"SCOTT MEREDITH TO PKD"

September 30 [1968]

Dear Phil,

Thanks very much for our letter. Doubleday can't yet release the full $4500 because the money hasn't come in yet from NAL. We have asked them to advance some -- up to $1500 -- and we're confident this will be coming in very soon. In the meantime, I'm happy to send you a check for the $1500, less commission, as our advance on the Doubleday money. Here, then, is $1350. Doubleday, of course, is very anxious to see the new book you've mentioned to us and to Larry, and if you could send in a completed half, say in two weeks or so, they'll be able to issue an immediate contract. And, of course, they're very anxious about DEUS IRAE, mostly because they'd like to contract for THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH as soon as possible, but cannot until they have something more on DEUS IRAE. This is necessary because GAME in only in outline form, whereas the new one is completed in rough draft. Now I'd like to pass on some very encouraging news from Norman Spinrad -- we know you've been talking to him about this -- that the editor at Essex House is very interested in seeing some of your old unpublished novels. They are of course moving out of the sex lines and the editor is an old S-F fan. They would pay from $1000 to $1500 for any they might want to do. By all means, send in these old ones and we'll be happy to push for you in his area. Finally, I have another project you should perhaps be working on. Collier Books is doing some science-fiction collections from name authors -- and they've asked for you as one of the name writers in the genre of course -- of stories totaling 70,000 words. They must all be based on one theme. One they threw out would deal with the mind and consciousness expanding under drugs (or anything else for that mater). They will do a limited hardcover edition as well as the general paperback (quality of course) for an advance of about $1750. They're not looking for original stories (though they could use one or two), but reprint stuff. So dig back and see if you can come up with a collection of your stories that would total about 70,000 words on one underlying theme -- and let us know. Okay? For now, all the best.

Scott

PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 1 A Question of Chronology: 1955 – 1958 frame. First is a letter from PKD to Bill Hamlin, By Lord RC, Dec 2003 editor at Imagination, dated Sep 2, 1955 in which PKD refuses to do a rewrite of "Recall In a letter to Anthony Boucher, editor at Mechanism". The second reason is more F&SF, in June 1957 Philip K. Dick states that subjective and relies on another of our stories he had "stopped writing short stuff for assigned to 1958 -- "Explorers We" -- and the magazine publication back in May of '55..." The uncertainty around its dating. reception at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency "Explorers We" reached the SMLA on May of his short story "The Unreconstructed M" on 6, 1958. However, there is evidence that it was June 2, 1955 seems to confirm this. written much earlier. In a letter to Tony But in 1958 we note the reception of three Boucher, editor at F&SF dated April 8, 1954 more short stories by the SMLA. These were: PKD explicitly refers to this story "late in "Recall Mechanism", "Explorers We" and "War September of last year..." [1953]. Game." On the face of it there is nothing wrong Taking these two cases together: "Recall with this accepted chronology but when we Mechanism" and "Explorers We" and the doubt look more closely at what is known about the thrown on their 1958 ascription by these publishing history of these three stories we letters, then we find that if we assign their note a couple of anomalies that cast doubt on composition back to 1955 or earlier we have a the origin of two of them and by inference stark anomaly in the chronology. doubt on the third. The short story "War Game" now stands out To me it is necessary to sort out the singly and sharply as the only remaining short chronology of four stories: "The story assigned to 1958. It nestles in its Unreconstructed M", "Recall Mechanism", singularity amidst manuscripts of several "Explorers We" and "War Game." I see this as novels including NICHOLAS AND THE HIGS, important because there is a gap of some five TIME OUT OF JOINT and IN MILTON LUMKY years' uncertainty involved in the dating of TERRITORY. Now although the SMLA records these stories. These stories could have been delivery of "War Game' on Oct 31, 1958 would written as early as 1953 or as late as 1958. PKD drop his straight novel aspirations to To figure out the likely actual composition suddenly revert to an earlier time and crank out dates we must take the evidence of these a short science fiction story? stories singly and then all together and put I think not. And when "War Game" is shorn them in the context of what PKD was writing in of its 1958 bolster of "Recall Mechanism" and this period. "Explorers We" and we take in PKD's We start with "The Unreconstructed M" and statement that he stopped writing short fiction note that the manuscript for this story arrived at in May 1955 we can reasonably assign "War the SMLA on June 2, 1955. To support this Game" to 1955 or earlier. date we have the above-mentioned letter he But, why then, if these three stories were sent to Tony Boucher on June 3, 1957 in which written earlier, is their reception dates at the he states "I have ceased to write either s.f. or SMLA recorded in 1958? fantasy, Tony; I stopped writing short stuff for The answer to this perhaps lies in the two magazine publication back in May of '55." This letters mentioned above: "Recall Mechanism" then would solidify the composition