Philip Dick - The Shifting Realities of PK Dick

Often SF readers and writers are accused of a sort of clinical syndrome, a reality-evading one such as is found in schizophrenics. One pictures the disturbed adolescent boy in his room avidly reading "Spicy Science Fiction Horror Tales" and escaping into lurid fantasy as a way out of solving his and society's problems. But a primary tendency in the schizophrenic is that he is unable to think abstractly to such an extent that his mentational processes become involuntarily tied to immediate stimuli, to what is called concrete thinking. The production of great tales of other societies in the future on other planets does not pander to the incipient schizophrenic, and anyhow if I am wrong about this I'm sure TV is doing a better job in this area anyhow, this pandering.

The authentic body of science fiction, by its truly reputable writers (and I believe most of us are), does not provide an alternative to facing reality because it deals, as I've said, with reality fundamentally and primarily, as opposed to the genre of fantasy, and the writers are not clinically disturbed either; I have met many, many of my colleagues over the years, and I find them genial, warm, friendly people who hate the isolation imposed on them by the tragically solitary act of having to go off and lock oneself into one's study for a year to do a novel, not allowing any interruptions... writing is a lonely profession, at least I have found it so, and this is what I hold against my work: not that it allows me to escape into the "fantasies" of my novels but that it cuts me off from wife, children, and friends. I resent that. We all do. I find that there is enough extroversion in SF writers to cause them to yearn, to strive -- and very successfully -- to relate to other people; they are not motivated by the wish to withdraw, but by the necessity of solitude involved in the mechanics of the work itself. They have, let me say, enough extroversion to seek out whenever possible their colleagues and fans, to lecture, to speak on the radio and TV, to be interviewed... but then they must go back into that lonely little office for a period of time that, not counting food breaks and sleep breaks, may run, for a good novel, two years.

They resent this; they would love to sit and chat forever, and must force themselves back into their office or studio. They do not flee; they are forced that way, whereas, I think, the true scientist may be more introverted and might greet with real relief his withdrawal from human contact to do his work. This brings up one more point, crucial, I think, in determining what sort of person becomes an SF writer: He has a warmer heart than the scientist, and would like to play and chat and be close to others, and he resents this aspect of his work; he is torn within, and when he can, emerges from his studio to fraternize with whomever he can buttonhole. Probably, as I do, most SF writers, like most fiction writers in general, solve this by creating characters in their stories to keep them company during the long, lonely, isolated chore of work. I have a strong feeling, having met so many of my colleagues over the years, that there is almost universally among them a love of human beings and a concern for them, a desire for closeness that, in itself, might explain why the SF writer chose that field rather than one of the pure sciences. SF writers are not loners. Caught halfway between going out to petition versus retiring into solitude -- caught between the political activist and the pure scientist -- they have or at least I have found SF a workable compromise: I can be with my characters when I write, I can love them and support their anguished hopes as I would my "actual" friends -- we do, in the final analysis, write about people, however idea-oriented our stories -- and yet I don't have to be manning the barricades, be out on the street waving a banner, where I really don't belong.

I have seen real love shown among SF writers who came together at one of the many conventions -- a great authentic fondness for their colleagues, not as writers, but as close friends. I'm sure this isn't unique to SF, and yet even other kinds of writers do not seem to exhibit this extended family quality that we have -- they seem more competitive, more pitted against one another, hoping the new novel by their colleague will fail, will not turn out good. SF writers have none of that. We are a body, a corporate group working, as in the Byzantine days, on some great mosaic, upon which finally no individual name will be stamped; we are friends and we admire one another in a warm and personal way. We ratify one another and sense our identity as humans as being intimately connected with this fraternal spirit. There are few if any cold schizoid SF writers; when you meet a Ray Bradbury or a Ted Sturgeon or a Norman Spinrad or an A. E. van Vogt you find a warm person longing to know you, too; you are part of a family that goes back decades and into which we perpetually welcome others: There are no sterile, aseptic white smocks, no cruel or detached interactions among us. Writing SF requires a humanization of the person, or, put another way, I doubt if that person would want to write SF unless he had in him these empathic needs and qualities. Too timid to demonstrate, too warm to retreat to a sterile lab and experiment on objects or animals, too excited and impatient to allow all knowledge to be confined to the limits of absolute certitude -- we live in a world of what a radio SF show once called "possible maybes," and this world attracts persons who are not loners but are lonely; and between those two distinctions there is a crucial difference.

The failure of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment in 1881, in which the absolute velocity of the Earth moving through luminiferous ether proved to be zero, gave rise to Einstein's Relativity Theory, which holds that the concept "absolute velocity" is meaningless. However, scientists at UCLA, using more sophisticated laser techniques, have suggested a more probable significance of the null result: that in fact the Earth does not move and that Copernicus was a crypto-Pythagorean determined to vindicate an ancient and discredited heliocentric solar system model. In a meeting of Southern California astronomers and astrophysicists it was proposed that (1) the geocentric solar system be restored as the proper model, and (2) that Copernicus be dug up and admonished. As a side issue, Einstein will be regarded with mild disfavor and some amusement, but scientists attending the meeting could not agree on the amount of amusement to be formally proposed.

Well, I predicted wrong when I wrote Dr. Bloodmoney back in 1964. Events that I foresaw never came about, and as you read this novel you will see what I mean. But it is not the job, really, of science fiction to predict. Science fiction only seems to predict. It's like the aliens on Star Trek , all of whom speak English. A literary convention is involved, here. Nothing more.

I am amused, however, to see what specifically I got wrong. Worst of all, I totally misread the future of the manned space program. But this only shows how rapidly history unfolds. In Dr. Bloodmoney I have one American circling the world forever. This is obvious nonsense; either there would be many Americans -- and many Russians, for that matter -- or none at all.

Of course, the major item that I got wrong is the End of the World. Back in 1964 I was expecting it anytime; I kept checking my watch. Horace Gold, who edited Galaxy magazine, once chided me for anticipating global wipe-out within the next week. That was back around 1954; I anticipated it by 1964. Well, such were the fears of the times. Right now we have other worries. Our problem seems to be paying our debts with incredibly inflated dollars, finding gas for our cars -- much more mundane worries. Less cosmic.