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The Last Interview

Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview [Paperback]

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An electric collection of interviews—including the first and the last—with one of the 20th century's most prolific, influential, and dazzlingly original writers of science fiction

Long before Ridley Scott transformed Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into Blade Runner, Philip K. Dick was banging away at his typewriter in relative obscurity, ostracized by the literary establishment. Today he is widely considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. These interviews reveal a man plagued by bouts of manic paranoia and failed suicide attempts; a career fuelled by alcohol, amphetamines, and mystical inspiration; and, above all, a magnificent and generous imagination at work.

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2015

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About the author

Philip K. Dick

1,956 books23.4k followers
Philip Kindred Dick was a prolific American science fiction author whose work has had a lasting impact on literature, cinema, and popular culture. Known for his imaginative narratives and profound philosophical themes, Dick explored the nature of reality, the boundaries of human identity, and the impact of technology and authoritarianism on society. His stories often blurred the line between the real and the artificial, challenging readers to question their perceptions and beliefs.

Raised in California, Dick began writing professionally in the early 1950s, publishing short stories in various science fiction magazines. He quickly developed a distinctive voice within the genre, marked by a fusion of science fiction concepts with deep existential and psychological inquiry. Over his career, he authored 44 novels and more than 100 short stories, many of which have become classics in the field.

Recurring themes in Dick's work include alternate realities, simulations, corporate and government control, mental illness, and the nature of consciousness. His protagonists are frequently everyday individuals—often paranoid, uncertain, or troubled—caught in surreal and often dangerous circumstances that force them to question their environment and themselves. Works such as Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly reflect his fascination with perception and altered states of consciousness, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health struggles and drug use.

One of Dick's most influential novels is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for Ridley Scott's iconic film Blade Runner. The novel deals with the distinction between humans and artificial beings and asks profound questions about empathy, identity, and what it means to be alive. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, each reflecting key elements of his storytelling—uncertain realities, oppressive systems, and the search for truth. These adaptations have introduced his complex ideas to audiences well beyond the traditional readership of science fiction.

In the 1970s, Dick underwent a series of visionary and mystical experiences that had a significant influence on his later writings. He described receiving profound knowledge from an external, possibly divine, source and documented these events extensively in what became known as The Exegesis, a massive and often fragmented journal. These experiences inspired his later novels, most notably the VALIS trilogy, which mixes autobiography, theology, and metaphysics in a narrative that defies conventional structure and genre boundaries.

Throughout his life, Dick faced financial instability, health issues, and periods of personal turmoil, yet he remained a dedicated and relentless writer. Despite limited commercial success during his lifetime, his reputation grew steadily, and he came to be regarded as one of the most original voices in speculative fiction. His work has been celebrated for its ability to fuse philosophical depth with gripping storytelling and has influenced not only science fiction writers but also philosophers, filmmakers, and futurists.

Dick's legacy continues to thrive in both literary and cinematic spheres. The themes he explored remain urgently relevant in the modern world, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with human identity and governance. The Philip K. Dick Award, named in his honor, is presented annually to distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. His writings have also inspired television series, academic studies, and countless homages across media.

Through his vivid imagination and unflinching inquiry into the nature of existence, Philip K. Dick redefined what science fiction could achieve. His wor

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Profile Image for Jayakrishnan.
562 reviews254 followers
May 9, 2017
***SPOILERS ALERT***

Philip.K.Dick bares his soul in these interviews. What can I say? He was a great man. He admits that he wrote because he was lonely. He reveals that he wrote for the weak. He was such a prolific writer because he was literally living on his writing.

He also puts forth some really unique and possibly original theories. While he does not agree that he is paranoid, he says the state of animalism or animal awareness that human beings require to survive in the modern world should have been cast off by now. He says we were created by an imperfect, malevolent and possibly cruel entity but that we as a species can improve ourselves to become kind because we are standing on the shoulders of giants (god).

There are some hilarious anecdotes about how a little girl came to his house and asked for paper and he felt like he was being watched by a cop in a car when he followed the girl, carrying the paper that she asked for. Another one is about how he plucked and threw marijuana crop from his property into his neighbors property when he saw a police car cruising in the neighborhood. His neighbors turned out to be three "black dudes". They fried the crop and brought it back to PKD's home and PKD thought they were going to beat him up when he opened the door. But they all just sat and smoked.