date for due to Bill Hamlin wanting a rewrite and PKD "The Unreconstructed M" as no later than May not wanting to do it probably laid around the 1955. Agency or Dick's abode and just sort of got The next story, "Recall Mechanism" reached forgotten. And "Explorers We", also needing a the SMLA on May 2, 1958. But was it actually rewrite, seems to have got lost in the shuffle written shortly before that date as one might between the Agency, Dick and F&SF. assume? Or was it written much earlier in With no earlier reference to "War Game" 1955? than 1958 we assume that sometime in early We have two reasons for saying that the 1958 PKD went through his files or instructed story was probably written in the earlier time the Agency to go through theirs to search for PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 2 any unsold short stories. The four that showed the contracts, still keeping faith at my end -- up were "The Unreconstructed M", "Recall they returned the MS with a short note. Mechanism", "Explorers We" and "War Game." Personally, I believe they couldn't get a pre- So, then, in light of this analysis we'll put publication softcover house to go along with these stories into our composition chronology the book to underwrite their costs. at different dates than the accepted ones. Thus: PKD to Bill Hamling, Editor Imagination, Sep 2, 1955 "Null-O", received at the SMLA on Aug 31, 1953 My agent Scott Meredith has relayed to me "Explorers We", referred in letter to Sep 1953 your request for a rewrite on my story RECALL "To Serve The Master", received at the SMLA MECHANISM. on Oct 21, 1953 The story is a good one, and I am proud of it. When a rewrite improves the story I'm glad ... Five novels, many short stories to perform it. I welcome suggestions that help a story. In this case, however, the rewrite would "The Minority Report", received at SMLA on turn a good yarn into a cornball nothing. Dec 22, 1954 With great pride, and a sense of my "War Game", indeterminate, received at SMLA responsibility to writers in general, to my own Oct 31, 1958 ethics, and to science-fiction readers, I refuse. "Recall Mechanism", before Sep 1955 [before I have informed Scott, and I assume he'll be May 1955?] looking for the MS back. "The Unreconstructed M", received at the SMLA on June 2, 1955 PKD to Tony Boucher, Apr 8, 1954 I'm sorry to keep bothering you with phone This ordering leaves the year 1958 with no call and letter, but I understand that Scott short stories written and PKD working on his Meredith is going to write to you about straight novels with a sporadic effort to get his "Explorers We" and I wanted to get hold of you old short stories published. It is then not until first. 1963 that PKD returned to writing short stories. As you recall, late in September of last year "If There Were No Benny Cemoli" was the first you wrote to me, expressing an interest in that of this series. story, and suggesting changes. I made changes and mailed them back within the NOTES week; during the first part of October. Since then I haven't heard hide nor hair from you, but PKD to Tony Boucher, June 3, 1957 I understand that you are officially away, these days, so I have been happy to wait. However, Tiresome as all this is, there's worse to now I'm getting worried. Maybe there was a come. I have ceased to write either s.f. or slip-up and you didn't receive my rewrite. Or fantasy, Tony; I stopped writing short stuff for something. magazine publication back in May of '55; since In any case, if you want another rewrite, etc, then I've done only novels, both s.f. and what I etc. let me know and I will produce. It may be call straight contemporary serious quality that the time travel angle didn't convince you, fiction about non-myth type people, and in the in which case I'm sure another resolution can last year it's been just the latter, the non-s.f. I be found. Okay? Thanks a lot ... and maybe have five of these novels in circulation (...) We we could get together one of these days, as damn near sold one of them (called MARY both of us repeatedly suggest. AND THE GIANT). In fact we had an oral okay over the phone from the editor-in-chief of a Deckard, please be human! reputable hardcover house. They held the MS By Marc 'Zito' Oberst for six months and then -- as I stood waiting for PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 3 In the last issue of PKD Otaku, Patrick asked his readers by posting a mailinglist mail by "Mostly rush-writing as a cheap pulp fictioner in Dante (26th October 1998), what they think the '50s and '60s, Dick became a cult writer of about the technological state of Rick Deckard. the early '70s in Britain, a well-thumbed copy of So I am here to give a quite personal answer. such gems as The Turning Wheel, The Man in For the adapted movie the answer is clear, I the High Castle or Dr. Futurity being as think. There everybody is an android except essential a fashion accessory to wasted white Bryant (the one who hunts them and hates artschool boys as a copy of Roxy Music's first them most) and J.F.Sebastian (who got killed album." by them) as you can see in every character's - Simon Dwyer, "The Plague Yard." Rapid eyes. This question has been answered a Eye 2 (1995) p. 156. thousand times and everybody I talked to agreed that Ridley Scott wanted the audience Commentary to recognize it this way, sooner or later. But for By David Aylward the book the question has to be another one in my opinion: "Can even a world of Philip K. Dick I promised Frank Bertrand I'd write a LOC for be so cruel and make Rick Deckard an android your fanzine PKD Otaku #1, and at last can get who does not know it?" down to it. Rather than run on and on about In the