madness drove him saner. It didn’t last. Eventually, “the divine spirit left.” Spiritually abandoned and in despair, Dick attempted suicide. He overdosed on his blood pressure medication and slit his wrists. Then, he climbed into his car and turned the engine on, with the garage door closed. He hoped that if the overdose and slit wrists didn’t do him in, the carbon monoxide would. The suicide failed. Dick vomited up the medication, his wrists coagulated, and the engine stalled. For the rest of his life, Dick was obsessed with his close encounter with the pink light. Trying to make sense of it, he wrote an 8,000 page commentary he called his Exegesis. In it, he proposed that the source of the pink light may have been God, the KGB, a satellite, aliens, a 1st century Christian named Thomas with whom he was in telepathic communication, the CIA, a version of himself from a different dimension, or possibly his deceased twin sister contacting him from the spirit world. Each new theory seemed to telescope outward into further possible theories, ad infinitum. While Dick never settled on a definitive explanation of what happened to him, he did explain why his divine madness was so captivating. Before the visions, he felt alienated for most of his life, an observer in a strange world. But in 1974 it seemed as if “the world changed to accommodate me so that I was as a result of this radical change no longer a stranger here; it became my world–and my anxiety, which tormented me every day and night, departed… all of a sudden I fitted in.” For a short time, he had a place in the universe. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/70857-was-philip-k-dick-a-madman-or-a-mystic.html
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 20:47:55 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 7:16:17 GMT -5 the Scribe said: The transfiguration of Philip K Dick Roz Kaveney 23 Aug 2011 10:32 There is an American television show called Warehouse 13, a supernatural comedy-thriller, featuring the place—a bit like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark—where dangerous supernatural relics are stored; things such as Alice Liddell’s looking glass or Lizzie Borden’s compact. The news that Philip K Dick’s annotated copy of the New English Bible, in good condition, with a couple of holograph sheets inlaid, is up for sale on eBay almost inspires one to think that the show’s producers have missed a trick—except that this relic, and the unusual circumstances around it, are real. For those few people who know nothing of him, Philip Kindred Dick was a prolific science fiction writer and mystic who died in 1982; many of his short stories and novels have been filmed, one or two of them memorably: Blade Runner is an adaptation of his Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Richard Linklater made a powerful animated version of Dick’s novel about drugs and law enforcement, A Scanner Darkly. In 1974, Dick had the first of a sequence of visions, which raise some fascinating questions about the nature—and the value—of religious experience. A paranoid cosmology It is the nature of religious and mystical experience to be hard to put into words—if Dick did so more effectively than many, it is precisely because he was a pulp writer of genius. His sense, for example, that we still live in the “iron prison house” of a materialistic Roman Empire and that, in some very real sense, it is always 50AD—or his attempt to describe God as a Vast Active Living Intelligent System, an artificial intelligence orbiting another star, were partly religious insights, partly craziness and partly plot ideas. It is not to be reductive about religion to accept that these three categories have a certain amount in common. Dick is one of the great artists of paranoia—he took a lot of amphetamines to keep up his frenetic rate of literary productivity before discovering that he did not need them. For years he claimed to have been burgled and spied on, before the revelation of Richard Nixon’s enemies list made it rather likely that he was telling the truth. His work features conspiracies; revelations of underlying truths; mental patients forming a viable society based on diagnostic caste divisions; an alternate world in which the axis won and a version of our world is produced by a novelist using the I Ching for divination; and androids passing themselves off as human but revealed by their lack of empathy and compassion. There is a sense—of course there is a sense—in which the particular direction taken by the deepening of his religious convictions is of a piece with some of his other ideas. There is the sense of being special—believing yourself to be in mental touch with a community of persecuted Christians in Judaea who help you organise your tax affairs is probably more fun than just going to church. There is the sense of knowing what other people do not know—eternal Rome was a more glamorous hypothesis than four more years of Nixon. There was the sense of