An Evening With Philip K. Dick

Science fiction fans of my generation pretty much followed the same course of evolution in our reading. We discovered S/F around age 12 – 13. Andre Norton was our first discovery, she wrote for readers our age. The master Robert Heinlein remains the best storyteller in the generation of the Golden Age. STARSHIP TROOPERS and DOUBLE STAR would be the favorites until he gave us STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. Isaac Asimov’s massive FOUNDATION TRILOGY is to science fiction what THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE is to history. Arthur C. Clarke is the third of the Three Masters. He is best known for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (he hated Kubrick’s movie version), but his best story is THE STAR. It concerns an epiphany that comes to a Jesuit Priest/Astrophysicist. After an expedition to a solar system 3000 light years from Earth he concludes the star that shone above Bethlehem announcing the birth of Jesus was in fact a star that went supernova and destroyed a wondrous human-like civilization. The Three Masters set the standard for science fiction. Until Philip K. Dick that is. He literally took science fiction to a higher plane. In the universe he created the United States was controlled by mega corporations whose naked greed was beyond even what the robber barons of today aspire to. A class system where the correct color credit card was required for entrance to upscale shopping malls. Police unrestrained by the courts (Gitmo would fit right in). Psychiatrist in a box functioned to make a person crazy and unfit to be drafted to a dreary colony and pointless existence on Mars. People with precognitive abilities (precogs) were common, and worth more in the employment marketplace than a Harvard MBA. Death was not the end, just a transition of the mind to a computer hard drive where loved ones could converse with the deceased on the telephone. (Sort of like James Cagney talking to his Ma while he did his time in the big house. “Top of the world, Ma!”) For a while anyway. All of his stories asked the question, “What is real?” His mind truly had more bandwidth, and as it turned out in the end, he had more than he needed. My encounter with PKD began with a knock at the door of my room at the World Science Fiction Convention in LA in 1972. A friend and I had rented a room at the International Hotel where the convention was held. We were members of the Original Gonzo Japesters (We modeled ourselves after Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, although this was hubris. We did enjoy something of a bad boys reputation with the rest of Fandom. A reputation unearned but enjoyed. My room contained a small party, wild for the social outcasts that make up science fiction fandom. I did not ask for this party of louts but could not control them. Like an airborne virus they could not be kept out. 10 or 12 sat in a circle around a pathetic guitar player who assumed we would be enthralled with his nasty toneless drone. He was ignorant of the phrase “Eric Clapton is God”. A knock . . . I opened the door there stood Philip K. Dick. I said, “My friend and I were about to enjoy a pipe. Would you care to join us”? He joined my friend and I for a couple of hours of special adult smoking mixture prepared by my friend and smoked in a Dr. Grabow ‘Royal Duke’ pipe. I would like to report on a conversation with my science fiction idol, but such a report would be as much a product of an alternate reality as you might find in one of PKD’s novels. After forty years I just don’t remember. I do remember a pleasant time spent with an interesting, soft- spoken and imaginative writer. After a time his girlfriend appeared and spirited him away. It should be noted the hard-core science fiction fans enthralled by bad music did not recognize PKD. I doubt they would have known Asimov or Heinlein. Hardly surprising as they were the type of fan who dress-up in funny science fiction garb, standard attire for morbidly obese social outcasts that dominate the S/F fan census. In the spirit of full discloser I must admit several of the music lovers were dressed in Star Trek uniforms. This was the time before the Trekkies had their own massive conventions. Before STAR WARS characters began appearing at conventions. I remember assuring PKD they were dressed up like escapees from the Paramount wardrobe department, and not simulacra induced by our adult smoking mixture. After PKD was gone we continued to smoke, and the effect took real hold of me. I considered a verbal assault on the unwanted fatsos occupying my room like the SS in a French village, until I spied a phaser pistol in the belt of one of the Trekkies. I grabbed the pistol, took sloppy aim (the only kind allowed with a phaser as they lack sights) and disintegrated the guitar player. A collective moan emanated from the music lovers, Trekkies and non Trekkies alike. “You should have set it on stun.” “Shut your mouths and get out, or you’ll get what the wandering minstrel got. Time for Scotty to beam you out”, I told them. They made a mad dash for the door, all of them, including the reintegrated musician. I had a defective phaser! I never met Philip K. Dick again, but I had expected 20 years of new works by him. Alas, that was not to be. An epiphany, rather like a dance with the ghost of Hamlet’s father, led him to a mystic odyssey chronicled in his final three novels. Far too mystic for me. He was taken at far too young an age, but he left us a dozen or so novels and short stories that can be read over and over.