book, Deckard is the image of a Dick (don't get me started) I thought I'd human being. More than anybody else inside address one of the points that he raises in the as one must notice in the last chapter when he Metz interview of '77, which you quote. is climbing the mountains and finding the toad, Specifically, he deplores the lack of interest in his toad. So one could think in this case, that great literature, not only among SF readers, he can't be human as he seemed to be human but the general public. all the time. And than he seemingly reached In one respect, I think he was mistaken. The his goal by getting a real and own pet. And the SF writers of former days were more reader gets disappointed as Deckard himself conversant with classic literature than he when Iran noticed that the toad has a switch. allows. Even back in the bad old days (also So... And in this situation Deckard himself known as the Golden Age), people like Fritz should be no human too? Can't be! Dick's Lieber, Isaac Asimov, C. M. Kornbluth, James worlds are dark enough, they can't be so dark Blish and Robert Heinlein were quite well read. and Dick can't be so cruel to make Rick However the literature that influenced them -- Deckard an artificial being too! Phil saw, as far in their writing, I mean -- was more likely to be as I experienced his writings, always a chance the kind that their readers could relate to: for his characters. He always believed in hope Kipling, Dumas, Haggard and Robert Lewis and that what human is can survive everything. Stevenson, rather than Proust, Joyce, or He always gave more than one possibility for Virginia Woolf. When all is said and done, rescue to his novels. I would be mistaken in science fiction was, and to a large extent still Philip K. Dick if Deckard were an android for is, an offshoot of adventure fiction. real as it only seemed one time in the middle of Let's not forget that modern SF had its the novel. origins in the radio-experimental mags of the So I do believe that Rick Deckard is a child of 00's and teens of the last century -- mainly, if mankind as Iran is, even if she fulfilled the not exclusively read by bright young typical dickian andylike-wife-type of a character adolescent males. The field has come a long at the beginning. I really, really hope so, even if way since then, and in some respects it's come "The electric Ant" - the story many people see too far. Certainly, it's far more sophisticated -- as the ancestor of "Do Androids Dream Of but sophistication is based on repetition, not on Electric Sheep?" - indicates that he isn't. He creativity. must be human! Please Deckard, be... I'm going to go out on a limb here and state flatly that SF is learning the wrong lessons (C) 2003-10-07 Marc 'Zito' Oberst PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 4 from current mainstream fiction. It has become straight-forward space opera, however well- diffuse, intolerably wordy and introverted in a done (and there have been some dillies, by very superficial way. Its pages are defaced by Harness, M. John Harrison, Lafferty, and acres of empty chit-chat, by outright flattering Niven/Pournelle, to name a few) is not likely to of the readers' expectations, by completely get on their reading lists. incomprehensible characters, And by plots that True, SF is the literature of ideas -- but not are so convoluted as to be unintelligible. necessarily of issues, on which one can take And I have to say it: whatever PKD thought "positions" or have "opinions." Literature is an he was learning from the French novelists, he art form before it's anything else, although it didn’t always get. It is true that his people are certainly doesn't exclude agendas. All we ask realistically portrayed --to the point of being a is that they be dramatized effectively. One of bit dull, actually -- but the apparently effortless the reasons I have never been a great fan of clarity, conciseness and lack of sentimental Ursula LeGuin is that she's a shade too illusions that we associate with the best French earnest for my taste. Definitely course-fodder. writing were beyond his reach (and most other As for PKD, he presents no lack of puzzles, writers, French or whatever). but at least you feel he was on a quest. He Could it be that French readers find in Dick a does not push you (as for example Heinlein relief from what they have grown too used to? does) but rather pulls you into his invented What did Colette say to the young Simeon? -- worlds. "Just leave out all that literature!" Flaubert himself -- yea, even he -- longed to escape BOOK REVIEWS from the quotidian into a world of colour and violence. Maybe what he needed was science Solar Lottery fiction! If we're brave, we can admit that much of Damon Knight: Infinity Science Fiction what we enjoy reading won’t last. The trick is November 1955, pp. 128-130 to read widely; too much of any one kind of book and you lose perspective. I have a friend Philip K. Dick is that short-story writer who for who's a film buff; he thinks that evry black and the past five years has kept popping up all over white B movie from the 40's is a masterpiece -- -- in one year, 1953, he published 27 stories -- because he's watched too many of them. with a sort of unobtrusive and chamelonlike To find a mid-point between fan and critic is competence. Entering and leaving as he does not easy. I look through the remnants I have by so many doors at once, he creates a blurred saved from my formerly vast SF library. I see impression of pleasant, small literary gifts. that most of it is short stories. Much as I enjoy The surprise of a book like "Solar Lottery" re-reading them from time to time, who from such an author is more than