The stuff about his religious visions in the last interview went over my head because I have not read a single religious text in my life.

But this is such a great collection of interviews. You have to respect a writer who is so damn honest. And bares his soul. Not every writer in the world has the balls to do that and make a fool of himself. PKD did.
Profile Image for Michael Perkins.
Author 6 books485 followers
March 14, 2019
Excellent new article in the NYT about the works of Philip K. Dick....

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/bo...

=================

I have read a couple of the longer biographies of PKD and found them TMI. The editor of this volume does an excellent job, in considerably shorter space, of capturing who PKD was. Given the recommendation of the editor, I'm going to read "The Search for Philip K. Dick" by his third wife, next. Needless to say, I will not be reading PKD's "The Exegesis" any time soon.

In the late 80's and early 90's, I binge-read what seemed to be Dick's consensus classics, beginning with his last novel, “The Transmigration of Timothy Archer” based on the Episcopal Bishop of CA, James Pike, a notorious iconoclast in his day, now forgotten.

In recent years, when I attempted to re-read PKD, I ended up agreeing with Ursula Le Guinn who, after attempting the same, referred to his writing as “clunky.” His characters tend to be flat, portrayed in some books in his original pulp style.

He was a concept writer who, fueled by Dexedrine, has provided some excellent material for films and TV serials,. Sadly, he died just before the release of the first film, Blade Runner.

I see a rough analogy between PKD's work to Tolkien’s LOR. Tolkien wrote the trilogy for his own enjoyment. Published in 1954, it got a good review in the NYT by Tolkien’s friend W.H. Auden, but it wasn’t until the American youth counterculture discovered LOR in the 1960’s, apparently through an unauthorized edition published by Ace, that sales of the books took off. (The one irony here is PKD desperately needed money from his writing and was always broke, whereas Tolkien was never concerned that much about royalties).

I read LOR decades ago, but when I attempted a re-read in recent years it felt like a slog. I think LOR will live on its film versions, as I believe the stories of PKD will, as well.

What is the " The Exegesis"?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Profile Image for Mike.
389 reviews239 followers
March 3, 2020

Spanning a couple of decades, the six interviews here don't necessarily show Philip K. Dick at his most compelling. The first two are probably the best- the first has some interesting thoughts about writing and creativity, while the second includes a hilarious riff on paranoia.

They're not lying when they say "the last interview", though. It takes place on the night of 2/17/82 with a fan-turned-friend named Gregg Rickman, the night before Dick had a stroke and was rendered unable to speak until his death twelve days later. It's a bit tough to read. Phil's sense of humor and self-questioning aren't entirely absent- they order Chinese food, and at one point Phil threatens to eat all the egg rolls if Rickman asks a question he doesn't like- but his obsession with Valis and whether or not he was truly an early Christian living in the Roman Empire struck me as particularly sad this time. Rickman, to his credit, gently challenges him.

In other words, this slim volume is for PKD completists only. Divine Invasions by Lawrence Sutin is a much more comprehensive look at Dick's life. It was a darker and more desperate life than I'd realized, though Sutin also shows that Phil at his best was warm and brilliant, and inspired a lot of love in his friends.
Profile Image for emily.
777 reviews619 followers
January 14, 2024
‘—it’s a metaphor. He was swallowed by God and the whale yelled at him and made God cough him up—I forget how that goes. But you know, that we’re part of it. ’

The interviews were interesting enough (for me anyway) but personally did not really enjoy the editorial tone/style and the notes that came with. Can’t say if this was well curated or not because I don’t have any other relevant PKD experience/readings to compare with as I am only familiar with some of his popular adaptations (as many have) — ‘Blade Runner’ (films and graphic novels) for one, and etc. (which I’ve heard and read from one person/source or another does not ‘stay true’ to PKD’s narratives anyway)).

