James’s Comments (group member since Apr 15, 2008)

James’s comments from the Philip K Dick group.

"Bright new future waiting to be destroyed"

Yeah that sounds like a PKD lover alright. I would change the word "future" with "reality" and you'd have PKD's novels in a nutshell. I'd say I empathized with PKD's agoraphobia lol. His fear of what is "outside" as unknowable and what is tangible is actually deceiving. I don't share PKD's beliefs, but I empathize with that fear. It's an existential meltdown of sorts. I disagree with this idea of personally shaping reality..."truth is what you make of it" kind of philosophy. I think that's exactly what PKD was struggling with in his work, that the moral/judicial guidelines we live by may not be arbitrary. Anyway, it seems that he was coming to some sort of conclusion by the end of his life.

Mike,

What does "writing from the heart" mean to you. We all have our own ideas, i'm just curious to know what is yours. Vonnegut said that when he wrote he pretended he was writing for his sister, who happened to have died a long time ago, and if she liked it he would keep it.

On a side note,

Poor PKD. I feel like that was his torment. He worked himself up so much that he couldn't believe in anything, but at the end of his life he seemed to start believing in an END, like some sort of apocalyptic reality. Interesting.

Definitely the AIBO lol

LOL I think W.O.W. was prophesied by PKD, its the precursor to the sympathy boxes. Also we have those small robot dogs, not android pets per se, but close enough.

Yo its Jimbo. Glad to see PKD fans are alive and well. My uncle handed me "Man in the High Castle" when I was 13. I ended up not reading it till i was 16 or 17 and my uncle had passed by then. I liked "Castle" and wished i had read it sooner so i could talk with him about why he liked it so much. As time floated by I remembered snippets of the book. Odd things here and there. And I went back and read it... it was then that i began to really appreciate his work. I was surprised to find out that PKD was a "sci-fi" writer and immediately read his bladerunner, "Do androids dream of electric sheep." I'm still in my nascent stage of PKD knowledge. "Flow my tears the policeman said" will be next on the hit list. On a cool side note my uncle, the one who gave me "Castle" actually wrote an Afterword for one of PKD's books, "Time Out of Joint," the Bluejay 1984 version. I'm waiting for that one till I've read a bit more of PKD to appreciate what my uncle had to say. So, I'm still a noob, but from what I've read I can say he's a great author. Heck I applaud anyone who was able to capture my 16 year old ADD addled mind. Peace homies.


PS-I recommend the SUPER Box set of Bladerunner SOLELY for the PKD extras. They are great! He goes into what he felt were the differences between his and Ridley Scott's vision of the book vs. film and there is a mini bio on his work and life. Check it out PKD fans!

I dig his style. In the context of the story the language makes sense as slang of the characters, an idea that didn't really hit me until I was older, but even when I was a kid his words always kept me interested. They were like little radar blips that kept me focused when the internal dialogue or "story" overwhelmed me.