considerable. remembers "William Tenn" (Philip Klaus) today, Roughly, it's as if Robert Sheckley should or his tours-de-force like "The Custodian" or abruptly turn into a combination of Alfred "The Servant Problem"? My choice of novels, Bester, Henry and Catherine Kuttner, and A. E. even of the masters, is often perverse (no, not van Vogt. perverted -- perverse). I still think Asimov's This book is remarkable, to begin with, in the Caves of Steel is the only good novel he ever way its extrapolations have been handled. wrote; and that Gladiator-at-Law is the best Dick writes of a future world in which the radio- thing either Pohl or Kornbluth ever did. and-tv quiz show has evolved into a system- Similarly, my choice of Clement would be wide game with all power as its stake: the Cycle of Fire, over some others. tyrant, the Quizmaster, is chosen by a random I could go on…but let me close by deploring twitch of the bottle that contains an equivalent the influence of academe. It is the professors' of everybody's "power card." In practice, most unfortunate habit to take up puzzles --in order people are "unks" -- unclassified -- and have that we will need their help to explain them, like no p-cards; of those who have, most surrender Catholic priests explicating the Trinity. A them to the bosses of the Hills, the great PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 5 industrial complexes, under medieval fealty esthetic or other grounds, except as a simple arrangements. The masses of people, without reaction of the author's against magazine any cause-and-effect principle to sustain them, prudery. And the burning of surplus goods and have fallen back on "Minimax" -- the Theory of the use of medieval charms seem to me errors Games made into a nihilist philosophy. in dialectics. In a science-fiction magazine serial, this Yet even in the summing up, that place framework would be crudely exposed and where the author has got to try to say what his bunged into the reader's eye at every novel means and where he thinks it leads, opportunity: the lead character would have never quite satisfactorily -- because all novels long solemn thoughts about "how wonderful with any life in them end too soon -- Dick the system is -- or is it?" -- and we would all acquits himself wonderfully well. grow so tired of waiting for the boob to make Cartwright, the new Quizmaster, is explaining up his mind that any distraction would be how he gimmicked the bottle --making the welcome. whole M-Game system meaningless -- in order Nothing of the sort happens here; Dick states to get himself elected tyrant: his premises, gives you enough of a look at his "Was that ethical?" Bentley asked. "That crowed, complex world to let you get your kicks over the board, doesn't it?" bearings -- and then puts away his maps and "I played the game for years, " Cartwright charts for good. You are in the world of the said. "Most people go on playing the game all bottle and the Quizmaster, the Hill and the their lives. Then I began to realize the rules legal assassins, and you see the living surface were set up so I could not win. Who wants to of it, not the bones. play that kind of game. We're betting against This is not the end of the wonder. There's the house and the house always wins." the tension: Dick has caught and intensified the Unanswerable…. And then you realize, bare-nerve tautness of our own society at its while that speech resonates in your mind, that worst, and put it on paper here so you can see, it isn't only the imaginary society of "Solar hear, feel and smell it. Lottery" that Cartwright is condemning: it's all There's the plot -- like van Vogt miraculously societies -- including our own. making sense as it goes along: each new development not merely startling -- anybody Philip K. Dick: Electric Shepherd can startle -- but startling and logically necessary. This is architectural plotting, a rare Angus Taylor: Foundation no. 10 (June and inhumanely difficult thing; and who in 1976), p. 124-25 blazes ever expected Dick to turn up as one of the few masters of it? … For the student of Dick, however, the most And the characters: Verrick, the deposed valuable pieces in this book are the Quizmaster, whose single-minded aim to contributions of Dick himself: two letters and assassinate his successor gives this story its the text of "The Android and the Human" a tremendous drive; Eleanor Stevens, the speech delivered in Vancouver in 1972. In telepathic secretary who renounces her gift to these two short letters Dick shows that he is stay with Verrick; Pellig, the golem-assassin, well aware of the themes underlying his work, and more. These people are real; they carry and gives us a concise statement of his view of conviction. Not the least of Dick's virtues is the construction and destruction of reality as a that he shows the shock to the human nervous function of social organization in an system of violent events; he fobs you off with unorganized universe. "Reality" here is no icy supermen. something quite specific -- susceptible of Some of the small excesses and definition and investigation. There is the awkwardnesses of this book are perhaps entropic reality of the physical universe and traceable to the same cause. The bare- there is the negentropic reality of the social breastedness of all the women in Dick's world universe. But above all it is the ability and is hard to account for on climatic, social, moral, responsibility of the individual human being PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 6 that Dick affirms -- reality as a human creation, desperately unhappy his characters are. He'll as distinct from the common experience of set up some interesting world, and then have