Philip Dick - The Shifting Realities of PK Dick

Four nights before Pinky unexpectedly died, before we knew he had cancer -- I started to say, before he had been diagnosed as having a bruised rib -- he and Tessa and I, as was our custom, were lying on the big bed, and I saw a uniform pale white light slowly fill the room. I thought the angel of death had come for me and I began praying in Latin: "Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo," and so forth. Tessa gritted her teeth, but Pinky sat there, front feet tucked under him, impassive. I knew there was no place to hide, like under the bed. Every child knows that. And it looks bad.

It never occurred to me that death was arriving for anyone but me, which shows my attitude. I saw us all as painted ducks, on a painted sea, and thought of the thirteenth-century Arabic poem about "Once he will miss, twice he will miss. All the world's one level plain for him on which he hunts for flowers." We were as conspicuous as -- well, anyhow, finally I gave up praying, but I remember in particular I kept crying out, "Mors stupebit et natura," which I thought meant that death stood stupefied, as if in surprise (as in, "I was stupefied to learn that my car had been towed away." It means just standing there impotently. That maybe is not what Merriam-Webster 3 says, but it is what I say).

Pinky never noticed the pale white light; as was his custom he seemed awake, but dozing. I think he was humming to himself. Later when I slept, toward morning, I dreamed a disturbing dream: The report of a gun fired close to my ear: a dreadful shotgun blast, and when I looked I saw a woman lying dying. I went for aid, but got on to one of those electric trolley buses by mistake, along with three Gestapo agents (I dream that a lot). We rode around forever while I tried vainly to short-circuit the power cables of the bus or trolley car, whatever it was -- no luck. The Gestapo agents remained confident in that smug way they have and read newspapers and smoked. They knew they had me.

I would like to speak to my friends, here, to let them know that (1) all the dreadful things they have heard have befallen me have indeed befallen me, and (2) I am fine anyhow. In February I had a heart attack. The paramedics came -- I was alone in the house at the time -- and it was just like a scene in the TV program Emergency . They arrived two minutes after I phoned them, and pretty soon they were monitoring my vital life signs, and then it was to the county hospital to the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit. I hovered between life and death, telling jokes and falling in love with one nurse named Beth, who always wore pink.

But I write this to say that I recovered completely, until I saw the bill for $2,000 anyhow, which brings up the point that it was to the county hospital that I was taken; I didn't have any money, and none of the other Orange County hospitals would accept me. My view here is, Thank God for a hospital that will take you if you're broke, asking no questions, just saving your life and billing you later. But...

When I was sprung eleven days later I had forty cents, no more. Some food at home in the freezer. My total income for that month was nine dollars. March was no better, and by mid-April they were going to shut off the utilities. Every phone call was someone wanting money. My agent, God bless him, loaned me money, and here is where I want to say something that at the time didn't affect my head, but that when I told it later to a dude, he got really funny and said, "That sums up the situation of the artist better than I've ever heard it summed up before." There was a French royalty check on its way by mail from Paris to my agent, and I phoned, desperately, to see if it had arrived yet, since much of it was to go to me. The check arrived, the previous day. My agent could hear the fear in my voice, the shaking; I was three months overdue in my child support payments -- and he said, in an oddly soft voice, "You know, Phil, you are one of the most respected writers in the world." I barely listened; all I knew was that I wouldn't be spending thirty days in Orange County jail for nonsupport, as Jim Croce says in one of his songs.