‘I tried to define the real person, because there are people among us who are biologically human but who are androids in the metaphoric sense. I wanted to draw the line so I could define the positive primary goal of stipulating what was human. Computers are becoming more and more like sensitive cognitive creatures, but at the same time human beings are becoming dehumanised. As I wrote the speech I sensed in it the need for people who were human to reinforce other people’s humanness. And because of this it would be necessary to rebel against an inhuman or android society.’

‘I am very conscious of the reader. I am saying to the reader, The greatest menace in the twentieth century is the totalitarian state. It can take many forms: left-wing fascism, psychological movements, religious movements, drug rehabilitation places, powerful people, manipulative people; or it can be in a relationship with someone who is more powerful than you psychologically. Essentially, I’m pleading for the cause of those people who are not strong. If I were strong myself I would probably not feel this as such a menace. I identify with the weak person; this is one reason why my fictional protagonists are essentially anti-heroes. They’re almost losers, yet I try to equip them with qualities by which they can survive. At the same time I don’t want to see them develop counter-aggressive tactics where they, too, become exploitative and manipulative.’


I like the interview, ‘Killing the Rat’ best. It’s no surprise to me that that brings to (my) mind Clarice Lispector’s novella with the cockroach. If you know, you know; I won’t elaborate as I’ve already indulged in way too many ramblings in most of my Lispector reviews. I just adore.

‘When I was in my thirties and living in the country, I had to kill a rat—Rats are hard to kill. I set a trap for it. In the night it got into the trap, and the next morning, when I got up, it heard me coming, and it screamed. I took the trap out with a pitchfork and sprung the trap and let the rat go out in the pasture, and it came out of the trap and its neck was broken. I took the pitchfork and drove the tines into the rat, and it still didn’t die. Here was this rat, it had tried only to come in and get food, it was poisoned, its neck was broken, it was stabbed, and it was still alive. At that point I simply went crazy with horror. I ran in and filled a tub with water and drowned it. And I buried it and I took the St. Christopher medal that I wore and buried that with the rat. And the soul of that rat I carry on me from then on, as a question and as a problem about the condition of living creatures on this world. The rat had come into the house to get food. That is all it was motivated to do. If this is not relevant, you’ll tell me.’
Profile Image for R..
1,064 reviews148 followers
December 26, 2015
The Last Interview and Other Conversations of Philip K. Dick is the latest entry in Melville House's Last Interviews series, a sort of 33 1/3 for dead writers. And this particular volume certainly lives up to its name - going from a news brief in the Oakland Tribune headed, no kidding, Local Kid Makes Good (1955) up towards an evening with interviewer G. Rickman in February, 1982, which was indeed the last time PKD talked not only with an interviewer but with anybody.

Contents are Local Kid Makes Good (unattributed author 1955), Acid Truth (Arthur Byron Cover 1974), Even Paranoids Have Enemies (Paul Williams 1974), Anticipating the Future (D. Scott Apel and Kevin C. Briggs 1974), Killing the Rat (Charles Platt 1979), Blade Runner and Hollywood Temptations (James Van Hise 1981), Destruction and Enlightenment: The Last Interview (G. Rickman 1981, 1982).

This book makes an excellent companion to The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings -- there is no overlap between these two books, as I had feared.

Now, wow. That last interview. It's heartbreaking to witness PKD breaking down in his last hours, rambling about parapolitical assassination squads and Karen Silkwood and Khadafi-as-disco-dancer. He was really scattering the contents of his mind there at the very end - almost as if he knew that The End was very, very near (he was to have a debilitating stroke just hours later). But it makes a perfect capstone in this book, if we were to view it as a novel of one man's entropy, from Golden Kid being crowned/covered in the local highlights of the local newspaper down through the Paranoid Wisenheimer years of the mid-70s, to the career highlight of seeing his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep finally breaking away from several terrible scriptwrites and rewrites to shape, morph, into some semblance of sanity and respectability and. then. the final long dark night sitting at a table talking bullshit and sadness over cold Chinese takeout ("You gonna eat that last eggroll?")

