I was listening to an interview that Philip K Dick (PKD) made back in May 1979.\u00a0 Now I\u2019ve never read any of his stories.\u00a0 Of course, I\u2019ve seen Blade Runner and I have heard him described as one of the best science fiction writers of all time so I\u2019ve always meant to get ahold of a few of his books and read them but between work and wife and kids and life I\u2019ve just never had a chance.<\/p>\n
So, when I saw this YouTube audio-file I listened to it.\u00a0 It\u2019s two hours long and some of it is kind of hard to believe.\u00a0 But it is extremely interesting.\u00a0 I would say PKD was a very intelligent man but I\u2019m pretty sure his grasp on reality was extremely tenuous on certain subjects.\u00a0 He believed that at one point he was possessed by some kind of spirit or intelligence that controlled him and fixed a lot of his financial and even health problems.\u00a0 And listening to him describe this chapter in his life it\u2019s hard not to assume that either he was dealing with some kind of split personality or he was suffering from schizophrenia.<\/p>\n
Now based on what I\u2019ve read about PKD\u2019s fiction he was intrigued with the idea that reality wasn\u2019t what we think it is.\u00a0 That different people experienced radically different perceptions of reality and maybe none of these perceptions were particularly accurate.\u00a0 And so, with this type of belief I could see how he might accept versions of reality that most people would find absurd.<\/p>\n
Now, in the audio-recording he is asked by the interviewer about his use of drugs and their impact on his mind and writing.\u00a0 PKD goes to great lengths to deny that he used LSD more than once.\u00a0 He claimed that the drug he abused was an amphetamine that he used to be able to produce prodigious amounts of fiction writing.\u00a0 The implication was that his drug use did not affect his writing by altering his mind.\u00a0 And maybe this was true.\u00a0 But listening to this man I got the distinct impression that even if LSD wasn\u2019t the source of his delusions, that he was indeed substantially untethered from reality in a lot of his beliefs about the world around him.\u00a0 In short, I think he was in some sense insane.<\/p>\n
So, how does this jibe with his undeniable creative talent?\u00a0 I think that both these things can be true at the same time.\u00a0 Look at Vincent van Gogh.\u00a0 He was undeniably a creative genius in his field of art but he was also a tortured madman who finally killed himself to escape his mental anguish.\u00a0 So, whether PKD was driven insane by his drug use (of whatever substances) or whether his mind was damaged for whatever other reasons there might have been, his grasp on reality (or lack thereof) did not stop him from producing very entertaining science fiction.\u00a0 And perhaps it was his delusions that actually made his stories so interesting.\u00a0 Strange man.\u00a0 Well, I\u2019ll start with \u201cDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?\u201d and see how I like it.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019ll read some more.<\/p>\n