Category: Web Site

Updated and Expanded Bibliography

Posted on by Michael Fisher

A new expanded bibliography of the works of Philip K. Dick plus related titles is available at PKD and Me: A personal journey into the works of Philip K. Dick.

When someone discovers the work of Philip K. Dick and becomes fascinated by it, there is a phenomenon in which they must read all of his work as fast as possible. Sometimes the plots and incidents blur together into one mega-novel. And there are a lot of novels.

At PKD and Me, view resources such as publication dates, covers and links to more information for an even deeper dive into the works.

An electronic only version is available at Homeopape.

Future improvements are the ability to create an account, review titles and mark which titles have been read.

Blade Runner Versions

Posted on by Michael Fisher

The history of the film Blade Runner consists of various subtly different versions or prints of the film.

US theatrical release (1982)
• Contains the voiceover narration included because the audience testing indicated that there was some confusion in understanding the film
• Contains the happy ending with Deckard and Rachel flying over mountainous country (pulled from unused shots created for The Shining (1980)
Amazon Video

 

The Director’s Cut (1992)
• Removal of the voiceover narration
• Removal of the happy ending
• Addition of a brief dream sequence with the unicorn running in a forest
Amazon Video | DVD

 

The Final Cut (2007)
• Contains the original full-length version of the dream sequence with the unicorn
• definitive version that underwent a restoration with Ridley Scott
• completely restored from the original negative
• scanned at the highest resolution available
• restored and remixed sound
• definitive version that underwent a restoration with Ridley Scott
Amazon Video | Blu-ray | DVD

 

Other Versions

• Workprint prototype version (1982)
• San Diego Sneak Preview version (1982)
• International theatrical release (1982)
• US broadcast version (1986)

Many other formats and available versions can be found with some investigation on Amazon.com. The more expensive collector sets have these other versions of Blade Runner available to view.

For more information, visit Versions of Blade Runner.

Philip K. Dick’s Birthday (And A Present For You!)

Posted on by Michael Fisher

Homeopape.com and .net stores are now open. Purchase digital (i.e. not analog) versions of the works of Philip K. Dick or other works related to Philip K. Dick’s life and his writing. For reading, watching or listening on the go with your portable homeopape device.

 

In a corner of the large room a chime sounded and a tinkling mechanical voice called, “I’m your free homeopape machine, a service supplied exclusively by all the fine Rootes hotels throughout Earth and the colonies. Simply dial the classification of news that you wish, and in a matter of seconds I’ll speedily provide you with a fresh, up-to-the-minute homeopape tailored to your individual requirements; and, let me repeat, at no cost to you!” — From Ubik, by Philip K. Dick

On The Occasion Of Philip K. Dick’s 87th Birthday: Presenting The philipkdick.com Archive

Posted on by Michael Fisher

To celebrate what would be Philip K. Dick’s 87th birthday (if here were still with us), I have resurrected or archived the former philipkdick.com site in the archive on philipdick.com. The archive of the site can be viewed at http://2013philipkdick.philipdick.com and can also be found on the website archives page. I’m still working through fixing some of the broken images on the site. I’ll do what I can to fix the site. Unfortunately, I can’t be responsible for broken links or other site issues. They should be viewed AS IS.

What is probably the most compelling reason to archive this site is the cover gallery of Philip K. Dick novels from around the world. That page is located at http://2013philipkdick.philipdick.com/works_covers.html and as far as I know, I have all the cover images archived. An article at Open Culture linked to the Internet Wayback Machine to find these cover images, but sometimes that source can be inconsistent with what was archived on what date (i.e. the Internet Wayback Machine doesn’t always make a copy of an entire site all at once on the same date). Hopefully, this new site archive will be a reliable place to look at the cover gallery and other parts of the site.

Here is a screen capture from the archived www.philipkdick.com.

Works In Print Section Content Refresh [Update 2]

Posted on by Michael Fisher

Had a hiccup in the Works In Print Section Secondary Resources page. Thinking that I had updated the item links to the new(ish?) look that Amazon is using, I didn’t change the link code before the links quit working.

So I quickly made the changes and in addition, included the items that have been released since the last update of the page.

On to the revised and expanded inspired by Philip K. Dick/Dickian section!

Works In Print Section Content Refresh [Update]

Posted on by Michael Fisher

I have been working on a content refresh/updating of the Works In Print Section to include items that have been released since the last update of the pages and updating the links to the new(ish?) look that Amazon is using.

I have completed the updates on the Works In Print page and the Non Fiction page.

The listings on the Books Inspired By Philip K. Dick page have been converted to the new style that Amazon is using. I have plans to expand this area. If anyone has suggestions for works that were directly inspired by Philip K. Dick (with some sort of evidence to verify the claim) or are Dickian in some ways, please email philipkdickfans[at]gmail[dot]com with the work and evidence to support it’s inclusion. I’m not limiting this to any particular medium. I expanded the Movies section to include Television and I plan on adding the comic book adaptation of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and maybe even the Marvel Comics adaptation of Blade Runner!

