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See: BLADE RUNNER

"Alive yet not living, they sought to pass as humans and seize man’s dying world!"

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152

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1967?

Mar 1968

THE GANYMEDE TAKEOVER

UBIK

See "The Little Black Box"

FIRST EDITIONS
  wpe161.jpg (2919 bytes)   Doubleday, hb, 68-11779, Mar 1968, 210pp, $3.95, (Harry Sehring){Levack: "Bound in grey cloth with gold lettering on the spine. '1968' on the title page. 'FIRST EDITION' on the copyright page. Date code J5 [5th week of 1968] at lower right margin of page 210"}

  

    Rapp & Whiting, hb, 081-2, Mar 1969, 192pp, 21/- (Lawrence Edwards)

HISTORY

    Nominated for 1968 Nebula for Best Novel.

    For a novel that has been much commented upon, mostly because of its adaptation into the film BLADE RUNNER, it is difficult to determine when it first started. Sutin says that DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? was completed in 1966 and Perry Kinman and Andrew Butler have it completed by Jun 20, 1966. Presumably this is the date the manuscript reached the SMLA.

    Sutin notes that the novel had several original titles: THE ELECTRIC TOAD; DO ANDROIDS DREAM?; THE ELECTRIC SHEEP and THE KILLERS ARE AMONG US! CRIED RICK DECKARD TO THE SPECIAL MAN. It’s a wonder Doubleday didn’t go with that last one… certain to grab the browser’s attention at the newsstand. The one they did decide on, DO ANDROID DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? was almost as bad. I remember seeing this title on the bookshelves and after an idle glance passing it by in favor of something like Clifford Simak's ALL FLESH IS GRASS.

    ANDROIDS was first published by Doubleday in March 1968 in an edition that is now so scarce that a copy commands into the thousands of dollars.

    The novel takes off from Dick’s short story "The Little Black Box" written in 1964 in that the ‘empathy boxes’ and the religion of Mercerism from the story return in a different context in the novel.

    This was another novel about which PKD made contrary comments in his interview with Apel & Briggs:

    (PKD:) Somebody has told me that I have to see that film (Last Year At Marienbad). Anyway... I don't like DO ANDROIDS DREAM at all; I really loathe that book.
    (Briggs:) Oh good. I have to tell you I detest it.
    (PKD:) Yeah, there are certain books of mine I wish I could shovel under, and that's one of them.

    But… no one takes Dick seriously on this.

    Perhaps it’s to be expected but there is much more known about the transition from the novel DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? to the movie BLADE RUNNER than is known about when, where, how or why Dick wrote the story in the first place. Perhaps the idea had been in his mind as early as 1964 and "The Little Black Box"?

    Still, if completed in June 1966 it took almost two years to see publication in 1968. During this period nothing is known about ANDROIDS. In 1968, however, things begin to pick up after Doubleday published the first edition.

    At this time we will not concern ourselves with the transition from novel to movie but will defer that to the BLADE RUNNER page. Instead we will note only the effect this had on his sales.

    In May 1968 Phil Dick was hard up as usual and glad to receive a letter from his agent, Sidney Meredith, telling him of the sale of the German rights to ANDROIDS for $375 and enclosing German tax forms.

    Dick replied a few days later:

    Here are the German tax forms back for DO ANDROIDS DREAM. Thank you very much for the sale; I can use it.

    But only three days after thanking his agent for this German sale, Philip Dick must’ve been much gratified to receive a congratulatory letter from Lawrence Ashmead at Doubleday on the sale of the movie rights to DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?

    This first Doubleday edition of ANDROIDS was a successful one as shown by the letter to Dick from Marcia Howell of Doubleday at the end of August which announced royalties for a six month period in 1968. The amount for ANDROIDS was $671.38. This compares with $6.32 for NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR.

    In November PKD was happier yet. Writing to his friend and collaborator Roger Zelazny whom he’d finally met at the Baycon science fiction convention held in San Francisco in August:

    I've been thinking about the Convention and you, wondering how you are and how you're busy schedule of work is ioi going. (Please forgive the bad typing; I just finished an outline and some sample chapters for Ace, and my fingers are tired.) Anyhow, I wanted to tell you my reaction to LORD OF LIGHT, with its beautiful cover -- plus what you wrote in my copy. {...} I think I'll simply type my notes, taken as i read it, onto this sheet of paper. here goes.

    (...)