significance—a Philip K Dick whose decades of producing paperback fiction for a quick buck were a preparation for his receiving the word of God was a man who could respect himself more. (After all, he was not to know that, after his death, he would be a dominant figure in popular culture whose fiction has received more critical attention than most of his colleagues put together.) Heretical and humane Dick received the first instalment of his vision along with a packet of painkillers and in a sense religion was always about healing his pain, but not that alone. He knew, and was fearfully impressed by, the heretic Episcopalian bishop James Pike and his last novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which deals with Pike and a version of his death on a spiritual quest in the desert, is one of his best and most humane. Dick always had a problem with women—his several divorces, his obsession with Linda Ronstadt, his many female villains—and it is touching that this last book has, in its narrator Angel, one of his best female characters. In the end, those of us who are agnostic find it easiest to accept the existential validity of religious experiences that make those who endure or enjoy them better writers and more likable human beings. I doubt that the few notes Dick scrawled in his copy of the Bible are more useful in their insights than his own books, especially that last one. — mg.co.za/article/2011-08-23-the-transfiguration-of-philip-k-dickThe Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick R. Crumb Shortly before his death, Philip K. Dick has what can only be described as a religious experience, which he described in, among other places, his novel Valis. In Weirdo #17, R. Crumb adapted Dick’s story. Click the image below to see the almost-full-size pages in a lightbox. Enjoy! sensitiveskinmagazine.com/the-religious-experience-of-philip-k-dick/ “I saw God,” Fat states, and Kevin and I and Sherri state, “No, you just saw something like God, exactly like God.” And having spoke, we do not stay to hear the answer, like jesting Pilate, upon his asking, “What is truth?” –Philip K. Dick, VALIS In the months of February and March, 1974, Philip K. Dick met God, or something like God, or what he thought was God, at least, in a hallucinatory experience he chronicled in several obsessively dense diaries that recently saw publication as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, a work of deeply personal theo-philosophical reflection akin to Carl Jung’s The Red Book. Whatever it was he encountered—Dick was never too dogmatic about it—he ended up referring to it as Zebra, or by the acronym VALIS, Vast Active Living Intelligence System, also the title of a novel detailing the experiences of one very PKD-like character with the improbable name of “Horselover Fat.” LSD-triggered psychotic break, genuine religious experience, or something else entirely, whatever Dick’s encounter meant, he didn’t let the opportunity to turn it into art slip by him, and neither did outsider cartoonist and PKD fan Robert Crumb. In issue #17 of the underground comix magazine Weirdo, Crumb narrated and illustrated Dick’s meeting with a divine intelligence in the appropriately titled “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick.” It was eventually collected in the edition, The Weirdo Years by R. Crumb: 1981-'93. (See the comic in motion in the awkward, amateur video above.) The comic quotes directly from Dick’s telling of the event, which began with a wisdom tooth extraction and was ultimately triggered by a golden Christian fish symbol worn around the neck of a pharmaceutical delivery girl. Most PKD fans will be familiar with the story, whether they treat it as gospel or not, but to see it illustrated with such empathetic intensity by Crumb is truly a treat. If you only know Crumb as the creator of lascivious Rubenesque women and schlubby, druggy horndog hipsters (like Fritz the Cat), you may be surprised by these emotionally realist illustrations. If you know Crumb’s more serious work, like his take on the book of Genesis, you won’t. In either case, fans of Dick, Crumb, or—most likely—both, won’t want to miss this. www.openculture.com/2013/08/robert-crumb-illustrates-philip-k-dicks-infamous-hallucinatory-meeting-with-god-1974.html
