Hey everyone - lomg time no new blog posts from me. Life got pretty chaotic in December with tons of work, a long list of expensive dental treatments and a few Christmas parties too - I still haven't fully recoverd but "get some cool stuff up on Coolest Crap" has been on my "to do" list for weeks so let's get the ball rolling and hopefully we'll build up this cool crap blog into something pretty cool during 2013!
Let's kick off the New Year and a new phase of blogging with a mention of Phillip K Dick. He's in my list of cool people everyone needs to know about and 2013 should be the year we all start either re-reading his stuff or reading hos stuff for the first time. And by "we" I mean everyone on the planet over the age of 8 and a half, of course!
From wikipedia, then, a brief intro:
Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS.
The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975.
"I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real."
In addition to 44 published novels Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau.
In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
Pretty cool so far, eh?
However that is really just the tip of the iceberg and there's a whole world of juicy weirdness when it comes to exploring the world of Phillip K. Dick - go read the full wikipedia article for now and tune in sometime soonish (possibly tomorrow) as we dive deeper into the world of Phillip K. Dick.
There's a classic BBC "Arena" documentary on Youtube, you might as well watch that too:
