Philip Dick - The Shifting Realities of PK Dick

What has happened is that the correction is not separated from that which it corrects, either by time or space, hence not by causality. The person is rescued by the merit of an act that he will not live to commit -- an impossible situation from the normal standpoint. Perhaps it can be understood if solution A, which does not work, is supposed as occurring in a falsework or hypothetical, not actual, universe: a sort of tentative sketch off the canvas. Or what if it is supposed that no linear time elapses within the period in which solution A takes place; solution A occurs at a point rather than a line. The correction does not lag; it is as fast as the faulty solution that it overtakes. In other words, the faulty solution is overrun as it unfolds. This is impossible, but it is the case. It is like a spider who can only toss a web strand across a distance between bushes if he has already tossed a stand across that distance. The solution must precede the problem, and therein lies the mystery. How can it be? But it is so; the solution to the Xerox missive of 3-74 shows up in novels and a story I wrote as much as ten years earlier [most likely "Faith of Our Fathers"]. The problem is formulated; the right solution is formulated (especially in Penultimate Truth , and for all I know, it shows up elsewhere in my writing as well, places I have not as yet looked). The mind that is retracking its life has plenty of leisure time in which to formulate the problem and develop a successful answer.

Lawrence Sutin is the author of Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick . He is currently at work on a biography of Aleister Crowley.