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 20:49:57 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 7:21:15 GMT -5 the Scribe said: Philip K. Dick BIRTH 16 Dec 1928 Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA DEATH 2 Mar 1982 (aged 53) Santa Ana, Orange County, California, USA BURIAL Riverside Cemetery Fort Morgan, Morgan County, Colorado, USA PLOT Section K, Block 1, Lot 56 MEMORIAL ID 1490 · View Source www.findagrave.com/memorial/1490/philip-k.-dick#sourceFrom "Introduction to The Golden Man" (1980): You see, had I not become a writer I'd be somewhere in the music industry now, almost certainly the record industry. I remember back in the midsixties when I first heard Linda Ronstadt; she was a guest on Glen Campbell's TV show, and no one had ever heard of her. I went nuts listening to her and looking at her. I had been a buyer in retail records and it had been my job to spot new talent that was hot property, and, seeing and hearing Ronstadt, I knew I was hearing one of the great people in the business; I could see down the pipe of time into the future. Later, when she'd recorded a few records, none of them hits, all of which I faithfully bought, I calculated to the exact month when she'd make it big. I even wrote Capitol Records and told them; I said, the next record Ronstadt cuts will be the beginning of a career unparalleled in the record industry. Her next record was "Heart Like a Wheel." Capitol didn't answer my letter, but what the hell; I was right, and happy to be right. But, see, that's what I'd be into now, had I not gone into writing SF. My fantasy number that I run in my head is, I discover Linda Ronstadt, and am remembered as the scout for Capitol who signed her. I would have wanted that on my gravestone: sisabianovenia.com/LoLeido/NoFiccion/Dick-GoldenMan.htm Benediction We are a world Growing dark with dying flashes While the moon is crying Full of unfamiliar music With some heaven between God & Prayer I watch For here the light no longer follows I see the new ghosts Lost in the innocence of their mission On an Earth that is burning Who will be there Angel of death In the moon of the red grass Surrender your shroud Benediction
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 21:20:18 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 10:18:57 GMT -5 the Scribe said: Philip K. Dick - A Day In The Afterlife (complete)
no data available Published on Feb 1, 2014 BBC Arena Documentary about the author, Philip K. Dick, from 1994.
Features Terry Gilliam, Fay Wheldon, Thomas M. Disch, Brian Aldiss, Paul Williams, Elvis Costello, and other friends and fans.
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 21:20:47 GMT
Dec 9, 2018 15:27:31 GMT -5 Tony said: I read a lot of his books in the '70s and '80s. In fact, sometimes, to get a sideways look from someone, when they asked about hobbies, I would tell them I collected "Dick books." In fact, I used to have one of his book covers as my avatar on this forum: Dick book cover This particular book was made into a movie with Robert Downey Jr. When I initially became a fan of his writing, I was not aware that he was also a Linda Ronstadt fan. I found out about that later. She is mentioned by name in some of his works.
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 21:21:31 GMT
Dec 10, 2018 2:27:13 GMT -5 the Scribe said: Dec 9, 2018 15:27:31 GMT -5 Tony said: I read a lot of his books in the '70s and '80s. In fact, sometimes, to get a sideways look from someone, when they asked about hobbies, I would tell them I collected "Dick books." In fact, I used to have one of his book covers as my avatar on this forum: Dick book cover This particular book was made into a movie with Robert Downey Jr. When I initially became a fan of his writing, I was not aware that he was also a Linda Ronstadt fan. I found out about that later. She is mentioned by name in some of his works. So you were one of the first dickheads (as they now call themselves). Ahead of your time Tony (no pun intended)!
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 21:22:18 GMT
Dec 10, 2018 2:41:34 GMT -5 the Scribe said: Some Dick related music. That sounds odd so I will do like many others do and refer to him as PKD. Replicant's Dream (inspired by Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?") LeventeZone Published on Jul 30, 2016 Track from the new CD "The Dowland Shores of Philip K. Dick's Universe". leventeth.wixsite.com/thedowlandshores ALBUM INFO “...the supposedly real world has begun to feel more and more like a Philip K. Dick novel. [...] You might note that, alongside Dickensian and Kafkaesque, we now have an adjective to describe this state of affairs. Phildickian. And the world seems more phildickian every day.” (Jesse Hicks, The Verge, 2012) Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was an American writer, whose works, exploring philosophical, political and theological themes, have moved from a rather unique corner of “science fiction” into mainstream (including cult film adaptations like Blade Runner and Minority Report) and into courses on literature. In Dick’s exquisitely complex, often disturbing (and disturbingly prophetic) universe there are numerous veiled or direct references to John Dowland, the English Renaissance composer. While navigating through Dick’s unique and turbulent world, these references for me were akin to encountering safe shores of humanity, of familiar and cosy reality, where one could stop for a moment among the many turbulent flows and currents. This album is about those shores - the human, sometimes background or secondary, stories and undercurrents in Dick’s ever-changing labyrinthine universe. Among