Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick
Lawrence Sutin
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 0786716231
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Horselover Fat in the novel." As for the redemptive role of the artist, this had always been one of Phil's least favorite themes. In the SFR letter, Phil proudly restated his proletarian writer's credo, unchanged since the Berkeley days. "My answer: My novel is my justification, not anything I arrogate to myself as a person, as a novelist. [... ] This [writing] talent [... ] does not make me superior to people who repair shoes or drive buses." Phil's defiance here is surely related to his
leading him into a desperate liaison with his female counterpart from enemy Peep-East, Lilo Topchev. Both Lilo and Maren Faine, Lars's other mistress, were inspired by Anne. 01' Orville, the missile guidance system "plowshared" (cf. Isaiah) into a talking toy, tries its best to help Lars out. The Empathic-Telepath Pseudononhomo Ludens Maze is a game so literally absorbing that it saves Earth from invasion. Surley G. Febbs, the paranoid pursap catapulted into dizzying power, gets my vote as the
upon four of Phil's stories: "The Defenders" (1953), "The Mold of Yancy" (1955), "War Veteran" (1955), and "The Unreconstructed M" (1956). Penultimate is Phil's most pointed examination of the lies woven by government. But the seriousness of its theme is blunted by its clunking style and wayward plot. Stanton Brose, the purely evil leader of the "yance-men" (propagandizing speechwriters and filmmakers, who keep the underground populace deceived), is made up entirely of mechanized "artiforg"
of Phil's unsold mainstream novels in one big package that was dumped on his doorstep in January 1963. Those rejections, coupled with the ray of hope of the Hugo, made it official. After seven years, Phil's mainstream breakthrough effort was formally at an end. So be it. Phil would move right on to work on an SF novel (the mainstream be damned!) that for sheer hairpin plotting and metaphysical weirdness soared far beyond anything in High Castle or Time-Slip. For he would now see a vision of
sane/insane dualism that would make a mockery of Phil's artistic and spiritual vision, and an ass of his biographer. Finally, a note on the organization of the book. The sheer bulk of Phil's work-over forty novels and two hundred stories-makes detailed examination of the whole a practical impossibility. I have therefore focused, in the main narrative, on only the best of the stories and on those eleven novels-Eye in the Sky (1957), Time Out of Joint (1959), Confessions of a Crap Artist (w. 1959,