PKD was the type of guy, no, wait, he was the guy who would bring out his own recording equipment to tape the interviews in case of misquotationLike Pynchon, PKD was the living embodiment of the Watergate era - the paranoia and the creeps informing both their public "performance" (PKD's open-house, open-door, open-hearted hipster pad seems as contrived as Pynchon's own hiding and various exiles) and their art - I mean, how else to explain a guy who had his own high-end recording equipment that he made great show of setting up in front of the interviewer? "This is me. This is who I am." he seems to say as he gestures, with not a little flair, at the stacks of reel-to-reels tumbling out of a metal (fireproof) filing cabinet upon which is perched a green-eyed satisfied cat of dubious, questionable, if not outright treasonous loyalty named Microphone.
Profile Image for Michael.
650 reviews136 followers
December 22, 2015
A fantastic collection of interviews with PKD from 1974 up to the night before he died in 1982.

I found the earlier interviews facinating, even though the interviewers seemed to have an unnatural obsession with Dick's alleged paranoia, despite his refusal to accept that label other than if it covered the rest of humanity with him.

Dick provides some great insights into his works and world view, and clears up once and for all what he thinks about the Rick Deckard is he/isn't he an android (sorry, Replicant) in Ridley Scott's film, Blade Runner. I don't care what revelations might be made in the up-coming Blade Runner 2 movie, if they don't go with Dick's view they will get it wrong!

The 'Last Interview' of the title was, for me, poignant and sad. Dick seems consumed by his religious mania (I have no other word for it) and seems incoherent at times and it is no wonder that the interviewer, Gregg Rickman, begged leave to end the interview as it's likely he would otherwise have been there until the early hours of the next morning. Although, as I write that, I realise that if Rickman had stayed around, maybe he would have been there when Dick had his stroke and could have got him medical assistance more quickly and... well, that would be a different reality than the one we have, I guess.

Whether or not you're a Dick-Head, this is an intriguing insight into the strange world of an unconventional and complex human person.
Profile Image for Meghna.
95 reviews17 followers
October 28, 2022
Fairly interesting concept. Interviews from the life of a manic, paranoia fuelled writer and the unglamorous side of the literary genius.
Profile Image for Ashish.
281 reviews50 followers
January 13, 2018
First thing to note: anyone who is contemplating getting a copy of this book better take a good look inside, the copy I got was full of printing errors and missing letters which made a bad reading experience. From what I've heard, the problem persists across copies and is shoddy work by the publishers.

The book itself is good. It's a collection of interviews over a period of time in which Philip K Dick talks about a variety of topics; how he got into writing SciFi, his views about the genre and authors, his philosophy about life which comes across in his books, his paranoia and his delusions and the plethora of eccentricities that define who he is as a person. He seems to be hyper-aware of his own personality traits and his interviews get progressively weird and surreal. It's an interesting peak into the mind of the author as he reflects upon his writings.
A definite recommendation for fans of the author and of the genre.
Profile Image for Snakes.
1,506 reviews85 followers
May 9, 2024
If you’re expecting to learn anything which isn’t completely crazy about Dick’s books then reading his interviews will disappoint you. Dick was basically a diagnosed schizophrenic who heard voices in his head, had a messianic complex, and revered some truly despicable human beings. 99% of the book is about his paranoia and can be attributed to his mental illness. The only thing that stuck in my head because of its contemporaneous occurrence was when he spoke a little about his first book, Solar Lottery, and how one of the elements of the book was “presidentially approved assassins working for the government.” Interesting considering Trump’s recent argument that be could kill a political rival as an official duty of the presidency and could NOT be prosecuted for it.
Profile Image for Bill.
2,121 reviews115 followers
November 20, 2023
I've read a couple of books in this series, the interviews with Ursula K Le Guin and those with Hannah Arendt. I was looking forward to trying Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview and Other Conversations, edited by David Streitfield as Dick has written some of my favorite Sci Fi novels; The Man in the High Castle, Dr. Bloodmoney, etc.

The book contains 7 interviews, the first when he was initially published in 1955 and one that ended the day before Dick's death in 1982. The next day he had a stroke and never spoke again, dying a week or so later. The interviews were conducted by the Oakland Tribune (Jan 1955), Arthur Byron Cover (Feb 1974), Paul Williams (Nov 1974), D. Scott Apel & Kevin C. Briggs (Jun 1977), Charles Platt (May 1979), James van Hise (Aug 1981), and Gregg Rickman (Apr 1981 - Feb 1982).