reified reality. As he says in the Vancouver chapter after chapter of a guy arguing with his speech: wife about nothing. It's realistic, but it's not necessarily what I want from a SF book. I want I have never had too high a regard for humor, sense of wonder, eyeball kicks, reality what is generally called "reality". warps, conceptual breaks. Dick can do all of Reality, to me is not so much something those, but I think sometimes his own demons that you perceive, but something you took over and you're just getting page after make. You create it more rapidly than it page of purging. Dick is esteemed, I think, for creates you. Man is the reality God his sensibility as much for his particular works, created out of dust; God is the reality as so few of them are fully successful." man creates continually out of his - From an interview with Rudy Rucker for compassion, his own determination. the Polish SF magazine Ubik: May23, 2003 "Good", for example --that is not a quality or even a force in the world or The Cyborgs Are In Charge above the world, but what you do with By Pat Cadigan bits and pieces of meaningless, Infinite Matrix 10.09.03 puzzling, disappointing and even cruel and crushing fragments all around us [re. The election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as that seem to be pieces left over, Governor of California] discarded, from another world entirely that did, maybe, make sense. To tell you the truth, I'm flabbergasted X 2. I.e., I'm flabbergasted, and I'm flabbergasted This other world is Dick's ideal, organized, that I'm flabbergasted. I mean, Philip K. Dick humanely constructed realm of the spirit -- of knew it all along. I've read just about everything God, not transcendent, external, or above the PKD ever wrote and I believe every word of it. world, but immanent, the full expression of the So why am I surprised? human potential. It is on this level that Dick the It's SFnal, all right, but it's SFnal in a Philip K. political scientist/sociologist merges with Dick Dick kind of SFnal way. And, as you might the religious prophet, for if we recognize in his remember — or totally recall, if you will — work the concept of immanent divinity, then the Schwarzenegger did star in a movie based on religious and the political dimensions need not "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by conflict. When humanity is God, then politics is none other than our Prophet himself. religion. The struggle for ideal social relations Well-read faithful such as myself will is the struggle of mankind toward its Godhood. recognize this seeming coincidence for what it By penetrating the mystifications of various really is: a message from God revealing the anti-human political orders, humanity can hope true nature of the universe. to organize the relations among its parts in an Which is, for the benefit of the not-so-well- ideal, liberating manner, and thus manifest its read and the heathen: the universe is in fact a divine, truly human nature. movie and we are all in it. God is the director. It's a production that has been plagued by problems from the beginning and, in fact, has already had a number of directors prior to the "When I first discovered Phil Dick's work, I was one now at the helm. really happy. He often has this very relaxed, In an effort to rescue this production from a unstuffy way about him. Just folks. And I like fate worse than the fiery pit — i.e., becoming that his 'folks' aren't good patriotic honest the Heaven's Gate of its time — the current workers, no, they're neurotics. On the other director, or God, has dispensed with dogma hand, if I read too much Dick, I get sick of how and embraced dogme. It's one of the few

PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 7 techniques nobody's tried yet and in a situation was running out of steam. He later explained this desperate, there isn't a whole lot to lose. to Gregg Rickman: Thus, the lousy lighting, muddled sound, all those badly-framed shots with things off-centre Ubik started off conventionally, and then (not to mention camera-shake!), and the all of a sudden I realized I was writing improvised sequences that go on and on and too conventional a novel, and I panicked on and don't end until some of the characters and just decided to go for broke on end up painting themselves into a corner with anything I could think of, and lucked out. their tongues (so to speak). I lucked out because I’d been reading But there is a script. It's based on things the Tibetan Book of the Dead and I'd taken from many different books and stories, had some interesting theological ideas. all of them by Philip K. Dick. And as you So I had the material to put in. But that probably understand by now, Dick is also the was a rather desperate attempt to infuse director. something original into that book, Therefore, PKD = GOD. QED. whereas the original concept was not I realize the foregoing isn't exactly what original. anyone would call pithy. But then, scripture I was writing for Larry Ashmead (at never is. Doubleday), and he liked Ubik a lot. It If you give long and careful consideration to was his favorite, of all those that I sold everything I've just told you, you'll see I'm right. him. But I had to pull that out of the fire. That's not all there is to it, of course, but that Now there is an element of pretty much covers the most important points. I desperation that began to show up in would tell you more, except Chris says that I the writing, a recognition that I'm have to take my medication now. Actually, he beginning to repeat myself and an says I should have taken it an hour ago, but I attempt to do something new when I really fail to see what difference 60 minutes