Review: The Gospel of Philip K. Dick (2001)

In the comments section, please add your your review, your criticism or a link to as post when you have much more to write than would fit in a comment.

 

I recently rewatched The Gospel of Philip K. Dick after first seeing it about ten years ago and honestly it was a little worse than I remembered. The animation went on and was more difficult to watch than I remembered and when the animated Philip K. Dick spoke, it was really uncomfortable to watch. I’m not sure why because I usually don’t have that reaction to animated content. The credits at the beginning and the animated typed pages that gave written information instead of narration both seemed like padding to the film to meet some specific number of minutes. The lack of a narrator may have been a cost issue or thinking the animated PKD could compensate may have thought to have been a excellent idea but it wasn’t. Those parts plodded along.

What I liked was seeing the interview sections which were fascinated and the film was broken up into a number of topic areas related to the gospel of Dick, like the visions and the Xerox missive but there were only a few viewpoints given in each section with the interviews for extremely complicated topics. I think an entire movie could be made exploring the 1971 break-in or pink beam visions and related events. What could have been an interesting view that many fans may not have the resources to see is the visit to the collection at Fullerton but the detail there goes overboard including a librarian running through the process to view the collection pieces. Overall I was disappointed in this documentary and hoped for more content and less filler.

Other Reviews

Amazon.com Reviews

Contest: Win An Exegesis :: BookPulse iPad Application

Exegesis :: BookPulseAnnouncing a contest on this site in which the winner will receive a coupon code for a free Exegesis :: BookPulse for their iPad. For more information about the application see this post, visit the Facebook site, or the iTunes Store Preview.

To enter you need to write a 500-1000 word blog post about anything related to the Exegesis. I will be the final determination if it’s relevant so if you’re not sure email me at philipkdickfans[at]gmail[dot]com. The blog post is due by the end of January and can be emailed to philipkdickfans[at]gmail[dot]com with the Subject of “Free Exegesis BookPulse Entry”. Please include your name and preferred email address so the winner can be notified. The best, most interesting and well written entry will be determined to be the winner. The winner should expect that the entry will be posted to the philipdick.com as a guest blog post. Please email if you have any questions or clarifications.

New Issue of PKD Otaku

PKD Otaku Issue 23A new issue of PKD Otaku has been published on this site, /, which is to be the new home for the online fan created journal. Issue 23 has a new look and articles about the newly published Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. You can view it here: PKD Otaku Issue 23 or view past issues. Issue 23 also has a page of Additional Links for more exploration.

Please be patient after clicking on the link for this issue. The file is large and requires more time to download. An alternative would be to save the file to your computer and read the issue from there.

Philip K Dick Timeline pdf

Philip-K-Dick-TimelineI found this Philip K Dick Timeline and I had to post it here also. The timeline was created by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and posted here to scribed.com. You can view it larger here: Philip K Dick Timeline (Original link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/66406787/Philip-K-Dick-Timeline)

Put on your reading glasses because it seems a little hard to read unless you blow it up to 150-200%, but this is a great way to represent the data.

Update For iPad Users: Exegesis :: BookPulse

Exegesis :: BookPulseI noticed on another blog that there is a lite version of the Exegesis :: BookPulse application that only includes the first few chapters of the Exegesis but appears to have all the other features. It is free and seems to me to be a good way to test the application out before you buy the full version. (Unfortunately, I don’t happen to own an iPad…)

The lite version is here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-exegesis-philip-k.-dick/id492161170.

Review: Remembering Firebright By Tessa Dick (2009)

In the comments section, please add your your review, your criticism or a link to as post when you have much more to write than would fit in a comment.

 

It must be hard to write a memoir. I’ve never written one myself and what writing I’ve done has all been fiction. I repeatedly noticed that Ms. Dick would start down a narrative/memory path and then get far ahead of where she intends and then backtracks. This structure didn’t bother me because I have some familiarity with the events but someone who doesn’t might find it hard to follow.

In fiction you trust the reader to remember the details of the narrative later. It appears that Ms. Dick doesn’t trust the reader to recall and there are repetitions of events and explanations in this structure which leads to an absolutely clear discussion that can repeat itself. The memoir felt somewhat like you were having a conversation with Ms. Dick which suits the material that she covered in the book.

One of my favorite parts is the discussion of the infamous abscessed tooth/fish
necklace/pink beam experience at the beginning of Chapter Four which slightly changes the events as I knew them but they still retain the essence. That event has always fascinated me and to read a slightly different version makes me wonder what exactly happened. For example, Ms. Dick writes that the necklace didn’t cause the anamnesis but a piece of pink glass in their window with the sun shining through and the events remembered weren’t the events of Roman times but events that happened in Vancouver that I’d never read about.

The memoir has a structure more like put together a puzzle or creating a painting than a linear narrative and I think it suits the events that happened. Ms. Dick would describe an event fully chronologically even if it overlapped another event so that the reader has a better understanding of what happened and what she has put together in hindsight.

The book has parts which wander off the topic like the discussion of the movies made from Dick’s works but the discussion of the adaptation of A Scanner Darkly is fascinating because Ms. Dick helped work on the novel with him. Philip K. Dick would explain to her his intentions with that novel and all the novels after it so that she has an excellent understanding of Philip K. Dick’s purpose in writing the books.

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in this period in Philip K. Dick’s life. The memoir provides a second viewpoint on events that Philip K. Dick wrote about, a viewpoint of someone who was there to witness the events.

Other Reviews

Amazon.com Reviews

Help Philip K. Dick’s Fifth Wife, Tessa Dick

Tessa Dick Plea For HelpThere is an youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvF2XMD7fks) circulating the fan base in which Tessa Dick, Philip K. Dick’s Fifth Wife, pleads for financial help because she is struggling much more than many of us are. She is disabled and waiting on the paperwork to be processed which takes some time.

If you would like to make a donation to her, send it to her by Paypal to tuffy777@gmail.com or snail mail:

Tessa Dick
PO Box 1942
Crestline, CA 92325-1942


But if you would rather not donate directly, I would strongly encourage you to purchase one of her books. I don’t believe that one biography, one viewpoint can describe someone’s life. With the recent publication of the Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, one excellent choice is Remembering Firebright because she was present when he was experiencing and writing about the events in the Exegesis. I am reading it right now and the second viewpoint on events that I have become familiar with from Philip K. Dick’s telling is fascinating. Without the other viewpoints, we risk falling into solipsism like Dick was fond of writing and considering.

You can purchase her books at Tessa’s Amazon Author Page. A review of Remembering Firebright will be posted on soon.

For iPad Users: Exegesis :: BookPulse

Exegesis :: BookPulseHoughton Mifflin Harcourt recently released their iPad application for The Exegesis called ExegesisBookpulse in the iTunes store. There is also a Facebook page for the appplication called Exegesis :: BookPulse. The application allows you to share annotations, interact with other readers, connect with Facebook and share your reading experience. It is available on the iPad and will soon be available on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android.

New Site Addition: The PKDicktionary!

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!