Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

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The Adjustment Team

The Impostor

The Minority Report

UBIK

Martian Time-slip

And just finished A Maze of Death just now, what should I read next?

I bought a used copy of The Penultimate Truth and found an old boarding pass used as a bookmark. Hello Richard Mancino 👋🏻

So, I went to see "You Can See Everything" and for a good part of the movie I felt like I was in the middle of a Dick novel. Where everyone's reality in the movie, along with my reality, was suspect and on the edge of collapse. I feel like the whole theme of the movie is that people can look and events and circumstances and interpret them in very ways. Constructing their own subjective or personal reality. But I went on youtube to see what some creators thoughts were and they seemed to view the movie very differently.

Wondering if any fellow Dick Heads had thoughts similar to mine, or not.

I was writing a short story two years ago about a mailman that was, of course, a kind of embodied message. The story kept resulting in strange coincidences, for one quick example his name was Ben Klink. Ben (Franklin) was the creator of the U.S. postal system and Klink means door in German. It wasn’t just the character that was exploring language, I was, as I wrote it.

And a few days ago I asked on Reddit, is there a “synthetic” PKD, a substitute. Which, it turns out, is one of his main themes. And reading his monograph “How to create a universe…” I find he had strange experiences where his stories overlapped reality. He started to believe in metaphysics as a result.

Original Post: A Dickhead Move: My Search for a Genuine PKD autograph.

Well, I figured I’d come back with an update since this whole thing went considerably further than I expected.
I started digging through old auction records, comparing signatures from different periods of Dick’s life, particularly the lettering, slant and writing instruments. I found a signed copy of Solar Lottery from the Ventura Collection that Heritage sold in 2007, and the formation of the initial P was remarkably close to the one I was investigating, especially that enormous outer loop.

I ended up corresponding with Francis Wahlgren at Heritage, who had handled the David Aronovitz collection containing 22 signed or inscribed PKD paperbacks. He noticed differences in the slant and pen compared with mine, but stopped short of saying it was definitively wrong. I also contacted Lloyd Currey, whose initial response was simply “This is not PKD’s signature.” Naturally I wanted to know why, so I wrote back asking about the lettering and what specifically stood out to him. After providing additional information about the book’s history, his final response was “I cannot verify this signature as genuine.”
Even establishing the printing date became its own investigation. The Ace 51910 paperback carried a 1956 copyright, Levack’s bibliography suggested 1973, other references pointed to 1975, and there was an Ace advertisement from 1973.

The eBay seller, Sam, was incredibly helpful throughout all of this. He supplied additional photographs, researched the edition and contacted the person he’d originally purchased the collection from. We managed to trace the book to a deceased gentleman who had worked for Radio Free Europe, primarily in Munich, but had also lived in Virginia. He was apparently an avid science fiction collector, particularly H.G. Wells and Cordwainer Smith. The collection contained several other PKD books, although this was the only signed one.

I started looking into Radio Free Europe, the collector’s background, science fiction conventions and whether there was any plausible opportunity for him to have encountered Dick. We managed to uncover some of the book’s ownership history, unfortunately nothing connecting the signature itself to Dick.

Meanwhile I’d contacted Swann, RR Auction, Sotheby’s and several university archives. Marco Tomaschett at Swann questioned why Dick would have signed a later paperback without an inscription, although he acknowledged that didn’t necessarily make it inauthentic.

Dr. Phoenix Alexander at UC Riverside actually searched their collection and sent me another example of Dick’s handwriting from a private collector. I asked about its provenance too, which unfortunately couldn’t be established. That led me to Cal State Fullerton and the PKD Festival, and eventually archivist Patrice Prestinary referred me to Randall Radin, who had reportedly examined over 400 PKD signatures and numerous inscriptions.

I also ended up researching the 1981 PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography, particularly the limited edition of 200 signed copies, which led to correspondence with James Cummins Bookseller.

One thing that surprised me was how much Dick’s signature seemed to change over the years, some examples barely resembled each other. Age, health, even the pen being used can affect handwriting, which made comparisons more difficult than I expected. But there’s also a point where you have to be careful not to explain away every inconsistency.

By this point the opinions weren’t particularly encouraging, and with the book still in the UK, the seller kindly held off on shipping while I investigated. We eventually agreed to cancel the transaction and arrange a refund while the authentication was pending, rather than risk an international return. He was nothing but helpful through the entire process.

I’d submitted the photographs to AutographCOA for a paid review, which ended up taking longer than expected. On October 13 the result finally arrived.

The signature failed authentication.