    (eight) How did you do on paperback resale? I got $9,000 for ELECTRIC SHEEP. I hope you got more -- the novel deserves it.

    One can imagine that even this amount paled beside the first paperback edition of BLADE RUNNER that followed the movie release in 1982. As Paul Williams notes:

    BLADE RUNNER / ANDROIDS is by far PKD's best seller (in the US anyway) with 325,000 copies sold.

    Judy-Lyn Del Rey was the editor responsible for publishing this first edition of BLADE RUNNER from Del Rey Books in May 1982.

    As regards this first edition of BLADE RUNNER, On the cover under the large BLADE RUNNER title logo is found, in parentheses, in miniature, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? The story of how Philip K. Dick got even that concession from the movie producers is detailed on the BLADE RUNNER page. But the financial result was that Dick got $12,500 for reissuing ANDROIDS whereas if he’d’ve suppressed the original novel and written a ‘quickie’ movie novelization he’d’ve accrued something like $400,000.

    Again, despite PKD’s bad-mouthing his own work, we can tell that he was fond of DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?:

    DO ANDROIDS DREAM? has sold very well and has been eyed intently by a film company who have in fact purchased an option on it. My wife thinks its a good book. I like it for one thing: it deals with a society in which animals are adored and rare, and a man who owns a real sheep is Somebody... and feels for that sheep a vast bond of love and empathy. Willis my tomcat strides silently over the pages of that book, being important as he is, with his long golden twitching tail. Make them understand, he says to me, that animals are really that important right now. He says this, and then eats up all the food we have been warming for our baby. Some cats are far too pushy. The next thing he'll want to do is write sf novels. I hope he does. None of them will sell.

    And it is also a favorite among fans:

    Fan Fave: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Just what is it that makes a true human? I think he hit it right on the nail -- empathy, or compassion, as the Buddhists would have it.

    The story centers around Rick Deckard, android bounty hunter, and his desire to own a real sheep instead of the electric one on the roof of his conapt. But real sheep are rare and expensive and Deckard will have to eliminate the group of Nexus-6 androids that have returned to Earth illegally. One by one he goes about his business even though it getting increasingly difficult to distinguish between androids and humans. And when he falls in love with Rachael, herself an advanced android, Deckard begins to lose sight of his goal. In the end Rachael kills his new pet goat and Deckard finds a toad in the desert. But toads are supposedly extinct and Deckard’s salvific find turns out to be a fake.

    DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? deserves ô ô ô ô ô

OTHER ENGLISH EDITIONS:              For Cover Pix Click Here: aaaPKDickBooks.jpg (3234 bytes)

FOREIGN EDITIONS:

He wondered now, about her, too. Some female androids seemed to him pretty; he had found himself physically attracted by several, and it was an odd sensation, knowing intellectually that they were machines but emotionally reacting anyhow.

NOTES

PKDS-2 13:

They are the great joy for me, and I wish I could squeeze Willis, my huge orange and white tom, into a novel, or if they make a movie of DO ANDROIDS DREAM? Willis could play a walk-on part (no lines), and we would both be happy. {PKD - 1968}

PKDS-2 13:

DO ANDROIDS DREAM? has sold very well and has been eyed intently by a film company who have in fact purchased an option on it. My wife thinks its a good book. I like it for one thing: it deals with a society in which animals are adored and rare, and a man who owns a real sheep is Somebody... and feels for that sheep a vast bond of love and empathy. Willis my tomcat strides silently over the pages of that book, being important as he is, with his long golden twitching tail. Make them understand, he says to me, that animals are really that important right now. He says this, and then eats up all the food we have been warming for our baby. Some cats are far too pushy. The next thing he'll want to do is write sf novels. I hope he does. None of them will sell. {PKD - 1968 Self Portrait}

PKDS-3 2:

One of these projects, the film BLADE RUNNER, was the culmination of one of Phil's major dreams: to have one of his books -- in this case DO ANDROIDS? -- made into a movie. {Mark Hurst}

PKDS-3 6:

DO ANDROIDS? was originally optioned at or prior to the books publication in 1968, and of course, BLADE RUNNER appeared 14 years later.

PKDS-4 8:

BLADE RUNNER / ANDROIDS is by far PKD's best seller (in the US anyway) with 325,000 copies sold.

PKDS-5 11:

(AW:) He seemed hurt that Ridley Scott hadn't even bothered to read DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECRIC SHEEP?
(KW:) I don't know if that's true or not... {Andy Watson & K.W. Jeter}

PKDS-6 13:

(PKD:) Somebody has told me that I have to see that film (Last Year At Marienbad). Anyway... I don't like DO ANDROIDS DREAM at all; I really loathe that book.
(Briggs:) Oh good. I have to tell you I detest it.
(PKD:) Yeah, there are certain books of mine I wish I could shovel under, and that's one of them. {PKD - A & B 1977}

PKDS-8 4:

(JB:) I'm certain that he had a high regard for DO ANDROIDS, and yet, in the interview with our gentlemen up North (Apel & Briggs) he says he always loathed that book, or its his worst book, or something like that.
(TP:) Twenty minutes later if they'd asked him the same question, he'd have said something totally different.
(JB:) And whether he was being flippant, or whether for the moment he was convinced of that or something, he might have decided that there was something wrong with it artistically or something, and decided to loathe it for a day.
(TP:) When he wrote it he wasn't writing it despising it. He wrote about stuff that was important to him. {Powers, Blaylock, Watson)

PKDS-11 4:

He developed an interest in a particular actress named Victoria Principal... he was very interested in her playing the main female lead in UBIK -- Pat Conley ... At the same time he was thinking, "If she can't take this role, there is a role in DO ANDROIDS that she'd be good in." {D.S. Black}

PKDS-11 5:

Nord in Italy will publish DO ANDROIDS DREAM.

PKDS-11 6:

Judy-Lyn Del Rey was responsible for publishing... PKD's best-selling book ever, the movie tie-in edition of DO ANDROIDS DREAM

PKDS-15 10:

(From the New York Times Book Review, Brent Staples.)
Brent Staples ("first assistant metropolitan editor of the Times"), goes on to talk about the Mercer scenes in ANDROIDS, where "worshippers merge souls with a Jesus-like figure through a telly that lets them feel his pain... In the clearest sense, Dick envisions a culture in which television had, once and for all, escaped from its box."

PKDS-15 11:

Alexander Nedelkovich thoughtfully sent us a copy of the 1984 Yugoslav edition of SANJAJU LI ANDROIDI ELEKTRICNE OVCE? by Filip K. Dik, translated by Nedelkovich and Branislav Brkic (and dedicated to Timu i Sereni Pauers)

A rock, hurled at him, struck his arm. He felt the pain. He half turned and another rock sailed past him, missing him; it collided with the earth and the sound startled him. Who? he wondered, peering to see his tormentor. The old antagonists, manifesting themselves at the periphery of his vision; it, or they, had followed him all the way up the hill and they would remain until at the top --

{NOTE: See "Notes on DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?" (1968) in TSR 155ff. An article by PKD on the adaptation of ANDROIDS to film.}

SSF #3

DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?/BLADERUNNER, Granada, pb, 03605-9, 1982, L1.50
    Granada, with impeccable timing, have rereleased PKD's excellent bok as a Blade Runner tie-in, with a photo-montage cover and Blade Runner logo in obvious predominance. ANDROIDS? is a small, insignificant lettered title to the side.

    Still, besides the commercialism, you'll be getting a good book for your quid fifty. Rick Deckard is the main character, a policeman who collects bounty by 'retiring' rogue androids. His problems begin when a group of undetectable Nexus Six types escape from Mars and injure the top bounty hunter. Deckard takes the job -- if he retires all the 'andys' he will earn enough to retire on himself.

    The book is full of Dickian reality twists and anecdotes, such as the fact that real animals are rare and to own one is the ultimate status symbol. Deckard has the next best thing -- and electric one, a 'sheep'. He buys a real goat with some of his bounty but this is killed by Rachael, the surviving Nexus Six, with whom he made love prior to his hunting down of the other andys.

    At one point an elaborate set-up almost convinces Deckard and another bounty hunter that they are in fact androids themselves.

    Read ANDROIDS as a good primer for Blade Runner, but also if you want a good, imaginitive book, which is what we've come to expect from a writer of Dick's calibre. ...NKH.

