Politics, Religion, and Philosophy in the Fiction of Philip K. Dick

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research New York City College of Technology 2005 How Much Does Chaos Scare You?: Politics, Religion, and Philosophy in the Fiction of Philip K. Dick Aaron Barlow CUNY New York City College of Technology How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/ny_pubs/25 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] How Much Does Chaos Scare You? Politics, Religion, and Philosophy in the Fiction of Philip K. Dick Aaron Barlow Shakespeare’s Sister, Inc. Brooklyn, NY & lulu.com 2005 © Aaron Barlow, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Foreword n 1989, while I was serving in Peace Corps in West Africa, II received a letter from an American academic publisher asking if I were interested in submitting for publication the doctoral dissertation I had completed the year before at the University of Iowa. “Why would I want to do that?” I asked. One dissertation on Philip K. Dick had already appeared as a book (by Kim Stanley Robinson) and Dick, though I loved his work, just wasn’t that well known or respected (not then). Plus, I was liv- ing in a mud hut and teaching people to use oxen for plowing: how would I ever be able to do the work that would be needed to turn my study from dissertation to book? When I defended the dissertation, I had imagined myself finished with studies of Philip K. Dick and with academia. My life was moving in other, distant directions. So, when I heard, a year after tossing that letter into the trash, that the publisher had closed its doors, I figured that was simply confirmation that I had made the right choice. A few years later, however, in the early days of the Internet, I ran across Jason Koornick’s then-new site www.philipkdick.com (now www.philipkdickfans.com, the other name now housing the “official” site). Looking it over and admiring it, I had two thoughts. First, one of the things I had come to hate about doctoral dissertations is that they disappear. The only people who were reading them were the few other academics working in related fields who happened to request copies from University Microfilms in Ann Arbor, Michigan. By this time, obviously, I had changed from my earlier attitude: now I did want people to read what I had written and was worried that academic studies had moved just too far from even the educated lay reader, the reader who interests me most. Perhaps I also had been seduced by the volume that Judith Kerman had edited, Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream ii Aaron Barlow of Electric Sheep? (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991). My contribution was an essay called “Victimized Victimizers: Philip K. Dick’s Androids,” a much-altered version of the seventh chapter of my dissertation (and of this book). Second, I had become concerned about the increasing- ly proprietary nature of much scholarship. I believe quite strongly in the concept of the commons and feel that we all gain when we contribute to it. By giving Jason my dissertation for inclusion on his website—and doing that without copyrighting my work—I felt I might be moving academic studies somewhat into the popular sphere (something I continue to encourage) and could be pro- moting the sort of openness that helps engender future schol- arly and creative work. A few years afterwards, when I had been completely re- moved from academia for quite some time, I received an email from a woman in Spain, asking if a chapter of the dissertation (she had found it on Jason’s website) could be translated for inclusion in a magazine there. I gave my consent, of course, telling her I appreciated her asking (for, legally, she had no reason to). The chapter (chapter one of the dissertation) was translated by Diana Catalán Ruescas and appeared in VALIS: Ciencia Ficción y Fantasía 10 under the title “¿Cuánto te asusta el Caos… ?: Introducción a la obra y filosofía de Philip K. Dick” in 2001. Later that year, I returned to teaching, though part-time. At first, I saw it simply as a way of making a little extra mon- ey, but soon discovered I liked it much more than I ever had before. Soon, I was teaching at two, sometimes three, dif- ferent colleges—a course here, a course there—and thinking about entering the field full-time. The problem, though, was that English had become an extremely competitive field and, having been out of it for so long, I had no record of publication within it, nothing to base my job search on. And, quite frankly, having been away for so long, I didn’t know if I had How Much Does Chaos Scare You? iii the energy to catch up with everything that had happened in the meantime. In 2003, however, an English scholar named Will Brooker contacted me, asking if I would contribute to a new anthol- ogy of essays on Blade Runner. He’d liked my essay in the Kerman volume so had looked me up. Flattered, I agreed, and produced “Reel Frogs and Imaginary Cities: The Influences of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick on the Contemporary Science Fiction Movie” which will be part of The Blade Runner Experience: After-Effects and Intertexts of a Cult Film (London: Wallflower Press, September 2005). Emboldened, I decided to try my hand at a book of my own, on the intersection of science fiction and film with con- sideration of the impact of the new DVD technology. Though he didn’t like my proposal on that topic, Eric Levy, an editor at Praeger Publishing, encouraged me to submit another, one concentrating exclusively on the DVD. That led to The DVD Revolution: Movies, Culture, and Technology (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005) and confidence enough for me to begin a real academic job search. While I was working on The DVD Revolution, I received another email, this time from a man named Arturo Villarrubia. He asked if I were aware that my dissertation had now appeared as a book in Spain! Though I’d had glimmerings that something was happen- ing, I was still a little surprised. I didn’t mind, however, and wrote Arturo back, telling him it was fine by me—and wrote the publisher, asking that he send me a copy or two. He did. The book, which appeared at the end of 2003 from Grupo Editorial AJEC in Granada, is called ¿Cuánto te asusta el Caos? Política, religión y filosofía en la obra de Philip K. Dick. Eva Verloop Van der Meij did the translation. The work was well-received in Spain, and Arturo and I continued to exchange email. A few months later, he asked if I would contribute to a volume he was editing. So, I wrote “What’s Going Down: The Lessons of Philip K. Dick’s Short Fiction for the Post-9/11 World” and sent it off to him. iv Aaron Barlow Unfortunately, he was unable to use the essay, so I decided to include it here. Of course, all of this new interest in my work on Philip K. Dick didn’t come about because I am so brilliant, but because the world had awakened to the fact that he was. Dick’s books have sold well in the decades since his death, and more than half-a-dozen movies have been made from them. He has come to be recognized as one of the most intriguing writers of his time as well as one whose voice still seems fresh—a status that appears to be secure for the foreseeable future. As I began to publish more, and as my dissertation seemed connected, in one way or another, to each of the publications mentioned here, I soon began to think about ways of seeing it in print along with the rest. Given its checkered publication history, however, I did not feel I wanted to submit it to a traditional academic publisher, or to any other publisher, for that matter. For one thing, I want what’s on the www.philipkdick.com site to stay there, unencumbered by copyright considerations. For another, I wanted to be able to add the essay I wrote for Villarrubia without hassling over rights for it (Arturo is fine with whatever I do with it in English—it’s the other side I would worry about). If I were to publish the dissertation as a book, I would want the book to be an addition, not a limitation, to the dissertation’s place as a part of Philip K. Dick scholarship and fandom. The only person who would be willing to publish this book without copyright is me. And so that is what I have done, uti- lizing print-on-demand possibilities through the Internet, re- vising the chapters a little (though I must admit I haven’t tak- en advantage of contemporary scholarship—as I should have done), and even formatting the book myself, using Adobe InDesign. Please feel free to reproduce any part of this book, distrib- uting it any way you wish. All I ask in return is that you let me know: [email protected].

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