Kindred Spirit

Philip Kindred Dick was a legendary science fiction writer and one of the great paranoia fantasists of post-war America. He would have just turned 80 if he had not died back in 1982. Dick had been chemically harsh on his body over the years (including the taking of amphetamines to keep writing for long, long hours) and the resulting physical breakdown led to a stroke from which he did not recover. P. K. had been writing and being published for years but his cult status only really took off after his death. Certainly he never really saw the fame and fortune his name now associates with.

So, I've been wondering. If Dick had looked after himself better, perhaps taken life easier when his health was failing, let himself be looked after by friends and family (five ex-wives, three children), could he have lived to a ripe age of 80 and seen how his legacy has flourished? How would he feel knowing his 120 short stories and 36 novels were still in print? Would he see how much of an influence he has had on contemporary fiction and on writers like Jonathan Lethem, William Gibson, Matt Ruff, David Mitchell, Chuck Palahniuk, Darren Aronofsky, Charlie Kaufman, David Cronenberg, the Wachowski brothers, Michel Chabon, Richard Kelly and many others? How would he feel about the acknowledgment of his influence by leading philosophers like Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek?

What would he think of all those Hollywood adaptations? He read the script and saw some preview material for the adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, retitled Blade Runner, and he was very enthusiastic. But what would he have thought of Total Recall (based on his short story We Can Remember it for You Wholesale)? And instead of the Verhoven auctioneer with Arnie, would he have preferred the cancelled version by David Cronenberg with Richard Dreyfuss in the lead? Would P. K. have liked Minority Report or Screamers (based on short story Second Variety) or Imposter or Paycheck or Next (based on The Golden Man)? I think he would have quite liked A Scanner Darkly; it is the most loyal adaptation of any of his work and the only piece that was trying to invoke the feeling of Dick's writing. I can easily imagine he'd have a cameo in that one. Indeed, how much control would he have wielded over these projects if he was around to give them his blessing or not?

But the most important question in my wonderings is what would he have written? In his later years Dick had suffered from "reality" issues for some time (for a quick lesson I suggest checking out Robert Crumb's take on it). Would he have continued on that course of perception, gone over the edge, become a guru for enthusiastic followers? Or would he have taken advantage of the mental health revolution, taken some effective medications, settled down to a less brainstorm existence? Would that have had a good or bad effect on his writing? Would we have still gotten novels like Valis or The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, where Philip K. Dick's divine madness seem to be reaching new heights? Would he have mellowed or become harsher? Would he get more surreal or even written more mainstream? Would Dick have written spirituality books about alternate states of consciousness? Would he have finished his Exegesis, thousands of hand written pages of philosophical speculation? Would his works be getting the accolades from a literary community that they didn't while he was alive? Would he have quit writing altogether?

I have many other questions I'd like to ask. Would he have done panels with people like Timothy Leary or Ram Daas or Robert Anton Wilson? Would he have been doing literary panels with Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and J. G. Ballard? How chuffed would he be with the prestigious The Philip K Dick Award? What would he have thought of Michael Bishop's novel The Secret Ascension in which a demonically possessed Richard Nixon has had all of P. K. Dick's SF banned? What would he have thought of Lawrence Sutin or Emmanuel Carrere's biographies emphasising his madness? Would he prefer the feature length documentaries The Gospel According to Philip K Dick and Philip K. Dick - The Penultimate Truth? Would he go see the two forthcoming movies detailing his life?

And I wonder what he would think of this changing world; of the events of 9/11, the so-called War on Terror, the fall and rise of the Soviet Empire, out of control commerce, post-humanism and string theory. Would he be the publishing equivalent of a hysterical man running down the highway screaming, "They're here, they're here"? Or would he be a voice that turned from paranoid madness to vindicated reason? How would he have coped with the rapidly changing culture, of all this post-modern ephemera, of the fast changing technologies as we head towards the theoretical singularity?

And what would he have thought of the Internet? Would he have shunned it or embraced it? Would I have been able to post to his facebook and say how much I have been affected by his work? Would he have written back to me?

And could I have wished him a happy birthday?