FDO-6 11

    We ordered a copy of the audiocassette version of DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? (Time-Warner, ISBN: 1-57042-052-1, 1994. Two cassettes, approx. 3 hours, $17/$22 CAN). This is a pleasant surprise. Mathew Modine and, especially, Callista Flockhart, read the book with the conviction of real pros.. One anticipates Flockhart's weary portrayal of Deckard's wife, Iran, with glee, and Modine's sly humour brings the novel to life for the listener. One caveat: this is, according to the box, "an abridgement of DO ANDROIDS DREAM... approved by the author." Abridgement by Jeffrey Gorney. I haven't looked to see what's missing but enjoy listening to the tape for it's vivacity. -- Lord RC

BGSU Papers

    Announces sale of German rights to DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? for $375. Encloses German tax forms for Phil to sign. {Sidney Meredith > PKD, May 23, 1968}

--

Dear Sidney,

    Here are the German tax forms back for DO ANDROIDS DREAM. Thank you very much for the sale; I can use it.

    By the way -- as to the pictures of me. I may have forgotten to tell you that the portrait studio won't have them ready until June fifth. I hope the several publishers who've asked for them don't die of convulsions before that date, but there's nothing I can do to hurry the process up.

    Thank you again and best wishes.

    Cordially

    Philip K. Dick

    PS. Some time ago you notified me that you had sold something of mine (I believe The Impostor) to the BBC for something like $443. What ever happened to that? Do the mills of the gods grind that slow? {PKD > Sidney Meredith, SMLA, 5-26-1968}

--

    Questions about UBIK cover art. Congratulates Phil on the sale of the movie rights to DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?. Doubleday will alter the dedication to that work in the next printing as Phil has requested. {Lawrence P. Ashmead > PKD, May 29, 1968}

--

    Cover letter with Doubleday royalty statements for the six months 4-30-68. $6.32 for NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR, $671.38 for DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? {Marcia M. Howell > PKD, Aug 29, 1968}

--

Dear Roger,

    I've been thinking about the Convention and you, wondering how you are and how you're busy schedule of work is ioi going. (Please forgive the bad typing; I just finished an outline and some sample chapters for Ace, and my fingers are tired.) Anyhow, I wanted to tell you my reaction to LORD OF LIGHT, with its beautiful cover -- plus what you wrote in my copy. {...} I think I'll simply type my notes, taken as i read it, onto this sheet of paper. here goes.

    (...)

    (eight) How did you do on paperback resale? I got $9,000 for ELECTRIC SHEEP. I hope you got more -- the novel deserves it.

    {... ...} {PKD > Roger Zelazny, 11-13-1968} {See: A MAZE OF DEATH for more from this letter}

Starlog #55 20:

    The Ladd company production is the final result of a series of misunderstandings which made Dick doubt he would ever see anything filmed. At times the author was so alienated by the Hollywood system that he would have been just as happy if his novel never got filmed at all.

    "It all began years ago," he explains, "Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks were both interested in ANDROIDS but they didn't option it. That was the first movie interest in any property of mine. Then later Herb Jaffe optioned it and Robert Jaffe did a screenplay back about 1973. The screenplay was sent to me and it was so crude that I didn't understand that it was actually the shooting script; I thought it was the rough. I wrote to them and asked if they would like me to do the shooting script, at which point Robert Jaffe, the one who wrote the screenplay, flew down here to Orange County and confessed that he had written it under a nom de plume. I said to him then that it was so bad that I wanted to know if he wanted me to beat him up there at the airport or wait till we got to my apartment."

    Robert Jaffe was very straightforward and asked Dick if he really thought it was that bad, whereupon Dick responded candidly. "I said, 'All I ask is that you do not drag me down to ruin with you." I said that I'd honestly prefer to buy back the property than let them make a film based on that screenplay and he was real nice about it. I gave him suggestions and he took notes and then I noticed that he wasn't actually writing, but rather he was just moving the pen about a quarter of an inch from a piece of paper that already had printing on it so that he was only pretending to take notes. I realized then that there was a gulf between me and Hollywood.{...}" {Philip K. Dick on BLADERUNNER by James Van Hise}

Mainstream that through the ghetto flows

    A producer by the name of Herb Jaffe has an option on DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? I don’t dare bad-mouth his silly movies, but if You’re listening, Herb Jaffe, I love your money, but you sure write lousy scripts. You’re a Neanderthal Man. You’re back with George pal, and I don’t want you to make a movie out of my book. The screenplay that they wrote for ANDROIDS was a combination of Steve Reeves and Maxwell Smart. Robert Jaffe, Herb Jaffe’s son, flew down to Fullerton to talk with me about it because I didn’t think it was a final shooting script; I thought it was just a rough draft. I told him, "I’m going to beat you up right here in the airport, because you’re going to drag me down with you guys and ruin my career if you make a movie out of my book." He said, "You mean it’s that bad?" and I said, "Yeah." Finally, he said, "You mean you wrote that book seriously? You science fiction writers take your work seriously?" I said, "Seriously enough to throw you right out of this moving car." I said, "I’m going to buy it back from you and give you the two-thousand-dollar option money back." Then we had a four-hour rap session which was very productive: they didn’t make the movie. They just continued to hold the option, and I’m hoping they don’t make the movie unless they write a decent script.