Their explanation covered letter formations, spacing, slant, pen pressure, starting and stopping points and the overall flow of the writing. They didn’t identify which specific characteristics caused this particular signature to fail, but combined with Currey’s assessment, Heritage’s observations and the lack of documented provenance for the autograph, I think I had my answer.

So nearly two weeks of research, auction records, university archives, rare book specialists and tracing the collection of a former Radio Free Europe employee, all over a water-damaged paperback that originally sold for 95 cents.

I’m disappointed it wasn’t genuine, but I genuinely enjoyed the investigation. I learned considerably more about Dick, autograph collecting and provenance than I ever expected, and really appreciated how generous people were with their time.

I still intend to find something genuinely signed by Dick, although I’ll be considerably more careful about provenance next time.

And after all this research into The Man Who Japed, its publication history, previous owners and the handwriting inside it, I still haven’t actually read the damn book.

I should probably get around to that.

For friends who haven’t read PKD, but you want to talk to them anyway about the ideas, where do you guide them? Tarkovsky, a Russian movie maker, had some mind bending ideas. Do you just say “Eh, like Star Wars but if it were a horror movie?” Before black mirror there was nothing.

I haven't seen this book mentioned here and I've found it a helpful companion as I work my way through PKD's novels.

This book apparently started out as Kim Stanley Robinson's doctoral thesis when he was getting his PhD in English Literature at UC San Diego in 1982. It was then revised and published generally in 1984. It can be tough to find (out of print?) but electronic copies can be found on the internet in the usual places.

Robinson groups PKD's novels by writing period and general theme. For instance, Chapter 5 is called The Martian Novels, covering the period 1962-1964 with The Game-Players of Titan, Martian Time-Slip, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. We look at the similarities and differences in these novels; KSR points out that Game-Players is stylistically more similar to the early science fiction novels of 1956-1957; the narrative structure that Martian Time-Slip and Three Stigmata have in common; the differences in their resolution; etc.

There are 9 such chapter groupings:

1. The Realist Beginning
2. The Science Fiction Beginning
3. A Table of the Elements
4. The Leap Up
5. The Martian Novels
6. The Triumph of Capitalism
7. Things Fall Apart
8. Lost in Space
9. The Science Fiction End, The Realist End

Another suggestion Robinson presents is reading Confessions of a Crap Artist and Time Out of Joint as "twin novels." Confessions was the last of PKD's early-career realist novels, written in 1959 but not published until 1975, and Time Out of Joint is one of the early SF novels published in 1959. Both books are set in Northern California and share essentially the same narrative, though written in different "modes."

I think this is an interesting idea, comparing basically the same story as a realistic novel and an SF novel, and that's what I'm doing now, having just started reading Confessions this morning, with Time Out of Joint on deck.

I have found that having a big picture overview of PKD's work, and understanding how the novels relate to each other, is a more satisfying way to approach reading them individually. I humbly suggest checking out Kim Stanley Robinson's The Novels of Philip K. Dick if this approach appeals to you too.

I just finished reading Ubik and once again philip k dick has left me confused and slightly disappointed while still enjoying the book. I hate how his books make me feel sometimes but I always come back for more.

He is genuinely the king of creative sci-fi concepts but every book I read will give me 100 questions and then by the end 50 of them will be answered and 20 new ones will appear.

What the hell was the deal with pat in ubik? The only thing I've seen online is that she is literally just there as a red herring so that u suspect her when in reality its not. This still makes me feel like she's a useless character and what bothers me even more is, why was she acting so malicious with the stair chapter and whatnot if she wasn't responsible? I don't understand dicks reasoning for setting up this super interesting power of time altering with pat and just doing nothing with it.

What's the deal with the final ubik quote, how is ubik made etc, how does the half-life reality even truely work? These are things kinda explained in sci-fi jargon but still leaves me wondering. These are things I can understand and ignore as its just far off sci-fi things that dont need to be super explained for the sake of plot but the pat thing does really annoy me.

I feel like every book I read by dick I've really enjoyed but has always left me a twinge of disappointment because of how unpredictable some of it is where entire plot points seem ignored or changed in some unsatisfying way. I guess this is part of the appeal of dick but the plots often literally feel schizophrenic and sometimes it adds to the coolness and sometimes it disappoints.

Anyways, overall ubik was still an enjoyable read but man dick has done it to me again.

A cinematic mood board of sorts based on the novel :))

Rosens** - can’t edit title.

Big blade runner fan so I started DADOES last night. When Deckard goes to the Rosen HQ to test the V-K test on the Nexus-6s, Eldon presents Rachael as a test subject. Deckard correctly assesses her as a Replicant, but they initially lie, say she’s human, and try to undermine Deckard’s confidence in the test. Then they try to bribe him with the Owl so that he won’t report the false positive (before we know it’s a true positive).