the compositions, which were inspired by these, there are also a few tributes to John Dowland - hopefully adapted to fit into the Dick-inspired musical world as Dick’s references to the music of a distant past fit into his universe... Release date : 15 July 2016 (Amazon CD & Bandcamp), in all formats: 1 Aug 2016 TRACK LISTING incl. preview links 1. Flow I. soundcloud.com/levente-toth-2/flow-i-based-on-john-dowland2. REKAL Inc. soundcloud.com/levente-toth-2/rekal-inc-inspired-by-philip-k-dick(inspired by We Can Remember It For You Wholesale) 3. Human Is soundcloud.com/levente-toth-2/human-is(inspired by Human Is) 4. Flow II. 5. Stigmata soundcloud.com/levente-toth-2/stigmata-inspired-by-philip-k-dicks-the-three-stigmata-of-palmer-eldritch(inspired by The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch) 6. Twelve Realities (inspired by Faith of Our Fathers) 7. Imperial Truths (inspired by The Man in the High Castle) 8. Fading to Chaos (inspired by Ubik) 9. Flow III. 10. Identity Regained (inspired by The Divine Invasion) 11. Replicant’s Dream (inspired by Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) 12. Flow IV. BIOGRAPHY His CDs released by the former PeopleSound and Vitaminic indie internet labels were noted for the compositional versatility, which created well-received blends of medieval, ethnic and space/ambient elements. One composition from his debut album was also featured on the compilation CD entitled “Noua Romanie – Rebirth of a Nation”, which was a special project released by Earthtone / Sonic Images Records founded by the legendary Christopher Franke (ex-Tangerine Dream). Levente (Levente Toth) is a United Kingdom-based synth artist and published photographer. Born in Transylvania’s Hungarian ethnic minority, his main escapism during the communist dictatorship was listening to electronic music. He built his first analogue synth when he was a teenager living under the Ceausescu regime. Music creation has really begun later on in his home studio, which he established after his relocation to the UK in 1995. THE INSPIRATION: PHILIP K. DICK'S WORKS The novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said bases its title on John Dowland’s perhaps most famous composition. Its dehumanised totalitarian world is in stark contrast with the Dowlandian emotive universe it refers to. The opening and closing pieces of the album are based on Flow My Tears (1600). We Can Remember It for You Wholesale poses a fundamental question: how can we define our identity if our memories are artificial? The music explores this duality of machine-constructed vs. genuine human realities. Human Is explores the nature of what we define, and perceive, as humanity - it can be a trait of anything that is capable of deep empathy. Hence the music transitions from something otherworldly to a rather terrestrial elegy. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, with its many layers of different realities, religious and philosophical ideas, has fundamental human aspirations at its centre - and these even shape how humans imagine what a god is. The music was inspired by the dynamism and the metaphysical explorations of the novel. Faith of Our Fathers, with its disturbing totalitarian world and its ‘true reality’ that appears in different forms, is a powerful allegory, too. The music was mainly inspired by these shifting realities and the Oriental elements of the story. The Man in the High Castle, with its parallel post-World-War-Two reality of a totalitarian East and West, has at its core a superlative quest for an absolute, inner, truth. The music is inspired by the Oriental and Western elements, and the contrast between the heroic and the introspective. Ubik, while its world regresses into chaos, is again a fascinating exploration of what reality is... and what may be under the veil of reality. The music fades from order to chaos, as the universe in Ubik unstoppably and swiftly degrades. The Divine Invasion, while it is a mesmerising metaphysical and religious journey, speaks also about the search and rediscovery of one‘s identity. Hence elements of Eastern and Western music surface in the track inspired by this melancholic and, at the same time, uplifting novel. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has a subtle undercurrent: can something, seen as inhuman, be more human than we, who are actually dehumanised by the world we created? The music is inspired by the shift from something apparently quasi-alien to the very human longing for postponing life’s end.
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 23, 2022 21:23:22 GMT
Dec 10, 2018 2:48:15 GMT -5 the Scribe said:
Philip K. Dick - What You See Is Your Projection (Video Lecture)
Fractal Youniverse Published on Jun 7, 2018 This is a really interesting segment where Philip K. Dick discusses Carl Jung's concept of projection and how this idea was central to many of his amazing science fiction books.
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