Over the years that I have been exploring the Internet, I have several archives of topics that I’m interested in and obviously Philip K. Dick is one of them. I have been looking at my archive and pulling things out of it that weren’t on the original site. One of these items is the PKDictionary which has a long history that I will splice together here from the files that I’ve gathered, some even today. And instead of depending on the viral spread of this file across the Internet, I’m going to store all versions I found here. In my research I discovered many, many dead links like to the originators long dead page or geocities.
I have collected three different versions of the file and a .pdf of the file. Lots of more current references point to http://downlode.org/Etext/pkdicktionary.html which appears to be the most recent and the version that I will create ours from.
I have placed our version here:
/pkdicktionary/
Here is the history of this document which is also on the page with the PKDicktionary:
About this file
I am not the author of this file. That person was Simon Hickinbotham, who originally maintained it at his homepage at the University of York. Since it is no longer extant except for a few bootleg copies floating about on the Web, it’s clear that he no longer has the time to maintain it. So, in his stead, I have given it a new home and cleaned it up a bit. I am slowly going through it to add proper inter-item hyperlinking for each reference, and cleaning up a few typos, so if this note is still here, I haven’t finished yet. Feel free to email me any comments you may have.
And now, over to Simon:
This is a glossary of terms used by Philip K Dick (hereafter referred to as PKD). The description of each term is based on my (or someone else’s) best guess at the meaning, with opinions, criticisms, bad jokes etc. Hopefully this approach will keep the thing interesting, instead of it being just a dry, dusty description of words that PKD used. It could be argued that some of the words here are not exclusive to PKD, but I’ve included them because I think he put a spin on the usual meaning. What I’m trying to achieve is an overview of the ideas that Dick grappled with – all of them, even the silly/trivial ones – via the terms that he used to label them.
To save my blunt and bloody fingers, I’ve found it necessary to provide a reference section so I don’t keep having to type out the full title of a PKD work. References to works where a term is used are represented by a code: A number refers to the year the work was first published, followed by a sensible four-letter reduction of the title of the work. I’m trying to give brief descriptions of each story I refer to – but sometimes I ramble on a bit!