Philip K. Dick: Confessions Of A SF Artist
[An interview with Philip K. Dick]
by George Cain and Dana Longo

[source: Denver Clarion, October 23, 1980. Interview by George Cain and Dana Longo]

One thing Philip K. Dick is doing more of is research. Seven years of research spent prior to 1962 on The Man in the High Castle, paid off, when that novel won Dick his first Hugo Award for best science fiction novel of the year.

   Working on the Valis trilogy, Dick has taken down "hundreds of thousands of words of notes."

   How much time does Dick spend writing? "All the time," he claims. "From the moment I get up until the moment I go to bed, except when I'm with my friends or watching television. I spend a lot of time with my friends."

   His family life isn't what it once was. "I'm divorced now," he says. "I live with two cats, Harvey and Mrs. Mabel M. Tubbs. I don't like living alone very well at all. I do have a girlfriend in France, who I met at a convention in Europe. She keeps calling me and trying to convince me to move over there. If I wasn't so involved with my work, I'd do it. And there's all these big Hollywood deals..."

   What big Hollywood deals?

   "They want to make a film of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It's going to be directed by Ridley Scott, who directed Alien. The last reported budget on it was $20 million."

   The assistant produced of Alien is interested in making a movie out of "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," a short story. Another film company reportedly is interested in rights to "Second Variety," with a screenplay written by Dan O'Bannon, who, just by coincidence, wrote the screenplay for Alien.

   As for the release date of these movies, "God only knows!" says Dick. The actor's strike hasn't had a good effect on the progress.

   "I thought I was getting an exorbitant sum of money for the films," he remarks. "And I was having a drink with Ray Bradbury, telling him about it, and he had an apoplectic stroke He told me I was a babe in the woods and I wasn't getting nearly enough out of it. I thought it was large amounts of money. I was crushed."

   Unfortunately, Dick hasn't been asked to write any screenplays yet. "I'd do it if they asked me," he says. "I like to do script-type things."

   Dick also pointed out that the three works chosen for the silver screen all deal with "robots posing as people. Apparently, I have a basic patent on that," he laughs. "Movies like Westworld all used ideas I'd thought of a long time ago. Now, I'm finally cashing in on it."

   Dick admits being a movie freak. Two of his favorite films are The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring David Bowie, and Robert Altman's Three Women.

   "I have a pay TV, so I can see a couple of movies a day," he says. "I go mostly by directors. I like Altman and DePalma a lot. I also go by actors. I like the Rocky Horror Picture Show and Phantom of the Paradise, too."

TZ Magazine

TZ:  Your forthcoming novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, is essentially a non-sf literary work based on the mysterious death in the desert of your friend Bishop James Pike, and I've been told that you wrote it in lieu of doing a novelization of the Blade Runner screenplay. Why did you choose to write a book with openly religious themes instead of a lucrative, all-but-certain bestseller?

Dick:  The amount of money involved would have been very great, and the film people offered to cut us in on the merchandising rights. But they required a suppression of the original novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, in favor of the commercialized novelization based on the screenplay. My agency computed that I would accrue, conservatively, $400,000 if I did the novelization. In contrast, if we went the route of rereleasing the original novel, I would make about $12,500.

   Blade Runner's people were putting tremendous pressure on us to do the novelization -- or to allow someone else to come in and do it, like Alan Dean Foster. But we felt that the original was a good novel. And also, I did not want to write what I call the "El Cheapo" novelization. I did want to do the Timothy Archer novel.

   So we stuck to our guns, and at one point Blade Runner became so cold-blooded they threatened to withdraw the logo rights. We wouldn't be able to say, "The novel on which Blade Runner is based." We'd be unable to use any stills from the film.

   Finally we came to an agreement with them. We are adamant about rereleasing the original novel. And I have done The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

{…}

This is something that is extremely important to me in terms of the organic development of my ideas and preoccupations in my writing. So for me to derail myself and do that cheapo novelization of Blade Runner -- a completely commercialized thing aimed at twelve-year-olds -- would have probably been disastrous to me artistically. Although financially, as my agent explained it, I would literally be set up for life. I don't think my agent figures I'm going to live much longer.

