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The Penultimate Truth - by John Fairchild 21 the Truth - by Lord RC 22 Comments on the Penultimate Truth- by Bruce Gillespie 25 Late Night Thoughts About Fog

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The Penultimate Truth - by John Fairchild 21 the Truth - by Lord RC 22 Comments on the Penultimate Truth- by Bruce Gillespie 25 Late Night Thoughts About Fog Above Photo of Phil © Tessa Dick, by kind permission June 2017 Also in this issue... News of DVD’s of PKD Celebration 1991 (England), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, David Bowie and Philip K. Dick, Telepathy and Murder, - Explored Truth 1 The Penultimate Contents Page Cover - The Penultimate Distortion by Nick Buchanan 1 Editorial - by Patrick Clark 3 Reading PKD’s Mainstream Novels as SF- by Douglas A. Mackey 4 Notes for THITHC- PKD and Fake Realities panel by Patrick Clark 10 A Penultimate Mess - by Jami Yance-Woman Morgan 12 The Penultimate City - by Evan Lampe 18 Italicized Internal Dialogue in The Penultimate Truth - by John Fairchild 21 The Truth - by Lord RC 22 Comments on The Penultimate Truth- by Bruce Gillespie 25 Late Night Thoughts about Fog... - by Frank Bertrand 26 Are We There Yet?- by Nick Buchanan 29 A Poem in Memory of Perry Kinman - by Andre Welling 37 Perry Memories - by Lord RC 38 Perry Kinman: A Memoir - by Patrick Clark 41 Dickheads in the Boneyard- by Charles C. Mitchell 44 A Thank You - from Lord Running Clam 45 Letters to the Editor 46 Notes and Comments - compiled by Patrick Clark 47 PKD Otaku is a zine made by fans for fans. It exists to celebrate, explore and discuss the work of Philip K Dick. The PKD Otaku Team have enjoyed the writing and ideas of Philip K. Dick for decades, and continue to do so. The subject of Philip K. Dick benefits from diverse perspectives, opinions, and insights. In this zine we hope to explore the Novels, Short-Fiction, Non-fiction and ideas of Philip K Dick. If you would like to contribute (a letter of comment, an article, essay or review) please make your submission in MS Doc, Rtf or Txt form to the Otaku Team c/o Patrick Clark via email: [email protected] All submissions are welcome and considered, but we cannot promise that all will see print. Thank you for maintaining the dialogue! -- The PKD OTAKU Team PKD Otaku Layout, Logo, Graphics and Typesetting by Nick Buchanan [email protected] © Copyright Please note: Every article, letter, review, illustration and design is used here by consent of the author/ originator. Such work may not be reproduced in any form without their express permission. If in doubt, please contact Otaku, we will be happy to help you. 2 Fathers”. Those officials, very often police officials, are Editorial usually just doing their jobs but their “jobs” typically re- by Patrick Clark quire expediency over humanity. The heads of State are sometime responsible, like Gino Molinari, sometimes fe- ral, like Willis Gram, and sometimes pitilessly evil, like the “The greatest menace of the twentieth century is Ultimate Benefactor. the totalitarian state. It can take many forms: left- wing fascism, psychological movements, religious Beyond his fiction, Phil was keenly aware of the turmoil movements, of his own day: the drug re- post-war anti-com- habilita- munist hysteria, tion places, the war in Vietnam, powerful and, especially, the people, ma- Watergate scandal nipulative which he discussed people; or it so often in his let- can be in a ters from that relationship period. He went with some- public in his essays one who is “The Nixon Crowd” more pow- and “Letters from erful than Amerika.” you psycho- logically. Es- Given how the year sentially, I’m 2017 is going so far, 2017 Beach, England May Scarborough Armed Police pleading the cause of those people who are not jami morgan and Frank Bertrand thought a collection of strong.” essays and comments grouped around Phil’s 1964 novel – Philip K. Dick THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH would be highly appropriate. Our contributors took the idea and ran with it. You will t has been, I think everyone would agree, a most tumul- soon be examining the results. The essays range far and tuous last year. Beginning with Brexit, then the election wide and are in many case controversial. This is by inten- of Donald Trump, the tion: these are controver- I sial times and, may I add, continued rise of nation- alist movements on both “A good deal of what desperate times, too. the Left and Right, the diminution of democratic This is an especially large principles, instability in Phil wrote was overtly issue of PKD OTAKU. the EU, war and terror- There is much more than ism breaking out all over the special topic of THE the world. Where people political in nature” PENULTMATE TRUTH. were once focused on Herein are some mem- technology and economics, politics is the