They all provide a picture of Dick, his paranoia, his drug use, the themes of his books, thoughts on turning Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep into Blade Runner (He passed away before it was finished and never saw its release). Dick is definitely an interesting interview and I especially liked his references to those books I was most familiar with. In one interview he discusses the impact and his use of the I Ching, a theme throughout the first book I'd read, The Man in the High Castle. I remember getting a book on the I Ching to do some research, but I think I was a bit to lazy to try it.. LOL.

Anyway, I enjoyed this collection of interviews. I have a few others to try as well, Lou Reed, Kurt Vonnegut, Jacinda Ardern. It's an interesting collection to check out. (3.5 stars)
Profile Image for Tauan Tinti.
204 reviews4 followers
June 3, 2022
Pura conversa de maluco, no bom e no mau sentido, tendendo mais pro mau conforme o PKD se aproxima da morte - e digo isso mesmo com Valis sendo até agora (provavelmente) meu livro favorito dele. Mas as conversas são estranhas, um pouco naquele espírito de quem pergunta "e aí, tudo bem?" e ouve uma resposta sincera, longa e pormenorizada ao invés de protocolar. De certa forma, é até meio falta de respeito que as últimas entrevistas desse livrinho tenham sido publicadas.
Profile Image for Doug.
Author 3 books9 followers
May 6, 2017
Well, maybe 3.5 stars. This book is more fun than I expected. Dick is very funny talking about dealing with film people when "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was adapted as "Blade Runner." He is also, seemingly, crazy -- in a very articulate way. He talks in detail about having his own mind invaded by a super rational mind (God, an extraterrestrial, the Soviets?) in March 1974. This experience allowed him to organize his life, fire his agent and publisher, uncover an undiagnosed illness in his son, etc. He wrote hundreds of thousands of words of notes about this experience, which formed parts of his novel, "Valis." He says he wrote to Ursula LeGuin to ask her advice and shared his writing, and she wrote back, "I think you're crazy." Dick was also inhabited by the biblical Elijah. I'm not a big Dick fan (at least not yet), and have only read a few books by him, so this collection of interviews might be even more enjoyed by readers who know his work well.
Profile Image for Christopher Blosser.
164 reviews24 followers
March 29, 2019
I found the first several interviews rather entertaining. The “last interview” — concluding right before his stroke and subsequent passing — was not unlike some college day conversions under the influence with someone in the throes of a bad trip replete with prolonged ramblings and messianic delusions. My sense however is that you never quite know whether Dick believes what he’s saying or pulling your leg. For someone who reportedly only went on a psychedelic excursion twice (and claims not to have enjoyed it) he talks like a seasoned traveler.

His account of the early composition of the screenplay for Bladerunner and how it took shape was interesting — by all indications the original script being shopped around was awful and he absolutely hated it.
Profile Image for Magic Anderson.
117 reviews3 followers
August 15, 2021
Great collection of interviews here. Very interesting and illuminating. What an intriguing mind PKD had. Here are some of the statements that really resonated with me.


"One reason he (PKD) was so prolific—forty-five novels in thirty years, plus five fat volumes of short stories—was because his characters offered companionship he could find nowhere else."

"In July 1981, in the middle of middle age, exhausted by life yet thrilled by the prospect that Blade Runner would deliver a bigger audience and better opportunities, he wrote his agent that “a whole new phase of my life is beginning.” Less than a year later, he was dead and his true fame began."

"But in science fiction, you read it, and it’s not true now but there are things that are not true now that are going to be someday. Everybody knows that! And this creates a very strange feeling in a certain kind of person—a feeling that he is reading about reality, but he is disjointed from it only in temporal terms. It’s like all science fiction occurs in alternate future universes, so it could actually happen someday."

"Martian Time-Slip is exactly what I wanted to write. It deals with the premise that was, to me, so important—not just that we each live in a somewhat unique world of our own psychological content, but that the subjective world of one rather powerful person can infringe on the world of another person. If I can make you see the world the way I see it, then you will automatically think the way I think. You will come to the conclusions that I come to. And the greatest power one human being can exert over others is to control their perceptions of reality, and infringe on the integrity and individuality of their world."

