In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Linda Castellani and Tim Powers join Jon to discuss the legendary science fiction author Philip K. Dick. Linda and Tim recount their personal interactions with Dick. The discussion considers Dick’s complex personality, his writings, and his often tumultuous relationships, including Linda’s own experience as one of Dick’s “dark-haired girls.” They explore Dick’s paranoia, his mystical experiences, and his deep influence on the science fiction genre. Despite his brilliance, Dick’s life was marked by emotional instability, which profoundly affected those around him.
Dick’s science fiction was mind-bending – his stories explored the nature of reality and of human perception, and he wrote about alternate realities and histories, monopolistic corporations, authoritarian regimes, drugs, the nature of consciousness. He had his own mystical and metaphysical experiences that were reflected in his work. Later science fiction including the cyberpunk subgenre owed much to his work.
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Linda Castellani:
I wrote the letter because I was in a class taught by a professor named Will McNelly. I was in his Chaucer class; in the previous semester I was in his science fiction class. And one day he came to the Chaucer class with a letter from Phil, saying “Some of you might know who Philip K. Dick is and some of you may not, but you were in my science fiction class so maybe you’d be interested in this letter.” And it was all about his time in Canada at a rehabilitation place called X-Kalay, and the story of how he ended up being in Canada was kind of interesting. But I knew nothing of Philip K. Dick. I just heard this letter. I was 21, quite young and as you will see quite naive. And I thought, “Oh this man’s so sad, he needs a friend I’ll write him a letter.” Although I have come to wonder lately if I might not have been encouraged to do so by McNelly. But that’s a whole nother train of thought. So I wrote Phil a letter. My letter was dated April 7th, 1972. And a couple of days later McNally called me into his office and said, “Phil wants you to pick him up at the airport on Thursday night.” Which totally freaked me out.