What I want to stress is not that I am either one of the most respected writers in the world or that my agent thinks so or said so but that here I am, after twenty-five years of professional SF writing, getting notices that they are going to turn off the water and gas and electricity if I don't pay in three days, and I say, What has it all been for? Well, recently I read an article by Barry Malzberg in F&SF [ Fantasy and Science Fiction , a prominent SF magazine] in which he says he's leaving SF forever because -- well, read it yourself; it is the greatest bunch of whining I ever heard in my life. I don't propose to whine, although probably what I've said so far seems to be whining. Really, though, I am more asking a question than making a statement, whining or otherwise. What have twenty-five years of work done to make me financially secure? I have a new novel coming out next January [1977] by Doubleday ( A Scanner Darkly ), which I honestly believe to be the best work I've ever done. I have the collaboration with Roger Zelazny coming out this year, the novel Deus Irae [1976] -- there was that long article on me in Rolling Stone ["The Worlds of Philip K. Dick," November 6, 1975, by Paul Williams], which gave me a lot of publicity, and (and here it comes; get ready) I am just about to make it big. The key words: just about to . It is another case of waiting for Godot; the little boy says, "Mr. Godot isn't coming today, but surely he'll come tomorrow." But I say, If it does come for me, will it matter? Will it make up for twenty-five years of shivering with fear as to whether, when I get up in the morning, the electricity will still be turned on?

One time in early 1972 I came home and the utility company had shut off the electricity, and put a padlock on my circuit-breaker box. I got my tool kit, got out tools, and cut through the padlock and turned the power back on again. Technically, that's a crime, but the utility people were so surprised that they let me get away with it. I paid them the next day, but if you cut that padlock, you go into the slammer. I cite this to show that my fears are not merely neurotic. And the house that I was in then -- it was repossessed by the finance company that held the mortgage. So these are real and valid fears. After I moved down here to Southern California I had to start out from the bottom all over again; no car, no furniture, no house. And one day down here I got up and the electricity had been turned off. In early 1973 down here I was in bed with pneumonia, with no phone, no money to go to a doctor, to buy medication -- I remember that very well, because while I was lying there propped up in bed (so I could breathe), Mr. Death walked into my bedroom. Really. I saw him as clear as I see you now, my friends. He wore a sharp, modern, polyester suit and carried a briefcase, which he opened to reveal some simple puzzles, the sort you give grammar school children. I failed to pass, and Mr. Death said, "Then you can come with me." And I saw (I'm not kidding you) a vision of a long winding road up a hillside, with many trees, to a sort of lovely large safe-looking old building, which was a sanitarium of some kind. "I'm taking you there," he said. "These tests prove that your brain is totally burned out, so now you can rest. You can rest up there at the top of the hill forever." And I was flooded with a sense of total joy and relief. However, at that moment my chick came into the bedroom, on impulse, to see how I was. And I realized who I'd been talking to. After that I began to mend.

You will say, now, that this piece I am writing rambles, and it is supposed to, having no topic but the head of the author writing it, which is well known to be a rambling head that produces rambling writing -- with even a bit of chaos thrown in. What is my point? My point is that (1) twenty-five years of devoted writing haven't in any way given me financial security; (2) the fact that I am sure my new novel, A Scanner Darkly , is my best novel doesn't stop the fear; (3) I am not quitting. It's going to take more than all this to make me give up science fiction writing, for one simple reason. I love to write it. I am working on a thing now, called, To Scare the Dead , and already I've done two hundred thousand words of notes. It won't produce any financial security. The big break, just around the corner, will never come. One of these days I'll be back in the hospital, sick as hell, but I'll no doubt get out... and receive another $2,000 bill I have to pay off or go to jail. There are, in human beings, irrational drives. "Why don't you get a real job?" people say to me, mostly in fun, but not always in fun, and sometimes I say it to myself. They [sic; the big break] will always be on its way but not quite here yet; my agent will always help me (I should mention that he is Scott Meredith, and I've been with him about twenty-four years, and in 1973 when my son Christopher was born, Scott sent him the most beautiful silver rattle you ever saw) -- I guess there are eternal verities in the universe, all right, and the one that appeals to me is that man will keep on striving no matter how many times he is pushed down, which was what Faulkner said so thrillingly in his Nobel Prize speech. Man will be planning and scheming amid the ruins; the sound of his voice will still be heard.