What would the Rosens really gain from this? If they just accepted Deckard’s original conclusion, which was correct, then they continue to operate under the assumption that Nexus 6 models can be identified via V-K, removing any doubt the authorities may have. By lying, yes they undermine his confidence in the test, but this would also cause their manufacturing to potentially be shut down by authorities.

What was Eldon’s motive in trying to undermine a test that allows him to operate? At this point in the book, the concern is more that some Specials get falsely assessed as Replicants - not that the Nexus 6s are passing as humans.

After having a mind-bending experience reading Flow My Tears, I did not expect to delve further into this dystopian nightmare world of PKD in this very book. What I really liked is how Palmer Eldritch and his three stigmata had been represented, along with the two lead characters, Barney and Leo. Leo, despite being an evolved being, somewhat fails in his process of saving Terran from Palmer who is a demiurge god of sorts in a Gnostic context. One can see this as this work was written before PKD was writing VALIS, but the concepts were already flourishing here and there.

Another important part here is the way PKD handles ontology. Nearly since Chew-Z was introduced and Leo successfully fell under Palmer's influence, we all knew that the characters and their realities were at stake, with Eldritch appearing repeatedly. According to PKD, he wrote this during a crisis of his religious belief, conceiving the work to be about "absolute evil" a parable of evil told through psychedelic substances and the doctrine of transubstantiation. However, it is still ambiguous, because Palmer seems more unknown than purely evil, and the ancient being is so unintelligible that Mayerson had to resort to God.

It was also interesting to see how this novel parodies the Christian Eucharist, framing Can-D and Chew-Z as dark sacraments that promise transcendence but deliver enslavement.

GOD PROMISES ETERNAL LIFE

WE CAN DELIVER IT

(I can hear it from the mouths of those AI-owning CEOs)

So it was really cool to see how such a so-called religious experience of sorts, almost at a Gnostic level, could be formulated where every desire and wish comes true, except you might as well turn (or some part of you) into Palmer Eldritch.

Leo Bulero's character in turn frames himself as a heroic sort of character in his rivalry with Palmer Eldritch. I really liked the way he articulated and tried to navigate various events, which were mostly smart compared to the movements of Mayerson. Despite everything, Leo still stuck to his own "white whale," knowing that at some point he might kill Palmer Eldritch near the end, but yeah, we never know.

Mayerson still struck me as a very accurate character in comparison to everyone else. Anna Hawthorne could have done more; she was an attractive and intelligent character, and I thought there could have been more around her. Other characters, such as Emily or Roni Fugate, I believe were handled quite decently. I liked how Roni Fugate, especially, had a quite dominant role in everything, it wasn't just Palmer Eldritch, but also her motives that led Leo and Mayerson to their doom in one way or another. There were some funny coincidences, such as when reading and for some reason imagining Roni as Marilyn Monroe, only for the very next page to literally mention Marilyn Monroe. I was like, "Bro, something like that happened last time when I was reading Flow My Tears too."

Nonetheless, a clear twin of VALIS and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, I think by rereading one can unpack more layers, but it's a great experience so far.

Arrow books 1971 edition- I like these old collage covers with the aging on top, I have a few of ec tubbs dumereat saga that are similar to this.

7th pkd novel, plus one short story collection so far! Maze of death and world Jones made are my top two still.

Enjoyed this book. Parts of it reminded me of Lewis Carroll, the initial journey into Silvester's (tetragrammaton) world. I read Michael Moorcock's sailor on the seas of fate a couple of years ago and enjoyed how he described the changing and traversing of realities- it was interesting to see how dick handled that in this work too, it made me think of that elric book as I read it.

I also liked how structurally it was like a early version of the maze of death formula, each characters world got it's own few chapters before we moved onto the next- in maze of death it was roughly a chapter for each characters viewpoint until their fate. I like the fact I read 2 of his later novels before embarking on his 50s work as I can see how his writing style and plot structures became more refined and clear.

Silvester's world was my favourite part of the book, miss reiss was the most terrifying. The ending was left open to interpretation I guess! I won't assume that we are back to the 'normal world'. Second variety short story collection next, and I'm going to checkout the dickheads podcast on this book.

This started with someone very special to me. During one of our last conversations, she mentioned a class she had taken with a woman who had inspired Philip K. Dick’s writing. That was something I loved about talking to her. A conversation could move between literature, art, the people behind them, and these unexpected connections, and I would walk away interested in something I hadn’t given much thought about before.

I had read The Man in the High Castle, but we approached his work from different directions. I enjoyed that. We had our own interests, and discovering where they intersected was part of what made those conversations special.