   It's like Dante's Inferno. A writer sent to the Inferno is sentenced to rewrite all his novels -- his best ones, at least -- as cheapo, twelve-year-old hack stuff for all eternity. A terrible punishment! The fact that it would earn me a lot of money illuminates the grotesqueness of the situation. When it's finally offered to me, I'm more or less apathetic to the megabucks. I live a rather ascetic life. I don't have any material wants and I have no debts. My condominium is paid off, my car is paid off, my stereo is paid off.

{…}

TZ:  Let's get back to Blade Runner. What turned you 180 degrees in your attitude toward the production?

Dick:  You know, I was so turned off by Hollywood. And they were really turned off by me. That insistence on my part of bringing out the original novel and not doing the novelization -- they were just furious. They finally recognized that there was a legitimate reason for reissuing the novel, even though it cost them money. It was a victory not just of contractual obligations but of theoretical principles.

        And although this is speculation on my part, I think that one of the spin-offs was that they went back to the original novel. Because they knew it would be reissued, you see. So it is possible that it got fed back into the screenplay by a process of positive feedback. I was such a harsh critic of Hampton Francher's original screenplay, and I was so outspoken, that the studio knows that my present attitude is sincere, that I'm not just hyping them. Because I was really angry and disgusted.

        There were good things in Fancher's screenplay. It's like the story of the old lady who takes a ring into a jeweler to have the stone reset. And the jeweler scrapes all of the patina of years and years and shines it up, and she says, "My God, that was what I loved the ring for -- the patina!" Okay, they had cleaned my book up of all of the subtleties and of the meaning. The meaning was gone. It had become a fight between androids and a bounty hunter.

        I had this vision in my mind then that I would go up there and be introduced to Ridley Scott, and be introduced to Harrison Ford, who's the lead character, and I'd just be so dazzled I'd be like Mr. Toad seeing the motorcar for the first time. My eyes would be wide as saucers and I'd just be standing there completely mesmerized. Then I would watch a scene being shot. And Harrison Ford would say, "Lower that blast-pistol or you're a dead android!" And I would just leap across that special effects set like a veritable gazelle and seize him by the throat and start battering him against the wall. They'd have to run in and throw a blanket over me and call the security guards to bring in the Thorazine. And I'd be screaming, "You've destroyed my book!"

        That would be a little item in the newspaper: "Obscure Author Becomes Psychotic on H'wood Set; Minor Damage, Mostly to the Author." They'd have to ship me back to Orange County in a crate full of air holes. And I'd still be screaming.

        I started drinking a whole lot of scotch. I went from a thimbleful to a jigger glass and finally to two wine glasses of scotch every night. Last Memorial Day I started bleeding, gastrointestinal bleeding. And it was because of drinking scotch and taking aspirin constantly and worrying about this whole goddamned thing. I said, "Hollywood is gonna kill me by remote control!"

        One is always haunted by the specter of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who goes there and they just grind him up, like in a garbage disposal.

TZ:  All of that changed when you saw David W. People's revised screenplay?

Dick:  I saw a segment of Douglas Trumbull's special effects for Blade Runner on the KNBC-TV news. I recognized it immediately. It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly.

        I wrote the station, and they sent the letter to the Ladd Company. They gave me the updated screenplay. I read it without knowing they had brought somebody else in. I couldn't believe what I was reading! It was simply sensational -- still Hampton Francher's screenplay, but miraculously transfigured, as it were. The whole thing had simply been rejuvenated in a very fundamental way.

        After I finished reading the screenplay, I got the novel out and looked through it. The two reinforce each other, so that someone who started with the novel would enjoy the movie and someone who started with the movie would enjoy the novel. I was amazed that Peoples could get some of those scenes to work. It taught me things about writing that I didn't know.

        The thing I had in mind all of the time, from the beginning of it, was The Man Who Fell to Earth. This was the paradigm. That's why I was so disappointed when I read the first Blade Runner screenplay, because it was the absolute antithesis of what was done in The Man Who Fell to Earth. In other words, it was a destruction of the novel. But now, it's magic time. You read the screenplay and then you go to the novel, and it's like they're two halves to one meta-artwork, one meta-artifact. It's just exciting.

