Philip Dick - The Shifting Realities of PK Dick

As we move up the manifold -- i.e. progress forward in lineal time, or somehow stand still and lineal time progresses forward, whichever model is more correct -- we as many entelechies are continually signaled, given information, and most of all, disinhibited by firings from the universe around us; in this fashion harmony among all parts of the universe is maintained. There is no more grand scheme than this: to be aware that I, as a representative entelechy, must unfold only as these preset signals reach me, and that control as to the when -- the locus in time -- that each signal will come is entirely in the hands of the universe... this is a thrilling comprehension, and makes me aware of the unbreakable tie between me and my environment.

There is such order in the response between engrammed systems within each of us and the accumulating signals that fire these systems in sequence as to imply that the Agency that laid down the entelechy in the first place, engrammed and then blocked these systems, knew with absolute precision where along the time path the signals would take place that would disinhibit; chance is not involved -- the happiest of accidents is the most astute planning of the universe.

Sometimes I wonder how we could have imagined that our species was exempt from the instincts that lower species obviously have. What is different about us, however, is that ants, for instance, are disinhibited by the same signal, and the same behavior occurs; it is as if one ant again and again is involved, endlessly. But for us, each is a unique entelechy, and each receives unique sequences of signals -- to which each responds uniquely. Still, this is the language of the universe that the ant hears; we thrill with a common joy.

I myself have derived much of the material for my writing from dreams. In Flow My Tears , for example, the powerful dream that comes to Felix Buchman near the end, the dream of the wise old man on horseback, that was an actual dream I had at the time of writing the novel. In Martian Time-Slip I've written in so many dream experiences that I can't separate them, now, when I read the novel.

Ubik was primarily a dream, or series of dreams. In my opinion it contains strong themes of pre-Socratic philosophical views of the world, unfamiliar to me when I wrote it (to name just one, the views of Empedocles). It is possible that the noosphere contained thought patterns in the form of very weak energy until we developed radio transmission; whereupon the energy level of the noosphere went out of bounds and assumed a life of its own. It no longer served as a mere passive repository of human information (the "Seas of Knowledge" that ancient Sumer believed in) but, due to the incredible surge of charge from our electronic signals and the information-rich material therein, we have given it power to cross a vast threshold; we have, so to speak, resurrected what Philo and other ancients have called the Logos . Information has, then, become alive, with a collective mind of its own independent of our brains, if this theory is correct. It does not merely know what we know and remember what once was known, but can construct solutions on its own: It is a titanic AI system. The difference would be between a tape recorder that could "remember" a Beethoven symphony that it "heard," and one that could create new ones, on and on; the library in the sky, having read all the books there are and ever were, is writing its own book, now, and at night we are being read to -- told the exciting tale comprising that Great Work-in-Progress.

I must mention lan Watson's article in Science-Fiction Studies on Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven ; in his excellent piece he refers to what may be the most significant -- startlingly so -- story SF has yet produced: Fredric Brown's story that appeared in Astounding , "The Waveries." You must read that story; if you do not, you may die without understanding the universe coming into being around you. The Waveries were attracted to Earth by our radio waves; they returned in a facsimile form, so like our transmissions (SOS and so forth, chronologically) that at first we couldn't fathom what was up. Regarding Lathe , Watson says:

Conceivably George (Orr) dreamt a hostile invasion into a peaceful one; yet the dominant probability is that the aliens are, as they maintain, "of the dream time," that their whole culture revolves around the mode of "reality dreaming itself into being," that they have been attracted to Earth like the Waveries of Fredric Brown's story, only by dream-waves rather than radio waves [pp. 71-72].

This could be considered scary stuff, this theme in Le Guin's work and mine. What are dreams? Are there these dream-universe entities that have come here from another star (Aldebaran, in Ms. Le Guin's novel)? Are the UFOs that people see holograms projected by their unconscious minds, acting as transformers, acting, too, as transducers of these strange dream-universe creatures?

For the past year I've had many dreams that seemed -- I stress the word "seemed" -- to indicate that a telepathic communication was in progress somewhere within my head, but after talking with Henry Korman, an associate of Ornstein's, I would imagine that it is merely my right and left hemispheres conferring in a Martin Buber I-and-Thou dialogue. But much of the dream material seemed beyond my personal ability to have created. At one point an attempt was made to get me to write down a complex engineering principle that was shown me in the form of a round motor with twin rotating wheels, opposed in direction, much as yin and yang in Taoism alternate as opposing pairs (and much like Empedocles saw love versus strife, the dialectic interaction of the world). But this was a true engineering device they had there in my dream; they showed me a pencil, they said, "This principle was known in your time." And as I rushed to find a pencil they added: "Known, but buried in a basement and forgotten." There was an elaborate high-torque chain-thrown mechanism that moved camwise between the two rotors, but I never got the hang of it when I woke up. What I did later on grasp, though, was this: Further dreams made it clear that somehow our treatment of seawater by an osmosis process would give us not only pure water but a source of energy as well. However, they had the wrong human when they began giving me that sort of material; I am not trained to understand it. I did purchase over $1,000 worth of reference books to try to figure out what I'd been shown, though. I have learned this: Something to do with a high hysteresis factor, in this twin-rotor system, is converted from a defect to an advantage. No braking mechanism is needed; the two rotors spin constantly at the same velocity, and torque is transferred by a thrown cam chain.

I give this illustration only to show that either my unconscious has been reading articles on engineering that elude my memory and my conscious attention and interest, or there are, shall I say, dream-universe people from, shall I say, Aldebaran or some other star with us. Perhaps joining their noosphere with ours? And offering assistance to a crippled, blighted planet that has been bogged down, like a rat on a weary wheel, in the dead of winter for over two thousand years? If they bring the springtime with them, then whoever they are, I welcome them; like Joe Chip in Ubik , I fear the cold, the weariness; I fear the death of wearing out on endless upward stairs, while someone cruel, or anyhow wearing a cruel mask, watches and offers no aid -- the machine, lacking empathy, watching as mere spectator, the same horror that I know haunts Harlan Ellison. It is perhaps more frightening that the killer himself (in Ubik it was Jory), this figure that sees but gives no assistance, offers no hand. That is the android, to me, and the evil demigod to Harlan; we both shudder at the idea of its existence. What I can tell you about the dream-universe people is that if they do exist, whoever they are, they are not that unsympathetic android; they are human in this deepest of all senses: They have reached out a helping hand to our planet, to our polluted ecosphere, and perhaps even assisted in throwing down the tyranny that gripped the United States, Portugal, Greece, and one day they will throw down the tyranny of the Soviet bloc as well. This is what I think of when I grasp the idea of springtime: the lifting of the iron doors of the prison and the poor prisoners, in Beethoven's Fidelio , let out into the sunlight. Ah, that moment in the opera when they see the sun and feel its warmth. And at last, at the end, the trumpet call of freedom sounds the permanent end of their cruel imprisonment; help, from outside , has arrived.