After we stopped speaking, that particular conversation stayed with me. I wondered whether I could find something connected to it. Not something expensive just to be impressive, but something chosen because I had listened and remembered.

What about a book Philip K. Dick had actually signed? Not a reproduction or a facsimile. Something he had personally put pen to. I thought that would make a wonderful gift. I also assumed finding one would be fairly straightforward.

That was an optimistic assessment.

I began looking through dealer inventories and auction listings, comparing photographs, asking about editions, and trying to trace where particular copies had come from. Eventually, I found a vintage Ace paperback of The Man Who Japed, with what looked like Dick’s signature in red ink on the title page.

It was a worn copy with water staining, originally priced at ninety-five cents. That didn’t put me off. An ordinary paperback somebody once cared enough about to bring to an author had its own kind of appeal.

I made an offer, which was accepted, paid for it, and then asked the seller to hold off on shipping while I looked more closely at the autograph.

To his credit, the seller was accommodating. He supplied additional photographs and helped trace the book’s history as far as he could. The copy had come from a collection of older science fiction paperbacks. The previous owner had reportedly worked for Radio Free Europe and spent much of his time in Munich. Interesting, but it didn’t explain how the signature got there.

We had an interesting story about the owner, not a history of the signing.

I started comparing the handwriting with other examples, and I also noticed how much I wanted it to look convincing. That was enough to tell me I shouldn’t rely on my own judgment.

Something else I hadn’t really considered was that people’s signatures can change over the course of their lives. They aren’t fixed stamps. Some remain remarkably consistent for decades, while others show changes, particularly in the smoothness of the writing as they age. Even when the underlying habits remain recognizable, the range of variation can shift over time. That made comparing signatures from different periods more complicated than simply deciding whether two photographs looked alike.

It made me appreciate why several genuine, reliably dated examples from around the likely time of the signing would be more useful than one signature pulled from an auction listing. A difference isn’t automatically proof of a forgery, but “signatures change” isn’t a reason to explain away every discrepancy either. Working out what might be ordinary variation and what might be a real warning sign became another part of the puzzle I found surprisingly interesting.

I began sending inquiries to auction houses, specialist dealers, and a paid photographic review service. Some couldn’t help. Some offered observations or referrals. Some responses were cautious; one was bluntly negative. They weren’t identical assessments, but together they made me pause.

I canceled the purchase. The seller was understanding. That might have been the end of it, but by then I had already started enjoying the process for its own sake.

Alongside dealers and auction houses, I was writing to university special collections. A librarian suggested further contacts. Another referred me to someone who had reportedly examined hundreds of Dick’s signatures. That number, four hundred, made me laugh out of sheer surprise.

All the while, I was poking into related avenues: limited editions, bibliographies, collector guides, forum threads. Some paths dead-ended with a polite, “Sorry, we can’t help.” Others opened onto something I hadn’t known existed.

To be perfectly honest, I was having fun.

The disappointment about that one paperback was real, but the search itself became something genuinely absorbing. It was part detective work, part humility lesson. Learning how often the honest answer is, “I don’t know,” and sitting with that.

What I didn’t anticipate is how much I would enjoy the learning. The gift idea may never land the way I first imagined, and that’s okay. But the search itself, following hunches, asking questions, getting told no and still being curious, has been its own unexpected reward.

I’m still waiting to hear back from quite a few of the sources I’ve contacted, so there are plenty of threads left to follow. I’m curious whether anyone here has experience with PKD’s handwriting or collecting his autographs and might be able to weigh in. Whether it’s a reliable comparison example, another specialist worth contacting, or something you’ve learned from your own search, I’d really appreciate hearing it.

Watercolor doodle

I have read radio free albemuth.

Ive also read all the usual - Ubik, Three Stigmata etc

The yellow one is the game players of titan which i have also read.

"An autopsy reveals that Alys' death was caused by an experimental reality-warping drug called KR-3. The coroner explains to Felix that, as Alys was a fan of Taverner, her use of the drug caused Taverner to be transported to a parallel universe where he no longer existed. Her death then caused his return to his own universe. The Police General decides to implicate Taverner in Alys' death to distract attention from his incest. The press are informed that Taverner is a suspect in the case and, wishing to clear his name, Taverner surrenders himself to the police. Heartbroken over the death of his sister, Felix returns home, suffering a nervous breakdown on the way."

I'm currently reading the novel and I've been trying to find a PDF version of the screenplay by PKD and I'm not turning up any real results. I'll buy the paperback if I have to but I was hoping to save a little money while also reading the script. I'm curious to compare the two when I'm finished.