        As my agent, Russell Galen, put it, "Whenever a Hollywood film adaptation of a book works, it is always a miracle." Because it just cannot really happen. It did happen with The Man Who Fell to Earth and it has happened with Blade Runner, I'm sure now.

TZ:  It's great to hear that.

Dick:  Oh, yeah. It's been the greatest thing for me. I was just destroyed at one point at the prospect of this awful thing that had happened to my work. I wouldn't go up there, I wouldn't talk to them, I wouldn't meet Ridley Scott. I was supposed to be wined and dined and everything, and I wouldn't go, I just wouldn't go. There was bad blood between us.

        That David W. Peoples screenplay changed my attitude. He had been working on the third Star Wars film, Revenge of the Jedi. The Blade Runner people hired him away temporarily to do the script by showing him my novel

        I'm now working very closely with the Ladd Company and, I'm on very good terms with them. In fact, that's one of the things that's worn me out. I've been so amped-up over Blade Runner I couldn't work on The Owl in Daylight.

        I hear the film's going to have an old-fashioned gala premiere. It means I've got to buy -- or rent -- a black tuxedo, which I don't look forward to. That's not my style. I'm happier in a T-shirt. {Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 3, June 1982, pp. 47-52. Interview by John Boonstra}

The Patchin Review

Shit, Blade Runner started yelling at me because, in an article that I wrote in the Select TV Guide, I mentioned androids. They said, "That's very dangerous talk, mentioning androids in connection with this film. We're not using the word android." Well, it seems hard to avoid a word that's in the title of your own book. And they wanted to know how I'd gotten hold of a copy of the screenplay. "How did you get hold of it?" they said, with the emphasis on the word "you," you know?

        "The sets, I'm sure, are marvelous. Russell (Russell Galen, Dick's representative at the Scott Meredith agency) called me up and said, "You've got to go up there." Well, in a way it's a Chinese finger-trap. If the sets are that good, maybe I'll go up there and fall into the mode that exists now in science fiction, where the special effects and the sets are everything. And as an author I can't afford, as a practical matter, to adopt that ideology, because it reduces the author to merely setting up a simple plot-outline in which special effects can be brought in. His job is very much a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.

        "Ridley Scott is a director who has a visual sense rather than a narrative sense. This is not a matter of insulting Ridley Scott. He thinks visually, and of course this is why he's in movies. It is perhaps the way it should be. But I am an author, and I think in narrative terms, in terms of a story line." {The Patchin Review, No. 5, Oct/Dec 1982, pp. 2-6. Interviewed by John Boonstra}

Collector’s Notes

Phildickian: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Doubleday, hb,11779, 1968. G+-VG. Ex-Library with expected defects. Spine cocked but still tight. The dust jacket shows moderate rubbing and creasing, but surprisingly clean. Very scarce with dust jacket in any condition. $3,000.

Ebay (12-14-2001): DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Doubleday, hb, 68-11779, 1968. 2 Bids. $42 {I don’t know what the final bid was on this}

Monroe Bethea Books: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, Signet, pb, T3800, 1969 (1st pb). FINE. has a 3/16 inch chip at the head and heal of the spine and chips on front cover near spine. It has never been opened and is a glossy and good looking collectable copy. $31

Logan Lake Books: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, Del Rey, pb, 40447, 1996. NF. clean and tight. $7

Tacoma Book Center: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, Signet, pb, T3800, 1969. VG. $12

Massoglia Books: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, Signet, pb, T3800, 1969. $20

Monroe Bethea Books: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, Signet, pb, T3800, 1969 (1st pb). G+. damp along the vertical page edges. There are two hinge creases, edge wear and some chips along rear vertical edge of cover. It is tightly bound and makes a good first mass market edition reading copy. $8.99

Phildickian: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Signet, pb, T4758, 1971. VG. light creasing along the edges of the spine but not down it, a fold crease to the lower right corner of the front panel, and faint scuffing to the rear panel. Overall, the book is still clean and tight. $15

Phildickian: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Signet, pb, T4758, 1971. VG+. Clean copy showing only light rubbing. $15

Phildickian: BLADE RUNNER, Del Rey, pb, 129-3, 1982 (1st BR). VG+. this is a tight unread copy with a hint of shelfwear, and a small spot of scratching on the spine. Internally, the pages are clean and free of markings. $15

Phildickian: BLADE RUNNER, Del Rey, pb, 129-3, 1982 (1st BR). VG. creasing along the left/right edges of spine, light rubbing to the edges, and a faint fold crease to the lower right corner of the front panel. $10