"If I were strong myself I would probably not feel this as such a menace. I identify with the weak person; this is one reason why my fictional protagonists are essentially anti-heroes. They’re almost losers, yet I try to equip them with qualities by which they can survive. At the same time I don’t want to see them develop counter-aggressive tactics where they, too, become exploitative and manipulative. "

"However—if my view that each person has his unique world is correct, then if you say Chinese food is good, in your world it’s good, and if someone else says it’s bad, in his world it’s bad. I’m a complete relativist in that for me the answer to the question “Is Chinese food good or bad?” is semantically meaningless. Now, this is my view. If your view is that this view is incorrect, you might be right. In which case, I would be willing to agree with you. "

"My outlook is based not on faith but on an actual encounter that I had in 1974, when I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane. Now, I have actually thought of that as a possibility, that I had been psychotic from 1928, when I was born, until March of 1974. But I don’t think that’s the case. I may have been somewhat whacked-out and eccentric for years and years, but I know I wasn’t all that crazy, because I’d been given Rorschach tests and so on. This rational mind was not human. It was more like an artificial intelligence. On Thursdays and Saturdays I would think it was God, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I would think it was extraterrestrial, sometimes I would think it was the Soviet Union Academy of Sciences trying out their psychotronic microwave telepathic transmitter."
Profile Image for Tony.
1,110 reviews22 followers
April 8, 2025
This is a collection of interviews with Philip K Dick, including the last one he undertook in 1982. They're an interesting read. I found myself wishing I had Lawrence Sutin's book 'Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick.' beside me to get straight into after I'd finished.

The interviews cover a lot of the later part of his career, including the period around the making of 'Bladerunner' and it is fascinating to get Dick's take on the various different screenplays and his satisfaction with the Ridley Scott version.

Dick is clearly well-educated and well-read in the self-taught sense. He dropped out of college. But he seemed to have read widely in philosophy, religion and science-fiction. Amongst other things. His theories of the world and the universe are interesting. And he's spot on with some of his early predictions. He said this in 1977:

Computers are becoming more and more like sensitive cogitation creatures, but at the same time human beings are become dehumanized.

And then there was this:

This is one of the biggest transformations we have seen in human life in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. That we must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secret and that nothing is private. Everything is public.

And this is decades before social media made us voluntarily offer up our private lives.

There's a lot in here about perceptions of reality and of what constitutes a human being. He quotes the two themes from 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' for example and how the research he did for 'The Man in the High Castle' had led him to read diaries from Nazis and that he thought ...there is amongst us something that is bipedal, humanoid, morphologically identical to the human being but that is not human. It is not human to complain that starving children are keeping you awake.

This story reminded me of something I read in Clive James where he talks about German Civil Servants who worked beneath a Doctor's office where the Doctors were testing some drug on Jewish children that just killed lots of them. And James wonders what went through these peoples heads as every so often there was a thunk on the ceiling as another child's corpse hit the floor above. What kind of beings could they be?

There is also though the feeling that Dick's grip on reality - or our version of reality - is slipping. That he was mentally ill. That he was, perhaps, paranoid. He definitely believed a being took control of him in 1976. In the final interview he calls it Elijah, the prophet. And actually his discussion of that experience fits neatly with Bill Lundberg's experience in 'The Transfiguration of Timothy Archer' that I read recently. Except in that case Lundberg is sharing his mind with the dead Bishop Timothy Archer.

I found it a fascinating read and might have to see if I can get hold of a copy to annotate. I was reading a copy from Libby so my notes are all handwritten. Apparently this is part of a whole series of 'Last Interviews' with many different writers. Some of which I am interested in reading.