The Secondary Resources page is very out of date and there have been many new items published. This is the next task I will be working on. I will continue to post updates on the progress made on the content refresh as they are completed.

Works In Print Section Content Refresh

Posted on by Michael Fisher

I have been working on a content refresh/updating of the Works In Print Section to include items that have been released since the last update of the pages and updating the links to the new(ish?) look that Amazon is using.

I have completed the updates on the Short Story Collections page and the Film And Television (formerly titled Movies) page. I realized that some of these pages are very out of date and there have been many new items published. I will continue to post updates on the progress made on the content refresh as they are completed.

[Updated] Typos Found (And Fixed) In “Untitled 1978 (Very) Short Story by Philip K. Dick”

Posted on by Michael Fisher

Another kind reader pointed out to me that there were more typos in this page on this web site “Untitled 1978 (Very) Short Story by Philip K. Dick”. Here are the updates made to the story:

In the fourth paragraph of the article: “…the girl who, when she finally showed up, mearly laughed at me.” It should read merely and not mearly.

Also, in the fourth paragraph of the article: “I may may have been a success as a writer” The extra may needed to be removed.

In the fifth paragraph of the article: “Haraln continued, unabashed” It should read Harlan and not Haraln.

All the typos is in a Red font for emphasis.

I compared the version on this web site to the one printed in The Search for Philip K. Dick by Anne Dick to check for more errors.

The rest of typos in the version on the web site have been corrected. Now you can enjoy this story as Philip K. Dick intended (as the marketing people would say) [This time for real!]. I would like to thank both the reader who pointed out the further typo to me and the reader who pointed out that the story is also printed in Anne Dick’s The Search for Philip K. Dick and reprinted in PKD Otaku #10.

Typos Found (And Fixed) In “Untitled 1978 (Very) Short Story by Philip K. Dick”

Posted on by Michael Fisher

A kind reader working on a translation alerted me to a confusing word in the page on this web site “Untitled 1978 (Very) Short Story by Philip K. Dick” in the fourth paragraph of the article: “Living alone year after year in a rented room, apying off the I.R.S. and my endless child support, waiting vainly for the right girl, the girl who, when she finally showed up, mearly laughed at me.” The typo is in a Red font for emphasis.

By looking at the context, I wasn’t able to decipher what the word should be. I searched the older versions of this page in both the copy of the entire site that was passed to me, and in the Wayback Machine (as I prefer to call it) or Internet Archive. The typo seems to have existed since the content was first added to the site. So I contacted Patrick Clark, who had originally provided the story, and he was kind enough to go back and check the original.

He found that yes that was a typo; it should read paying and not apying. And while checking on this, he found another typo in the first sentence of the story: “In the back of the bus an old wino in tattered clothing sat hunched over, holding a wine bottle of ill-concealed in a brown paper bag.” Again, the typo is in a Red font for emphasis. The of needed to be removed.

I have fixed both typos in the version on the web site. Now you can enjoy this story as Philip K. Dick intended (as the marketing people would say). I would like to thank both the reader who pointed out the first typo to me and to Patrick Clark for helping me get to the bottom of these textual mistakes.

Official Philip K. Dick Website Offline

Posted on by Michael Fisher

From the questions and comments I’ve seen, many of the you may have noticed that the Official Philip K. Dick Website, http://www.philipkdick.com is offline and all that is displayed is:

I don’t know what happened to the site. Because of my experience, I have some facts about the situation. The site went offline sometime at the end sometime between June 23, 2013 and July 28, 2013 (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.philipkdick.com/). The domain name hasn’t expired (http://who.godaddy.com/whois.aspx). I would guess that the message is coming either from a hosting services servers or a content management system, but at this point I haven’t investigated that avenue very much.

What I have been working on is capturing as much of the old site as I can to either archive it here (if allowed) or for my own personal use. What happens to the site is entirely up to Electric Shepherd Productions LLC. I have reached out to my contacts within the organization to offer help about 1-2 weeks ago and haven’t had a response. I strongly feel that the www.philipkdick.com domain needs to be active or at least have some web presence. That domain is the one that used to drive the most traffic in (besides Wikipedia and imdb.com). This site is now 3rd when I search for “Philip K. Dick” so at least there is some location that can attract fans or new explorers to learn about Philip K. Dick.

Meanwhile, here is a screen capture from the old(?) www.philipkdick.com

Changes To Video Portion Of Multimedia Page

Posted on by Michael Fisher

I made changes to the list of YouTube video links to multi-part documentaries about Philip K. Dick on the Multimedia page. Instead of a list of links to part 1, part 2, etc. I created a page for each series and embedded the videos into the page.

