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N | S | Writing Date |
Pub. Date |
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Notes |
1 |
1 | 1943 |
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Lost MS |
FOREIGN EDITIONS:
HISTORY
The 15-year old PKD returned to Berkeley from Ojai in Oct 1943 and promptly had two more stories printed in Aunt Flo’s Young Author’s Column in The Berkeley Gazette. While in Ojai he had begun to write his first novel, RETURN TO LILLIPUT, now lost. This novel was not completed – if it ever was – until after PKD returned to Berkeley. In a letter to Philip K. Dick published in her column on Oct 23, 1943, Aunt Flo writes:
{…} 70 type-written pages must have run around 18,000 words – in other words, it’s well along the way to becoming a book instead of a story.
In an interview with Mike Hodel in 1976 PKD says about RETURN TO LILLIPUT:
{…} It was really a bomb. It was terrible. It was the worst novel. I'll sell it some day. I'll find a market for it. It had - it was really neat. They rediscovered Lilliput in the modern world. Like rediscovering Atlantis. These guys report they've discovered Lilliput. But it's only accessible by submarine because it's sunk under the water. You'd think a fourteen year old kid would have a more original idea than that. And I can even tell you the numbers on the submarines. I had, A-101, B-202, C-303 were the numbers and designations of the submarines.
Mike: Makes it a finite number of submarines, then.
Phil: Yeah, well, I realized that when I got halfway through. I wasn't thinking ahead.
The manuscript for RETURN TO LILLIPUT has been lost. It is doubtful if it ever progressed beyond the stage described here.
NOTES:
COLLECTOR'S NOTES
Maybe that early manuscript is out there somewhere...
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