Recommended if you like Dick's work or, more broadly, how a creative mind works. Or doesn't.
Profile Image for Gabriel Benitez.
Author 79 books26 followers
November 20, 2025
Es notorio que David Streifeld, el editor de este libro tenía como objetivo mostrarnos diferentes aspectos de Philip K. Dick. Y lo logra. Los que conocemos algo de Phil Dick sabemos que esta obsesionado con ciertos temas a los que vuelve una y otra vez en sus entrevistas, pero estas logran no ser repetitivas.
En su introducción, Streifeld nos habla de un Phil Dick que, más allá de la paranoia y la psicosis, era un ser humano buscando aceptación y cariño. Tal vez por eso le daba a sus entrevistadores aquello que querían oír. En la entrevista de Arthur Byron "La cruda verdad" hace hincapié en la relación de Dick con la ciencia ficción; en la de Paul Williams "Hasta los paranoicos tienen enemigos" la idea de la paranoia y otras filias que supuestamente aquejaban a Dick; en la de Scott Apel y Kevin Briggs "Anticipando el futuro" se profundiza en la relación con su trabajo y en el tema de la precognición que el autor pensaba tener o experimentar y sus extraordinarias coincidencias descritas en sus novelas que después se hicieron realidad. En "Matar a la rata", el escritor de ciencia ficción Charles Platt logra obtener de Dick una visión más intimista de este y su visión del Ideos Kosmos o "universo personal". De todas las entrevistas creo que es la más sincera, la que nos expone al Phil más real y a su pensamiento original. Su experiencia con la rata de la que la entrevista toma titulo, es muy emotiva y creo que nos habla del buen corazón que siempre tuvo Dick. La entrevista de James Van Hise "Blade Runner y las tentaciones de Hollywood" muestran a un Dick muy entusiasmado después de leer el guion modificado por David Peoples y la relación con su libro (esta entrevista fue antes que su primer visionado de la película) y finalmente, la última entrevista "Destrucción e iluminación de Gregg Rickman, que muestra a un Dick ya muy trastornado o haciéndose deliberadamente el chistoso con esa onda de que su cuerpo había sido poseído por el espíritu de Elías y estupideces así. Al día siguiente de esta entrevista, Dick sufriría un infarto cerebral que lo mantuvo poco más de una semana en el hospital. Finalmente moriría a los 53 años de edad... el mismo día que tuvo un encuentro increíble con una inteligencia no humana —tal vez la misma divinidad— en la decada de los setenta, varios años atrás.
Muy buen libro.
Profile Image for anulekha.
58 reviews10 followers
November 30, 2021
This book was a pleasant surprise. I almost didn't buy it, I was just browsing at the bookstore but the cover was too pretty. I also didn't really know who Philip Dick was although it did sound familiar (I don't read a lot of sci-fi). Turns out he's the guy that wrote the book that Blade Runner was based on!

The book is a curated collection of interviews, leading up to quite literally his last interview, since he suffered a stroke that would kill him the very next day. A lot of people would call Philip K. Dick cuckoo, and I get why. The entire time I felt like I was having a conversation with a friend while we were high on shrooms. And I loved it. It had everything you could expect from a shroom session: paranoia, conversations of all sorts, deep, philosophical, silly, and crazy. It also has Dick feeling like he was literally God.

I think there's a lot in here that would spark interesting conversation with open minded people, which I really enjoyed. Everyone can agree that Dick was a little bit crazy (especially in that last interview) but I believe that to reach that stage of craziness, you had to have not been afraid of imagining the whackiest of realities. And for that I appreciate him.

