Frolix-8

PKD Day 2 @ NTU - Turn Around, You've Missed It!

The second PKD Day was yet another excellent amalgam of intriguing, in-depth academic knowledge, real-life experience and ever-present enthusiasm. I would like to think that gatherings such as this keep alive the importance of PKD the writer and thinker, as opposed to PKD the Hollywood 'idea spigot'. But before I start ranting about films again... One thing I noticed this year was how rapidly the time passed - although this may have been due to my own performance! Prof. John Goodridge launched proceedings with a brief reminder of Dick the humanist, emphasising scenes such as Buckman's breakdown at the petrol station in Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. I still don't know what 'emotionalism' is, though, but then my brain is very small.

My own contribution was one half history of this very blog and one half attempt to explain what it means. Not sure I managed it but at least my scrolling background projection of apposite PKD quotes kept people interested. Thanks must go to MC Dr. Dan Cordle for keeping me to time! Dr. Barry Atkins' presentation on Dickian aspects in modern video games was fascinating - he refuted the notion that people could prefer gaming to reality and even become confused as to which was which (despite the odd nutter who makes the news, such as the chap who, on discovering a friend had sold his online avatar's sword, went round to said friend's house and murdered him with an actual sword) and gave an insight into the mechanics and philosophy of game construction and where the industry is heading in the near future.

Self-confessed 'biblio-maniac' Alberto Paulino kicked off the afternoon session. We had the great pleasure of seeing part of his superb PKD collection (along with that of Prof. Goodridge - not to be sneezed at itself, let me tell you - those collected letters books are really magnificent). This included unpublished letters and several signed and dedicated first editions. The copy of Ganymede Takeover (I think) which PKD had signed to a certain lady with the request 'Can I take you out to dinner?' was priceless (in Dick-head terms). Alberto also gave us an insight into the perils and pleasures of the serious collector; prices, deals, where to go and what to do.

Andrew M. Butler (he of the ever-useful PKD Pocket Essentials) closed the formal presentations with an excellent discussion of PKD's 'versions' of the nineteen-fifties, using Voices From The Street, In Milton Lumky Territory and Time Out of Joint to spring some very Dickian questions about the intentions and implications of those mostly overlooked gems. Basically he made Lumky out to be an early Ubik through an analysis of its flow of events. Must read it again!

The whole day's audio was recorded and certainly some of the afternoon was videoed, so watch this space and, indeed, this space for sights and sounds from the day at some point in the (hopefully near) future. A collective virtual petrol-station hug and thumbs-up drawn on a piece of paper from me to everyone involved and here's to the next one. I suggest somewhere in California as the venue...

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PKD Day 2 @ NTU - 14th June 2008

Evidently my foul-mouthed blurting towards Graham Joyce and Ian Watson at last year's event didn't put them off, because Prof. John Goodridge and Mr. Souvik Mukherjee of Nottingham Trent Uni are going for a second PKD Appreciation Day. Not only that - they've asked me to put my mouth where my keyboard is (so to speak), get up there and talk to people from the stage, rather than simply heckle. I will therefore be bringing the 'Which PKD Story Are We In Today ?' roadshow to Nottingham for one day only, complete with microrobs and homeostatic traps. Kind of.

That aside, there are some real treats lined up (with more to be announced), including Mr. Alberto Paulino (PKD collector extraordinaire), Dr. Barry Atkins (who promises to send us into "Videogames: Playing in a Dickian Universe") and Prof. Goodridge himself, who will hold forth upon "emotionalism and melodrama". Even if I wasn't already going, I would be there just to find out what "emotionalism" is.

10 am is the time. Saturday 14th June is the date. Clifton Campus' John Clare Lecture Theatre is the venue. Click thence for the web site. And it's going to be videoed, apparently, so I may have to send a sim in order to retain my anonymity. I'll dig out that PKD head that arrived in the post the other day and maybe stick it on that Abraham Lincoln I have in the garage...

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UPDATE - So, Souvik tells us (in t'comments) there's a beer-related competition, i.e. to link the logo from the PKD Day 2 website to the man himself (PKD, not Souvik). Logo below and email your answers to pkdday2atntu@gmail.com. Presumably any overseas winner will receive a tinny. Or perhaps a slip of paper with 'BEER' written on it...