This is what I ended up with:

So you only need to scroll a little bit to see the next part of the movie. Enjoy!

Newly Added To The Site: February 2, 2002

Posted on by Michael Fisher

I know that many of you may miss new things added like new articles or multimedia that are added to the site and not published on the front page. So I will write a post like this whenever I feel that enough items have been added behind the front page that it warrants a post.

Here is what’s new inside the depths of the site:

  1. Philip K. Dick Fan Site Store I am attempting with the help of Lord RC to create an online store to sell items. Any ideas on what you’d like to see, please comment or email philipkdickfans[at]gmail[dot]com.
  2. Multimedia add several youtube videos and the podcast Philip K. Dick Philosophical Podcast
  3. Variations in the Canonical Text of Philip K. Dick’s Short Stories (by Frank Hollander) which I put into Journals and Fanzines because it is serial in nature and I decided to classify it as a fanzine rather than create an entire new section on the site. For a better introduction than I could write here, please visit the section and take a look.

If you are feeling impatient between updates, you can check the Last Modified On The Site box on the right side of the pages three boxes from the top.

Website Milestone Reached

Posted on by Michael Fisher

We have just reached a milestone in the history of this website. All of the scholarly content from the old philipkdickfans site has been brought over and reorganized into categories along with being mixed with new content. One of the major goals of the website is to provide a place for fans and academics to write content relating to Philip K. Dick in some manner. And to be a resource for research by making readily available articles, essays, interviews, etc. From this point on only new content will be added (i.e. new to the web site).

I hope that the effort put into reorganizing the content is effective and helps users finds what they are looking for easier than before. It appeared the generally all content was put into an articles category on one long page. Which I think worked at first but became unmanageable when it was too late to easily fix.

I have a small backlog of new things I will be adding to the site that I came across during this push to get all the old stuff back on the site and available online again. I don’t know how fast it will go up because I’m going to slow down some on the site for awhile to catch up on PKD reading among other things.

You may be wondering what has not been brought over. I left off items that I felt didn’t belong on the site or items that could wait before appearing back online. Here is what’s not be converted and my current thoughts on the content:

  • artwork: Unsure about what to do with this section. It seems fairly small and not used.
  • covers: I would love to have these but they are at philipkdick.com. Apprarently the collection was moved over there at some point.
  • email_lists: Waiting on Cal’s change over to become more settled before the information appears here.
  • fiction: Just like the artwork there wasn’t sure fiction on the site and didn’t appear to be used much. I know there is more fan fiction out there than just what’s here and maybe an entire site could be built just for this?
  • forums: The old forums were a cesspool of spambots and really damaged the online reputation of the site, I believe. I’m not sure I want to manage them and they were heavily used.
  • hollywood: I’m a little stumped about what to do with this section right now. I know previous developers were more into Hollywood and closer to it but I don’t know if the section will come back.
  • news: I started on this and it became more time consuming than I originally thought and on top of that the news was all old. I’m unsure if I will continue bringing the old news over or not.
  • press room: Same as the news section; all out of date items and I won’t be using a pressroom right now to post news. I don’t beleive in the old style press releases.
  • games: Unnecessary to the site and irrelevant. Not coming back.
  • 3-D sitemap: I think all sites should have a site map and this one has one in xml for search engine readability but I on the fence about maintaining another one because I feel the architecture is well crafted and users generally can find what they need. It won’t be what wes here before because I could never figure it out.
  • solarshoe: I am working on a storefront of some type and there is a tentaive stab at one on the site.
  • ubikcorp: A nice to have but unecessary to the site and I never really saw the point in it.

If anyone has strong feelings about any of these categories, please add a comment. I would love some feedback at this stage as to the direction of the site and any new additions, even some that are mentioned here.

I will also spend some time fixing or making adjustments to the site. One big issue is that now there are a lot of bad links coming in from philipkdick.com that I intend to take care of as much as it is in my control to do so. PKDweb needs some work with broken images and links that I plan on helping fix. I may be working on a task that no one ever sees on the site but that makes it run better or helps with administration. So if you have any idea for something you’d like to see, please say something by adding a comment or emailing philipkdickfans[at]gmail[dot]com.

Lord Running Clams’s PKDweb Lives (Again)!

