05-01-2022, 08:01 AM
I guess I'll put this anecdote here. It concerns Lucius Shepard. After we parted ways after sharing an apartment for a few months up in Eugene, Oregon, I moved down to Sunnyvale; and Lucius visited me a couple times, and also we met up now and then at science fiction conventions. I don't remember whether this particular event happened in Sunnyvale or at a convention, but it was in 1981. Lucius was relating a recent experience, but laughing so hard at its bizarreness that at first I couldn't understand what he was talking about. Slowly it became clear.
Lucius had recently been in LA at a convention or some sort of literary event, and he had crossed paths with Phil Dick. It makes sense they would meet. Phil, the successful journeyman writer, Lucius, the hot up-and-comer, and both strongly anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian.
Anyhow, afterwards Phil invited Lucius to his house, and there, at a small kitchen table, they drank late into the night, all the while they (Phil mostly) ranted about the problems of the world. This was towards the end of Phil's life (he died March 2, 1982), and in those last years he had become increasingly paranoid. For instance, he believed that Stanislaw Lem was a fiction. No one could be so prolific. He was a secret committee of the FBI, or some other nefarious government agency. He had other far stranger convictions.
Anyhow, Phil grew increasingly agitated as the night wore on. He had pulled down something from the top of the fridge. It was a trophy of some kind, but so banged up as to be unrecognizable (almost certainly his 1963 Hugo for The Man in the High Castle). As he lamented the world's problems, he banged the trophy on the tabletop to emphasize his points. It was obvious he did this a lot, from the condition of the trophy. It was his scepter of power. It gave his words legitimacy.
Anyway, I don't relate this to denigrate Phil Dick or his writing. He was in his last year, and like so many others lost clarity of mind.
I think.
Lucius had recently been in LA at a convention or some sort of literary event, and he had crossed paths with Phil Dick. It makes sense they would meet. Phil, the successful journeyman writer, Lucius, the hot up-and-comer, and both strongly anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian.
Anyhow, afterwards Phil invited Lucius to his house, and there, at a small kitchen table, they drank late into the night, all the while they (Phil mostly) ranted about the problems of the world. This was towards the end of Phil's life (he died March 2, 1982), and in those last years he had become increasingly paranoid. For instance, he believed that Stanislaw Lem was a fiction. No one could be so prolific. He was a secret committee of the FBI, or some other nefarious government agency. He had other far stranger convictions.
Anyhow, Phil grew increasingly agitated as the night wore on. He had pulled down something from the top of the fridge. It was a trophy of some kind, but so banged up as to be unrecognizable (almost certainly his 1963 Hugo for The Man in the High Castle). As he lamented the world's problems, he banged the trophy on the tabletop to emphasize his points. It was obvious he did this a lot, from the condition of the trophy. It was his scepter of power. It gave his words legitimacy.
Anyway, I don't relate this to denigrate Phil Dick or his writing. He was in his last year, and like so many others lost clarity of mind.
I think.