wrote that one. What we're seeing with one way or another could make. that, though, is the beginning of an ossification in my writing where I am Game in the Maze beginning to repeat myself. There was By Patrick Clark beginning to be evidence that my whole format had frozen, and I wasn't I suppose the most natural thing in the advancing. Ubik was a desperate world is to hope, against all the evidence, that attempt to advance it. (Philip K Dick: In one's favorite author had actually produced an His Own Words: pp 183-84) unpublished novel and it was lying somewhere in manuscript waiting to be discovered. Alas, Ubik reached Phil's agent, Scott Meredith there is no reason at all to believe that an on 2 July 1966. At this point, Phil's writing unknown Philip K. Dick book is still out there grinds nearly to a halt. For the remainder of waiting for some lucky scholar to trip over it 1966 and all of 1967 Phil's output is negligible: and delight the world. The Owl In Daylight, the a script for the television program "The novel Phil had barely begun to think about just Invaders," a plot idea for "Mission Impossible" before his death, never got to the first draft and a chapter and some chapter excerpts for stage. There are, alas, no unpublished novels what will one day become The Galactic Pot- to be found. The second most natural thing in Healer totally thirty pages. (PKD to Cynthia the world is to wish that that favorite author had ____: February 27, 1967 and PKD to Scott written more books when he had the time. For Meredith: Nov. 3, 1967) In 1964 Phil had Phil one such period might have been 1966-67. written an outline and an opening chapter for a Between 1963 and 1966 Philip wrote an work he called "The Kneeling Legless Man." incredible thirteen novels beginning with Dr. Based upon the outline, Doubleday had Bloodmoney and ending with Ubik. But Phil contracted for the finished novel but Phil

PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 8 couldn't complete it. Failure to deliver the work don’t think Ace would be right for this caused complications with Doubleday. one, in spite of their loud noises of all at Two additional manuscripts were written in once being in the market for "adult" 1967. These were outlines for proposed science fiction. If you want, try this on novels composed to catch the attention of them, but primarily I'd like to see you some publisher who might be tempted sign a submit it wherever you think best. (PKD contract and pay an advance. The two outlines to Scott Meredith April 24, 1967) were entitled respectively "Joe Protagoras is Alive and Living on Earth" and "The Name of Two weeks later "additional material for the the Game is Death." They were eventually science fiction outline The Name of the Game published in 1992. (New Worlds #2: pp. 255- is Death" arrived in New York. 283) Meredith shopped both outlines around but Joe Protagoras is a typical PKD character without much luck. Doubleday and Avon living in a dreary, failing socialist future working rejected "Joe Protagoras" outright. Berkeley in a dead-end job and with a pushy girlfriend. received it next and sat on it for a year and a Through a series of improbable events he half before finally accepting it on January 31, lands a job at the REM Corporation designing 1969. Phil stiffed them and never wrote the rides for an amusement park. In reality REM is novel; Williams says Phil didn’t finally fulfill the constructing a fake utopian world as part of a Berkeley contract until 1978 when he sent convoluted political conspiracy to get rid of the them the collection The Golden Man. (New current elderly despot and replace him with a Worlds #2 p. 256) What this also means is that younger, though by no means more by 1969 Phil had two unfulfilled contracts with enlightened, successor. There are the usual two different publishers: Deus Irae for wheels-within-wheels plot developments Doubleday and "Joe Protagoras" for Berkeley. revolving around that familiar PKD device the Despite Phil's misgivings "Name of the "fake fakes." But the narrative itself appears Game" went first to Terry Carr at Ace who held fairly straightforward. The plot to "Joe it for five months before declining. It then went Protagoras " looks like it contains elements first to Avon and Lancer who both rejected it. At found in "Today the World," an unfinished last Meredith submitted it to Doubleday in May story thought to date from 1963. (PKDS 1968 possibly because Doubleday had Newsletter #20" pp. 2-3) requested something by Phil: "Name of the Game Is Death" is something else again. It involves two future societies, "By the way -- I got a letter from Larry 2017 and 2118, a complicated board game Ashmead at Doubleday asking for world reminiscent of The Game Players of another novel. This is a good sign, I Titan and Eye In the Sky mediated by different think." (PKD to Scott Meredith: mushrooms and murder, a form of February 28, 1968). communication known as "speedch" and illegal group sex involving electronic amplification. Considering that Phil had not yet delivered Even as an outline it's a bit of a mess. Deus Irae this seems like a strange request. It Scott Meredith received "Joe Protagoras" might explain why Meredith originally submitted on May 1, 1967 and "Name of the Game" on "Name of the Game" to the paperback houses May 4. In a cover letter Phil wrote: (Ace, Avon, Lancer) first rather than directly to Doubleday in 1967. Here is a new outline for a new s-f In the end, neither outline bore fruit. It novel, which I am in the process of seems unlikely that Phil would have been able working on. Terry Carr at Ace wrote me to write the novels in any case as throughout recently and asked if I had anything for the year he was essentially suffering from them, and I mentioned this particular writer's block. He confessed to his friend novel and that I would shortly be Avram Davidson: preparing an outline. However, I really PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 9 As to my end of things, I've been having together in his excitement at the idea of a good deal of trouble, too. I started on working with Zelazny, whom he obviously a new book the other day (for which I greatly admired. But the plot described in the have been making notes for four months October 26 letter is sufficiently different so that straight), got 16 good pages done, and it seems more likely that Phil had been thinking then -- bam. Nothing. What followed about the matter at least somewhat before was just awful. (PKD to Avram Zelazny came into the picture. What he Davidson: April 27, 1967) apparently is not thinking about at all is "The Kneeling Legless Man." Phil may be referring here to "Name of the 1968 was a busy year for Phil. Do Androids Game" but whatever it was it's clear he was at Dream of Electric Sheep (written in 1966) was an artistic impasse. Possibly he was simply published. In March he finished and sent to his burned out from his thirteen novels spree. agent the manuscript of Galactic Pot-Healer. Certainly he was tired of his "what is reality" His friend and mentor Anthony Boucher died of plot device as his remarks to Rickman plainly cancer on April 29th. In June Phil and his wife show. In a reply to Donald Wollheim about Nancy purchased a house in San Rafael. He doing another book for Ace, he asked,' had been collaborating in fits and starts for "Do you want me to handle any particular some time on the novel with Zelazny. Then, in theme? Do you want me to avoid any September 1968 Phil attended a science fiction particular theme (such as reality-versus- convention in San Francisco nicknamed illusion, for example)?" (PKD to Donald A. "Baycon." Shortly after the convention he Wollheim:October 22, 1968) wrote to Ashmead: Soon after Phil opened a correspondence with fellow SF writer Roger Zelazny and the "Meanwhile, I have started on a novel idea of collaborating on a novel grew up. which I think is a giant step forward for (This would eventually produce Deus Irae, the me. I am not going to do an outline on title by which "The Kneeling Legless Man" this one. It is, I think a totally new sort finally was completed.) In a letter to Zelazny of novel for me, one in which the nature on October 26, 1967 Phil pitches an idea for of reality is firmly stated; there won't collaboration on a new book. This is before the merely be layer after layer of illusion. I Deus Irae collaboration comes up. The plot he had the idea before the Baycon, and sends to Zelazny appears to be a merger of when I came away from it I had a totally the "Joe Protagoras" and "Name of the Game" new piece of material emerging, outlines. Paul Williams points this out in his perhaps because of what I said there New Worlds introduction. Here is the and what was said to me. Perhaps I interesting part. Phil writes: was too timid in the past to dare say what reality was; I only felt competent to "I have pages and pages of notes on say what was illusion. My confidence in this novel, including a full list of well myself is much greater at this point than developed characters. What I do not it ever was before in my seventeen have is any sort of final part -- i.e. years of s-f writing and selling." (PKD to resolution -- of the novel. In other words Lawrence Ashmead: September 7, I have half a novel…." 1968)

"Half a novel" finished is one possible This novel would eventually become A Maze of interpretation though perhaps that reads too Death. much into it. It does sound like Phil continued There has been some confusion as to origin to think about his two orphaned outlines even of this work. Some authorities believe it to though they were both still circulating have originated as "Name of the Game. But I separately amongst various publishers. Or he believe that Phil abandoned his original may have spontaneously melded the two concepts from 1967 and struck off on a PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 10 completely new direction as "Joe Protagoras" Knight story?") A few elements for this new and "Name of the Game" plots have very little work are lifted from the "Name of the Game" in common with Maze. In fact I believe that such as the characters all arriving separately "The Name of the Game Is Death" was never and, most significantly, the mysterious the new novel's working title, as some have murders. There are a number of minor suggested and certainly it was not the source differences between the outline and the of the ideas found in Maze. Properly "Name of finished novel though in the main Phil stayed the Game" refers only to the 1967 outline. on course. Despite what he told Ashmead, Phil did The working title "The Hour of the indeed write an outline. It is part of the T.E.N.C.H." is a bit of a mystery. Phil used the collection at Bowling Green State University. Maze title -- or a variation of it -- in his letter to The 1968 outline has the working title of "The Donald Wollheim on October 22, 1968: Hour of the T.E.N.C.H." This was the title on the carbon copy of the draft in the Bowling "My situation is this: yesterday I sent off Green collection as well, which, again, casts a new novel, A MAZE WITH DEATH, to doubt upon the "Name of the Game" as source Scott [Meredith]. It is an s-f mystery, material. Phil did draw on other authors for and Larry Ashmead is interested in it for some of his ideas and he conveniently lists a series of "future mystery novels," as them for us: they're called."