Philip K Dick in Italia

Proof that Philip K Dick is appreciated far more in countries other than the US and UK, at least as far as book publishing is concerned, was brought home to me in a couple of Italian bookshops recently. One was a small shop in a small town, one was in an airport. Both had nearly the complete works of PKD, in recently-published hardback. Sci-Fi and mainstream. I held in my hands for the first time a copy of Gather Yourselves Together, selling for sixteen Euros - a book I last saw sell on eBay for some stupid amount of money. I didn't buy it, however, as it was called Il Paradiso Maoista and gave me a further reason to curse my (very) limited Italian.

The edition was part of a twenty-fifth anniversary series by Fanucci, with some fantastic cover art by Antonello Silverini, amongst others. I've put three below, for Eye In The Sky, Deus Irae and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - do have a look at the others (put 'Dick' into the 'Autore' search box, top left).

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"You Nexus, huh? I design your hair..."

OK, look - there's a hair stylists' / salon / emporium in Grantham called 'Bladerunner Inc.' Kind of changes the film a bit...

"My hair? Let me tell you about my hair..."

“If only you could see the things I’ve seen with your hair...”

"Quite an experience to work in hairdressing, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave."

"Is this testing whether I'm a replicant or a hairstylist, Mr. Deckard?"

"Christ, Deckard. You look almost as bad as that hair-job you left on the sidewalk. "

and, of course, the crucial confrontation -

"I want more hair, fucker!"

I know, I know. 'Step away from the Internet....'

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PKD Day, Nottingham Trent Uni

The Philip K Dick appreciation day at Nottingham Trent Uni now has a web presence of its own. The programme looks excellent, with talks on 'Phildickian game theory', the various films and the 'Cold War' amongst others. To round everything off, there's an invitation for a drink and a curry afterwards. Top stuff and very well done to the English Division at Trent - apologies if I've referred to you as merely a 'department' in the past!

PKD Day, Nottingham Trent Uni

Nottingham Trent University's English department is holding a Philip K Dick appreciation day at the John Clare Lecture Theatre, Clifton Campus, on Saturday June 16th. Speakers include Graham Joyce and Ian Watson. I'm there.

Blade Runner Brollies

Not content with resembling one of PKD's books, it would seem we are now moving on to the films based on those books. Witness the none-more-craply-named 'Lightsaber Umbrella'. Get the Spinner sorted, someone. And not just a toy one.

A Mote of Dust, Suspended In A Sunbeam

The venerable broadcaster Brian Walden was on the radio this morning, delivering an opinion piece about religion. Passing over the fact that he always reminds me of Enoch Powell, I shall simply say that Walden is evidently a religious man with little time for the likes of Richard Dawkins. As he said in his piece this morning, religion isn't about science or facts. It's about faith. It's about believing that there must be a better fate for human kind than being alone in a Godless universe, the result of a cosmic 'accident'.

Unfortunate, really, because otherwise he seems quite a reasonable bloke. Apart from reading The God Delusion (which, amongst many other things, deals with the fallacy that life is an 'accident' without attributing it to a god), I would advise him to consider a particular snippet from a speech Carl Sagan gave in 1994. Sagan was talking about the photograph to the left [click for fuller joy] - the Earth, taken at a distance of some four billion miles by the spacecraft Voyager I;

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Glam Rocks

Hope University has been usurped - Glam Uni is where it's at. Unfortunately this isn't a reference to a new Bolan-centric institute of education, but the University of Glamorgan - resplendent as it is with the most 1970s friendly URL in existence. Its current stude propaganda begins thus;

Well, I'm excited already. Particularly when you see the photograph of Everystudent positioned below;

He is, of course imagining the view from his window - Cardiff doesn't really have a skyline like that as yet. But, as the killer thrust says;

Awesome, I think you'll agree. And for that glitterball n' stack-heeled URL...

Safe in the UK

I know that I'm not supposed to think when I read things published in the meeja. I can't help it. I just don't have the millisecond attention span / short term memory of journos' perceived punters. In time-homoured fashion, here are a few current 'stories' doing the rounds regarding the current state of things in the UK (note that I do not include anything about our 'surveillance society' or ID cards);

"Passengers boarding planes in EU countries will now be allowed to carry liquids in containers no more than 100ml in capacity brought to the airport contained in a single, transparent, re-sealable plastic bag - itself no more than a litre in capacity. The definition of liquids includes..."

"The customs officer stopped me to let me know that if I was leaving the country through Birmingham then he was going to have to arrest me because I had a gun on my jumper. I know it isn’t best to argue with these sort of people but I had to question whether he had confused a pink fabric gun shape stuck on a jumper to that of a real gun."

"You still think that the BBC is about Truth, Research and Integrity in exactly the same way that us Civvies think the Police Force is all about Truth, Honesty and Justice."

Sigh.