by Gwen Lee
LEE: What I was saying is, you know, you said they think they’re ready. I don’t think so if they’re that repulsive. They better find a way to communicate before they appear.
DICK: I saw them and they look like little white insects— bugs. They’re awful. They look cold, and they’re not. They’re not cold. But they look to us life forms that the analogic life forms on our planet are degenerate, machine repetitious, arc—reflex arc—machines— ants, and stuff like that (sic). On their planet those are the viable evolutionary trend—not the fossilites trend, you see.
LEE: See, they’re so repulsive to humans, you know, we don’t like insects, period.
DICK: Yeah, and they’re deaf, they have no language; they don’t speak.
LEE: I know. They’re just nasty things that everybody wants to kill and eradicate.
DICK: So, all they can do is fire the mathematical constants, which of course is the thing you know, but that doesn’t necessarily save them. That doesn’t necessarily save them from being killed. Just to fire, you know, a series of numbers and that’s all they’ve got at this point is a series of numbers. They have to fire those numbers.
LEE: I don’t mean to upset you but this is just what occurred to me.
DICK: I never, I know, it’s a natural—I’ve been blocking that thought. They’re not worried that we won’t like them, they’re worried that we have the capacity to kill them by the millions. To kill them all.
LEE: I’d send out a scout.
DICK: Gee, that’s one thing I didn’t tell my agent, you know. And I said, uh, you know, I don’t know what to do, you know, about this kind of thing. I wrote a book about it, The Divine Invasion, on the basis of what I saw and everything and it is YAHWEH himself coming back to earth, and—(pause) Jesus Christ! They tried to kill him, they consider him a monster and tried to kill him. They literally in the book—they do. He comes—
LEE: In your book?
DICK: My book. It’s already in print. Just what you said. And I’m saying, “I never thought of that.” But I said, he comes, OK, he’s YAHWEH and he’s not recognized as YAHWEH and they try to kill him as a monster.
LEE: Try to kill him? Did they succeed?
DICK: No.
LEE: Then maybe he is the beast from Revelation that withstands the fatal wound.
DICK: Oh! Can you find it for me? Let me see that […] I know this all sounds really nuts, and I told my agent, you know, I said that I’m convinced that that’s what’s been going with me all these years now, you know? And it isn’t God—
LEE: Oh, here we are.
DICK: OK, fine.
LEE: It’s the fifteenth [thirteenth] chapter of Revelation: “And then I saw a second beast that emerged from the ground. It had two horns like a lamb but made a noise like a dragon. The second beast was servant to the first beast and extended its authority everywhere, making the world and all its people worship the first beast.”
DICK: Well, now, that’s the empire.
LEE: “Which had had the fatal wound and had been healed. It worked great miracles, even calling down fire from heaven on earth while the people watched; through the miracle which it was allowed to do on behalf of the first beast, it was able to win over the people of the world and persuade them to put up a statue in honor of the beast that had been wounded by the sword and still lived. It was allowed to breathe life into the statue so that the statue of the beast was able to speak, and had anyone who refused to worship the statue of the beast be put to death.” And then it goes on to the stamping of the 666—it’s the Antichrist. That’s what I was taught in Sunday school. I had a real strong Bible upbringing.
DICK: I, you know, I’m overwhelmed by that. I mean, maybe I’m just spooked out. That is an awfully powerful section of the Bible there which I am not very familiar with.
LEE: I was very much attracted to it as a child. I used to get bored in church during the sermon so I read. I found the Bible much more interesting than his babbling, and I’m still that way. I have no use for churches whatsoever. I don’t even want to be in one.
DICK: I don’t go but I read the Bible a lot.
LEE: I enjoy the Bible and I do like Christ’s teachings. Interesting. So that’s about the best. Revelation fifteen is, Revelation twenty is. That was the part we talked about earlier. Where the angel came down— OK. Um . . .this was after the other. Uh. . . “Then I saw the angel come down from heaven with the key of the abyss in his hand and an enormous chain. He overpowered the dragon, that primeval serpent which is the devil, Satan.” OK, at that point you go back to fifteen, and they said, um, oh—I should—I’m sorry, that’s thirteen not fifteen—OK. “Then I saw the second beast. He had two horns like the lamb and made a noise like a dragon.” OK, over here in twenty it says, “There was a primeval serpent, which was the devil, and Satan, and chained him up for a thousand years. He threw him into the abyss and shut the entrance and sealed it over him, to make sure he would not deceive the nations again, until a thousand years had passed. At the end of this time he must release him for a short while.” And then it went on into the thrones and the people given power.