"Novel of an Earth colony on a far off "The Hour of the T.E.N.C.H." draft at Bowling planet, and the decline and decay both Green must then pre-date October 22. socially, economically, and Perhaps it is the "rough draft" Meredith speaks psychologically of them all: ala Paul of in his September 30 letter. The manuscript Bowles & "The Beckoning Fair One," & has numerous handwritten corrections, all fairly THE CASTLE -- ending ala NICHTS minor in nature, and when Phil typed the final NEUS IN WESTEN: the last death. A draft for Doubleday perhaps he changed the study of advancing entropy ala "Silent title to A MAZE WITH DEATH. On November Snow." 13 Phil wrote to Roger Zelazny:

"Each character arrived on his own ship. "Speaking of Doubleday -- I got news Prior to start of book they don't know from my agent today that Doubleday one another. Like AND THEN THERE has bought my most recent novel, a sort WERE NONE (do they actually die off, of "future mystery," as it's going to be one by one? YES. (Again like NICHTS called (working title: A MAZE WITH NEUSE.)" DEATH.)"

"As the last one dies he sees a rocket Note again the alternative wording of the arriving with help. They were not an title. The actual title was still up in the air in experiment; it was an accidental 1970 as the book was nearing publication. Phil SNAFU, without meaning or purpose. kept tinkering with it until the last minute: (Maybe the rocket has a medical robot, which saves him -- as in end of LORD "I, too, prefer MAZE OF DEATH, but I OF THE FLIES. think a THE should start it; i.e., THE MAZE OF DEATH (or possibly A MAZE All the elements that went into what finally OF DEATH). So go ahead." (PKD to became A Maze of Death are present in the Judith M. Glushanok: January 13, 1970) outline, including the ending when the crew is revealed to be in a "polyencephalic drama." In retrospect, Phil classified Maze as yet (To quote from the outline again: "Or are they another ossified work. He told Rickman: one polyencephalic organism ala the Damon PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 11 A Maze of Death is really a desperate Terry Carr on November 13th "I did turn over to attempt to come up with something new. Don …three and a half chapters and an In no way is it new. It repeats familiar outline…of an even more recent novel I'm things with a multi-foci basis and the working on, one especially for Ace that no one epistemological theme, the reality else has seen." There are so many outlines versus irreality. That's the last gasp of and manuscripts and contracts and those things that had become my stock collaborations in play it would be a wonder if in trade. At that point I could not go on. Phil himself could have kept it all straight. I had exhausted all the possibilities in Despite being able to write these new works the type of thing I was doing. (In His the energy soon disipated again and Phil found Own Words p. 183) himself at the end of 1968 pretty much as he was in 1967: blocked. So my guess would be this. There are three manuscripts in contention at Doubleday So with Maze of Death there was no in September-October 1968; the unfinished way there could be a further novel Deus Irae, the outline to "The Name of the based on those things. Something new Game is Death" and the completed rough draft had to be done. And the next novel, of what will eventually be titled A Maze of well, the next novel was Our Friends Death. Maze is the "new one" they speak of. from Frolix 8 (1970). And that is a The relevant paragraphs of the September 30 throwaway novel. That was simply letter from Meredith read: written for money. It was not intended to be anything else but a novel for Ace "Doubleday, of course, is very anxious Books. It was under contract for Ace to see the new book you've mentioned Books. It was simply a regression. (In to us and to Larry, and if you could send His Own Words p. 183-84) in a completed half, say in two weeks or so, they'll be able to issue an immediate With the exception of three short stories (itself contract. a kind of regression to his early writing days) And, of course, they're very anxious Phil falls silent until 1974. about DEUS IRAE, mostly because they'd like to contract for THE NAME OF "The law of diminishing returns appears to THE GAME IS DEATH as soon as have caught up with Hollywood's Philip K. Dick possible, but cannot until they have infatuation. The man was a literary workhorse, something more on DEUS IRAE. This is so it's not as if there's nothing left to adapt; it's necessary because GAME in only in more that the diversity of his vision has been outline form, whereas the new one is so diluted by well-meaning dilettantes and completed in rough draft." profit-hungry bandwagoneers that it now has the unmistakable rigidity of formula. Paycheck, Meredith may have the manuscript for "The the latest big-dollar cinematic Dickwork, flogs Hour of the T.E.N.C.H." in its possession but that formula mercilessly." from the sense of the letter wants a more - Mark Holcomb, “Philip K. Paycheck” polished draft to send to Doubleday -- though Village Voice Dec. 24, 2003 they may have contacted Larry Ashmead about the manuscript's existence. Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, the outline to "Joe Protagoras" is sitting at Berkeley waiting for them to make up their minds. The Deus Irae collaboration with Roger Zelazny continues and Phil is also working on a novel for Donald Wollheim at Ace -- what will become Our Friends from Frolix 8. He wrote to PKD Otaku # 12 - February 2004 12