Needless to say, I will be reading every book in this series.
Profile Image for Debra Daniels-Zeller.
Author 4 books14 followers
January 26, 2025
A great collection of interviews with PKD starting in 1955 with Local Kid Makes Good in the Oakland Tribune and ending with Destruction and Enlightenment: The Last Interview by Greg Rickman in 1981/82. This collection is a good insight into Dick’s science fiction obsession and his life. His stories were far ahead of the time and so many of his stories about inventions and technology are amazing for the time he lived in.
Profile Image for Matt Sautman.
2,102 reviews32 followers
March 17, 2019
This provides an excellent glimpse into PKD as a writer, especially in regard to his eccentricities, making this a worthwhile text for scholars interested in his work, as well as a lay audience who is relatively interested in the man behind the works of monumental science fiction texts like The Man in the High Castle.
Profile Image for Jim LeMay.
Author 34 books9 followers
January 23, 2018
This series of interviews, including the last one Dick gave, gives great insight into the origins of his fiction.
Profile Image for Özgür Tekin.
182 reviews32 followers
July 19, 2026
PKD ile tanışma okuması olarak toplu öyküler 1.cilde ekledim. Son röportajda kırıklığı patlamıştı, diğer röportajlarda gayet aklı-selim bir haldeydi.
Profile Image for dkaufman .
69 reviews12 followers
January 11, 2017
Wonderful range of interviews, Philip Dick was a complex/fascinating guy.
Profile Image for Mike.
724 reviews
December 26, 2016
There are a number of interviews with Phil Dick compiled in book format, and I've read and reviewed most of them previously. Most of and the older books, like those by Gregg Rickman and Paul Williams, have been out of print for years. The Last Interview and Other Conversations compiles sections from some of those old out-of-print books, along with things like an Oakland newspaper article from 1955, a zine article, and a Starlog interview about Blade Runner. What you get here are small snippets of the books, so in my opinion, it is still very much worth tracking down the originals if you want the full impact of the interviews. I thought the magazine selections were excellent, however, and I had not read them before. Dick's thoughts on the relationship between the themes in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner are quite interesting, and made me consider the film in ways I hadn't before. A nice sampler if you'd like to get an idea of what it must have been like to sit down with Phil Dick in his grungy apartment, have some takeout, and shoot the breeze for five hours about the nature of divine intervention.
Profile Image for Steve Stanton.
Author 15 books32 followers
February 21, 2016
These collected interviews with acclaimed science-fiction author Philip K. Dick span the period from 1974 to the day before the stroke that killed him in 1982 at fifty-three years of age. His life was a modern tragedy, writing forty-five novels in thirty years and never achieving fame until after his death when the movie Blade Runner came out, based on one of his novels, followed later by Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly. Despite going through five wives and many girlfriends, Dick was a loner at heart, a recluse who felt he didn't fit in with the real world, happier with the characters in his books and the development of his own theology based on his various dreams and visions. These candid interviews give great insight into his work as a novelist and the ravings of his troubled mind, and I was happy to see a Canadian connection. After winning the Hugo Award in 1963 and writing sixteen novels in five years with just a four-figure annual income, Philip K. Dick was invited as Guest of Honour at the second annual Vancouver SF Convention in February 1972, and worked on his speech for three months during a low period of his life. He stayed in Canada to escape the “oppressive air of the war,” rented an apartment, attempted suicide, and pretended to be a heroin addict in order to get into a drug rehabilitation facility, where he stayed for a few weeks until his true identity was discovered. He recovered from depression, became homesick, and returned to USA, but not before being impressed by the strength of the struggling addicts and seeing “the human being there as a magnificent creature.” This slim volume is easily read in one sitting.
Profile Image for Alex.
604 reviews48 followers
January 3, 2016
While I have read a good number of PKD's books (including Flow My Tears and Valis, both of which crop up significantly in these interviews), there is nothing quite like the "direct" expression of his views in a Q&A format. Being able to read several of these over time and to see what ideas tended to recur, and what accounts tended to morph in the retelling, was particularly interesting. Dick, like Gibson after him, was uncannily prescient in a lot of ways when it comes to technology and society, and it is intriguing to ponder what ideas of his may yet come to pass in the (near?) future.
Profile Image for David.
7 reviews
January 13, 2016
Dick comes across as a very bright guy - and funny, too. He had a rocky life, and died far too young; which puts him in good company in the writing community. I recently read one of his non-SF books, Mary and the Giant, and found it excellent. The interviews make many references to Flow my Tears..., and Three Stigmata...; but I have only Martian Time-slip, so I'll probably start there. We're watching The Man in the High Castle. Chilling. Some of his books are more ambitious, but any are probably worth reading.
Profile Image for Sebastian.
144 reviews1 follower
June 15, 2016
Having read a couple of Dick's novels and being a fan of SciFi books and movies in general, I was delighted to find this book. However, I would only recommend it to the die hard Philip K. Dick fan who has preferably read most of his works as otherwise quite some of the stuff in this book won't make much sense. And even then some won't.
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