Posted on by Michael Fisher

PKDweb 2003I have been waiting to get my hands on the newer version of Dave Hyde’s PKDweb site for a little while now before I put up a version of that site within a site essentially (or his own site if he wanted it that way). The version that was on the on philipdick.com was from 1999 which I never realized until Dave himself told me. And then he said he had a revision from 2003 that was updated. I pestered him for it and patiently waited and worked out a way for Dave to send it to me. I had the site in my hands just over a week ago and I have been using that time to upload test and make some fixes to it. As a proof of concept I put the old one up on the site first and configured the site to host this type of site within a site. Then I archived the old 1999 one here: http://1999pkdweb.philipdick.com and put the new code in place on the server the other night at /pkdweb/

Immediately, I realized that we had an issue that Dave developed the site on a PC which is case insensitive and the site is going to live on a case sensitive server. Several of the site links were broken that I fixed and let Dave look at it before going live. Obviously, he gave is okay! So the site is live with some deployment issues. I will be working to fix what I know about in the week or so ahead but if you see a broken link or any other issues, feel free to report it to philipkdickfans[at]gmail[dot]com

PKDweb 1999Another thing that I recently noticed is that there are many links to Dave’s pages on Wikipedia.org in the Philip K. Dick Bibliography area. I think that says much about Dave’s work on this content. When I asked him about it, he claimed that he didn’t know about it… A project I put on my list is to increase the number of links to philipdick.com and Dave’s content from Wikipedia.org to help interested fans find the site and to help the site’s rankings in search engines. And fix any broken links to his content with the new site change.

I really appreciate all that Dave contributes to the community and I’m very impressed with this site he did by himself without knowing html. Maybe in a few years, we can squeeze a 2010 version out of Dave!?!?

New Site Addition: The PKDicktionary!

Posted on by Michael Fisher

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!

Brief Notes About Site Updates

Posted on by Michael Fisher

I would like to encourage all fans of Philip K. Dick to check in on this site semi-regularly to see what is new because a lot of work has been spent bringing over old content and adding new content. So the site may seem to be more static now but actually much work has been happening. Articles, essays and criticism have been brought over from the old site so there items that may have been missed for the newer fans or even the older fans who weren’t able to read all the site’s content (and it was vast) before it was taken offline. Frank Views archives are being added and hopefully soon there will be new columns from Frank.

I have added a last updated widget so the users can see where I am working at the moment, what topic, what section, what page. Or the user can see when the last piece of new content has been added to the site.

Oh and volunteers are always welcome especially content writers!

Question And An Update

Posted on by Michael Fisher

I would like to give some updates on the progress on building out philipdick.com.  First, I have been working on pulling all available Philip K. Dick books from Amazon.com for the Works In Print section.  I have the Novels and Non Fiction completed, I believe (Please let me know if you see an error.)  The Short Story Collections should be done soon and then Secondary Resources section will be tackled.  I’m not sure that that section will ever be finished.  Oh, and if you have a suggestion for the Fiction Inspired By Philip K. Dick section, please send me them.  I put all the ones I knew about in the section.

I have spent some time roughing in the next set of changes that you will see on the site including the sidebar.  I have added some items including a PayPal donation box and a site only Google search box I am experimenting with.  I expect there may be more changes with the side bar as the site develops and things are moved around.  On the site pages, you may find a page with only the section headers on it which is a page that I have laid out what I think should be there but haven’t finished adding it.  I hope to have content in all areas soon but the timeline may change.  If I don’t feel that I will be able to get content in there soon, I will hide the areas I haven’t gotten to yet.  Nothing makes me madder than to follow a link and find nothing there and I don’t want to give that experience to someone else.

Which brings me to my question for the post?  I would like to steal/inherit/borrow and otherwise incorporate content from the old site into the new one, the new structure, not just the design but also the menu system.  Jason did an excellent job on the old site but I have always felt that the information architecture could have been improved.  I thank Jason for sending me a copy of the old site greatly.  How do you feel about me taking content from the old site and putting it into the new one?  Do you feel it should be left as it is or that the content should be repurposed?

Just the PKD Facts, Please

Posted on by Michael Fisher

I would really desperately like to offer Philip K. Dick relevant news on this site in such a way that I don’t need to post it all.  I would like it to come in automatically and appear in a feed like I set up on the top right box of the content.  Today’s top story is Standing Pat which only includes this part about Philip K. Dick:

“Thus Beattie winds up falling into the trap of conjuring not only Pat Nixon’s interior life but that of her husband — and inserting Richard Nixon into fiction usually yields cringe-inducing results, as works by Gore Vidal and Philip K. Dick, among many others, can attest.”

Not only is this story not primarily about Philip K. Dick, it appears to be insulting his writings.  The news feed generally works but the basis of it, is to find stories that mention Philip Dick.  We end up seeing stories like this one or The Technological Marvels Microsoft Hides in Its Labs “wouldn’t be out of place in a Philip K. Dick novel” or Sony HMZ-T1 3DTV Headset Review: An Amazing Toy “I’m already living the Philip K. Dick life.”  I’m not interested in these three articles and would guess that the site visitors are looking for this either.

The search algorithm I used was to look for Philip Dick in Google News (http://news.google.com).  Two questions for the group:

1.  Is this acceptable that the news stories may only mention Philip Dick and not be about him.

2. If not, what alternatives would you suggest?

I appreciate all your feedback and will look into any suggestions.