The smallish turnout consisted of uber-fans and scholars (mostly SF nerds now doing drugs only occasionally) who have been reading, studying, and fanning out on PKD since before he went big, fans loyal enough to drive to the remote location high in the Rocky Mountains for the festival. With a turnout of about 30 people for the main talks and considerably fewer attending the group meals, certainly a similarly promoted PKD Festival in any large city would draw more people, but anyone could show up to that. This festival’s remote location weeded out all but the most hardcore of fans.

Read the whole thing. In it, he links to this: I want it -

Dick looked around his world with a kind of skinlessness. He existed in the world and it just permeated him. Mid-’50s America was overwhelmingly alive in his vision, in such a way that he saw it simultaneously as a present and as a future. He saw the makings of the late capitalist experience embedded in that mid-century triumphalist post-war moment. And it’s as though he experienced it all, in all its absurdity and its tragedy, as this overwhelming vision. And he just jotted it down as frantically as he could. And the books are so raw with that perception that they still feel like a desperate attempt to record an arriving moment. I think that’s the experience of reading Philip K. Dick. He seems to be frantically trying to transcribe an arriving reality that is urgent and totally fresh.

What’s missing from both the academic and pop movie descriptions you mention is that Dick is an immensely personal writer. In his own way, he‘s a Beat or a proto-Beat. He’s like Henry Miller. One of these gargantuan, slightly egotistical but insecure, garrulous personas that just pour themselves onto the page, and says: “Love me or hate me. This is what I feel. And these are the kind of women I find sexy. And oh my god, I hate them. They’re consuming me. And I feel really stupid today, but I’m going to tell you about….” And he just gives himself. And as anyone who’s ever tried to write literary novels or stories or a memoir can tell you – it’s not a small thing to pour yourself onto the page. And when it’s accomplished, totally, you end up with the kind of monumental writers that many people find also unpleasant or toxic or unreadable.

Yeah, I’m obsessed.  But it gets to the reason that I’m so much more moved by PKD than writers like Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, or William Gibson.  They’re good, and impressive, but they’re also lacking a certain nakedness.  To me.  Reading and reviewing Anne Dick’s memoir about Philip K. Dick drove home just how personal his far-out novels were.

Been meaning to link to this piece.

Dick knew that there had to be an FBI file on his activities because, as he told the Bureau in the letter requesting access to it: “In the early ’fifties, two agents of the FBI, Mr George Scruggs and Mr George Smith, approached me.”

Undoubtedly, one of the prime reasons why Dick attracted attention from the FBI was a series of bizarre letters he penned to the Bureau in the early 1970s, in which he described his personal knowledge of an alleged underground Nazi cabal that was attempting to covertly manipulate science fiction writers to further advance its hidden cause.

And the nature of that cause was even more bizarre: to initiate a Third World War by infecting the American population with syphilis. On 28 October 1972, Dick wrote to the FBI and outlined his distinctly odd beliefs:

“I am a well-known author of science fiction novels, one of which dealt with Nazi Germany (called MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, it described an ‘alternate world’ in which the Germans and Japanese won World War Two and jointly occupied the United States).

“This novel, published in 1962 by Putnam and Co., won the Hugo Award for Best Novel of the Year and hence was widely read both here and abroad; for example, a Japanese edition printed in Tokyo ran into several editions. I bring this to your attention because several months ago I was approached by an individual who I have reason to believe belonged to a covert organization involved in politics, illegal weapons, etc., who put great pressure on me to place coded information in future novels ‘to be read by the right people here and there’, as he phrased it. I refused to do this.”

Part 1 and 3.

(via Dangerous Minds)

This happened, been better published in France than the States:

Incidentally I also received an email this week from Anne Dick, PK Dick’s third wife, who I sent my novel to, and who I interviewed.  She hasn’t read the novel yet, but a gracious note from the wife of Philip K. Dick restores some of my faith in the future.

From Philip Heying, photographer:

Your book is a page-turner. I burned through it in three days -finished it last Friday, which is really fast for me.

I found it both highly entertaining and plenty smart, with doses of humor. The Winchell family especially made me laugh, the way biting satire does -with fangs of truth.

For whatever my humble opinion is worth, I’d say it is a classic in the genre.

From Philip Persinger, author of Do the Math:

In the beginning… Oops. I didn’t mean to be so Biblical. I meant to say that as I started reading, I was very interested in how you were going to maintain, let alone, resolve the ambitious conceit that seemed to be your foundation. Little did I know that you would weave conceit into conceit.

The hyper-self-consciousness of the narrator’s narrative was the most problematic to me at the on-set and what I ultimately found technically the most pleasing in its resolution.

Since Philip K. Dick still remains on my super-sized to be read bookshelf, I was unable to appreciate any kind of homage there. But I did get a whiff of a little Brian Aldiss in a scene or two. Whether that was real or imagined, I do not know.

It is a complicated piece of work and as I’ve said interwoven. But what propelled me forward was not just the story line. It was your confidence. Your writing has strength of character. Even when the voice is insecure and afraid, the self-assurance of the writing moves the story forward powerfully.

I blasted through the book. I wasn’t quite sure whether or not I was enjoying the W Redux so soon after the damage was done. But I found it a great read.