new topic of oirs of our old friend Perry Kinman taken from this world conversation, commentary and worry. much too young. We have a report on the Fort Morgan Festival as well. And a fascinating look at Phil’s main- I suppose nowadays people think of Phil as a religious stream novels. or philosophical writer. Or, still, a reality-bending writer. Or a religious/philosophical/reality-bending writer. But It is with deep regret, too, that we note the deaths of a good deal of what Phil wrote was overtly political in Anne Dick, Phil’s third wife, and Grania Davis, his close nature. Government officials, and in some instance the friend and one-time companion. Both on April 28th by actual heads of State, are common actors in his stories. some strange coincidence. Consider THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, THE PENULTI- MATE TRUTH, NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR, OUR FRIENDS ----- FROM FROLIX 8, FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID, A SCANNER DARKLY – and let’s not forget “Faith of Our 3 Reading PKD’s Mainstream if they were sf, they will become sf. Let me explain. Novels as SF Interestingly, there are a number of Dick’s science fiction by Douglas A. Mackey works that are only marginally sf. The Man in the High Castle, Dr. Bloodmoney, We Can Build You, Valis, A Scan- t is not generally realized that The Man in the High Cas- ner Darkly, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, and tle, published in 1962, was Philip K. Dick’s twenty-first Time Out of Joint are nominally sf but most of these books novel. It was his ninth science-fiction novel, the one that honestly do not have that much to do with sf. Minus the I scramble suit, A Scanner Darkly is a book about drug ad- brought him fame and a Hugo Award, but he had writ- ten as well twelve non-science-fiction novels in the 1950s, dicts. Minus the Lincoln simulacrum, We Can Build You is which did not get published at that time. These were his about a relationship with a schizophrenic. And Valis? It’s attempts to break into the literary mainstream. scarcely categorizable at all. When I first learned of the existence of these books, well These hybrid sf/non-sf books show that there is a continu- before they were published, I was fascinated by the titles. um in the Dick oeuvre. In some books there is plenty of sf; For example: Puttering About in a Small Land. Mary and something like The Game Players of Titan. Then there are the Giant. In Milton Lumky Territory. The Man Whose Teeth the mixed ones as I have just described. And finally there Were All Exactly Alike. They sounded like very offbeat fan- are the mainstream books. In total we have 44 extant tasies. They sounded appropriate to the wild imagination novels and I regard them all together as a sf metanovel. of Philip K. Dick. But just as some of Dick’s novels have chapters that are clearly sf and others that have no particular sf feature, so When I first got a chance to read them, in the mid-1980s, the mainstream novels hold that polarity in terms of the most of them still unpublished, I was working on my book PKD metanovel. on PKD (which appeared under the highly original title of Philip K. Dick). I sat in the CalState-Fullerton Special Col- Time Out of Joint (1958) is a good demonstration of a nov- lections and in Paul Williams’ garage in Glen Ellen, Cali- el that seems very normal and realistic until the moment fornia, reading the typescripts one after another. In my the soft-drink stand disappears and is replaced by a piece book this resulted in a chapter entitled “A Realist in the of paper. The early chapters where Ragle Gumm solving Wrong Reality.”1 I his puzzles every day felt that Dick was and nothing much is trying to reveal the “When I first learned of happening—these truth about life in the are like the books 1950s but it didn’t where life goes on quite work because it the existence of these and there is no sci- wasn’t really his real- ence fiction, and yes, ity. He was there but things do happen but he didn’t really live books, well before they they stay in the realm there. It wasn’t until of the mundane. he became adjusted were published, I was to the fact that sci- The key that makes ence fiction was his all of this share the true home, that he fascinated by the titles” PKD brand, though, started writing his is that even when masterpieces: The Man in the High Castle, Martian Time- nothing is happening Slip, and so on. on the surface, as in Time Out of Joint, something is hap- pening below the surface. That something may manifest Because the manuscripts to three of the mainstream nov- as a wild affair, an extremely dysfunctional relationship, a els were lost, I am going to be dealing here with the nine loosening of the sense of reality within a character...but that were eventually published.
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