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 1982 (1st). VG+. $3.95

The Elder Tree Book Shop: BLADE RUNNER, Del Rey, pb, 1982 (1st BR). VG. creasing along the left/right edges of spine, light rubbing to the edges, and a faint fold crease to the lower right corner of the front panel. $10

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 1982 (1st BR). VG. $3.45

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 1982 (1st BR). G. text good, ends colored & covers worn. $2.95

Antiqbook: BLADE RUNNER, Granada, pb, 1982. NF. $5

Gravity Books: BLADE RUNNER, Granada, pb, 605-9, 1982. G. Covers worn. $2.24

Antiqbook: BLADE RUNNER, Granada, pb, 1982. G. Covers worn. $2

West L.A. Book Center: BLADE RUNNER SOUVENIR MAGAZINE, Friedman, inc, 1982 (1st). NF. Some almost neglible wear, else a very collectible copy. $350

Pawprint Books: BLADE RUNNER SOUVENIR MAGAZINE, Friedman, Inc., tp, 1982 (1st). NF. Left hand portion of front panel and lower right hand corner have a faint bit of waviness else fine. A gorgeous copy of this scarce and profusely illustrated souvenir magazine which was issued upon release of the motion picture. $505.61

Pawprint Books: BLADE RUNNER SKETCHBOOK, Blue Dolphin, tp, 1982 (1st). FINE. A superb copy of this scarce and profusely illustrated collection featuring original artwork by Syd Mead, Mentour Huebner, Charles Knode, Michael Kaplan and Ridley Scott from the motion picture starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, etc. and directed by Ridley Scott. Here are the original production designs. A wonderful and important "Blade Runner" item. $758.42

Robert Wright Books: BLADE RUNNER by Les Martin (an adaptation), Random House, tp, 1982 (1st). NF. With more than 60 colour photographs from the Ridley Scott Film. Wrappers, a bit rubbed, but else near fine. $25

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, ? (4th). VG. Some creasing at the corners and at the spine with an uncreased spine. Not store stamped. $3.95

Biblion: BLADE RUNNER, Del Rey, pb, 1984 (7th). NF. slight edge wear. $7.49

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 1984 (7th). VG. $3.20

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 1984 (7th) G. $4.95

Oddball Books: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 1987 (17th). FINE. $8

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Grafton, pb, 1987. VG. $4.45

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 1988. G-VG. $4.95

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Del Rey, pb, 1989 (15th). NF. $4.45

The Good Book Store: BLADE RUNNER, Random House, pb, 047-2, 1990. NEW. $13.96

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 1991 (19th). VG. $4.95

The Book Center: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 1991 (19th). G. over shows minor wear, pages browning. $10

Phildickian: BLADE RUNNER, Del Rey, pb, 1991 (19th). VG. very little reading stress, no creasing to spine, and a faint fold crease to the lower left corner of the rear panel. $5

Phildickian: BLADE RUNNER, Del Rey, pb, 1991 (19th). VG+. Unread copy with light rubbing. $5

Phildickian: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 35047, 1992 (12th). VG. Unread copy with light rubbing. $5

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Ballantine, pb, 1992. NF. $3.95

Biblion: BLADE RUNNER, Del Rey, pb, 1992 (20th). NF. barely visable spine crease and chipping alone some edges and corners. $7.49

Alibris: BLADE RUNNER, Del Rey, pb, 1994 (7th). G. $2.95

Phildickian: BLADE RUNNER, Del Rey, pb, 35047, 1994? (25th). VG+. Unread copy with light rubbing. $5

Powells: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, Del Rey, tp, 40447, 1996. NEW. $13

Phildickian: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Del Rey, tp, 40447, 1996. FINE. Bright unread copy. $10

Monroe Bethea Books: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, Del Rey, tp, 40447, 1996. AS NEW. This softcover book is a new remainder. A small red dot on top page edges. $6.75

Phildickian: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Del Rey, tp, 40447, 1996. FINE. Near-new condition. $10

Phildickian: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Del Rey, tp, 40447, 1996. VG. A solid VG with light shelf-wear. $5

The London Bookworm: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, Harper Collins, pb, 1997. Fair. chipped corner of spine. $6

Antiqbook: BLADE RUNNER, Millenium, pb, 1999. FINE. $5.50

Fantastic Literature: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, Millenium SF Masterworks, tp, 2000. FINE. $7

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