DICK: Let me read you the part I like the best in Revelation. The part that I just love, here. I’m not as good at finding stuff as I … uh, “Then in my vision I saw the door open in heaven and heard the same voice like a trumpet, saying, ‘Come up here, I will show you what is to come in the future.’ With that the spirit possessed me and I saw a throne standing in heaven and the one who was sitting on the throne. And the person sitting there looked like a diamond and a ruby. There was a rainbow encircling his throne and this looked like an emerald. And on his throne a circle with twenty-four thrones, and on them I saw twenty-four elders sitting, dressed in white robes with golden crowns on their heads. Flashes of lightning were coming from the throne, and the sound of peals of thunder. In front of the throne there were seven flaming lamps burning, the seven spirits of God. Between the throne and myself was a sea that seemed to be made of glass, like crystal. In this standard grouped round the throne itself were four animals with many eyes, in front and behind. The first animal was like a lion, the second like a bull, the third had a human face and the forth animal was like a flying eagle. Each of the four animals had six wings and had eyes all the way around as well as inside. And day and night they never stopped singing, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty. He was, He is and He is to come.’ Every time the animals glorified and honored and gave thanks to the one sitting on the throne, who lives forever and ever, twenty-four elders prostrated themselves before and threw down their crowns in front of the throne, saying, ‘You are our Lord and our God. You are worthy of glory and honor and power. Because you made all the universe and it was only by your will that everything was made that exists.’” Beautiful language, yeah.
LEE: That’s pretty.
DICK: Yeah.
LEE: So, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to call your friends the Antichrist, but it just made—you know, it was too coincidental. I just flashed on that and I thought I’d bring it up. Um—
DICK: It’s a strange feeling, the feeling you’re living in the apocalypse. It’s a very strange feeling. That the—
LEE: It’s strange that you’ve written a book.
DICK: Yeah.
LEE: And now that it’s taken on a different meaning.
DICK: Yeah, yeah. Well, I had that happen once before with a book I wrote. After it came out. I am—my mind is really—yeah, looking back now at Divine Invasion, that is essentially my current novel. It’s really God, they don’t recognize it, they think it’s a monster, and they try to kill it and they are evil. They are evil. They’re a fusion of the Communist Party and the Catholic Church. Yeah. They form one government and it’s worldwide.
LEE: Gospel, I suppose.
DICK: And they—A computer told them that a monster baby is being smuggled into earth in this woman’s womb—this fetus—that it’s not human. And they decide it’s a monster from outer space and
they should kill it. Uh, and they open the Bible and read from it and the Bible seems to verify that it is a monster from—that it’s a monster. They come to the part where it says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” And they decide it’s something that they should kill.
LEE: Yeah, right.
DICK: And they try to destroy the ship and the baby—the mother is killed. The baby is taken out by paramedics at the scene—and that’s in the future so they have, you know, real good equipment. And they put him in what’s called a “syntho-womb” till it becomes full term, you know. And then it can be born. He’s born but he has brain damage and he doesn’t remember he’s YAHWEH. He thinks he’s just an ordinary baby. He’s taken to school—public school, including schooling and everything.
LEE: This is The Divine Invasion?
DICK: Yeah.
LEE: OK.
DICK: And he’s really YAHWEH and he doesn’t remember it. And, it’s really—so in a way it was all in vain. He’s not dead, it’s just that he doesn’t remember it at all. He thinks he’s just a little kid. But they thought they’d killed him, and they would kill him if they could find him. It’s like the killing of the infants at the time of the, uh—the time of Herod, you know, where all the infants … were killed. And when I wrote the book, I wrote it on the basis of hearing the following words: “The time he waited for has come, and the work is complete, the final world is here. He has been transplanted and is alive.” The next night I heard the same words again: “And he has been transplanted and is alive.” And at the word “is alive” I saw the Tetragrammaton. Very extraordinary […]
LEE: How fascinating!
DICK: So this book—
LEE: Do you know what time it is?
DICK: It’s, uh, 10:40.
LEE: God, I got to get going, Phil. I should have left a long time ago. Let me turn this off.
(tape ends)
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books by Philip K. Dick
Novels
Solar Lottery. New York: Ace, 1955.
The World Jones Made. New York: Ace, 1956.
The Man Who Japed. New York: Ace, 1956.
Eye in the Sky. New York: Ace, 1957.
The Cosmic Puppets. New York: Ace, 1957.
Time Out Of Joint. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1959.
Eye In The Sky. New York: Ace, 1957.
The Man in The High Castle. New York: Putnam, 1962.
The Game Players of Titan. New York: Ace, 1963.
Clans of the Alphane Moon. New York: Ace, 1964.
Martian Time Slip.. New York: Ballantine, 1964.
The Penultimate Truth. New York: Belmont, 1964.
The Simulacra. New York: Ace, 1964.
Dr. Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After the Bomb. New York: Ace, 1965.
The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldrich. New York: Doubleday, 1965.
The Crack in Space. New York: Ace, 1966.
Now Wait for Last Year. New York: Doubleday, 1966.
The Unteleported Man. New York: Ace, 1966.
Counter-Clock World. New York: Berkeley, 1967.
Ganymede Takeover. New York: Ace, 1967.
The Zap Gun. New York: Pyramid, 1967.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Doubleday, 1968.
Galactic Pot Healer. New York: Berkley, 1969.
Ubik. New York: Doubleday, 1969.
A Maze of Death. New York: Doubleday, 1970.
Our Friends from Frolix 8. New York: Ace, 1970.
We Can Build You. DAW, 1972.
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. New York: Doubleday, 1974.
Confessions of A Crap Artist. New York: Entwistle Books, 1975.
Deus Irae, with Roger Zelazney New York: Doubleday, 1976.
A Scanner Darkly. New York: Doubleday, 1977.
Valis. New York: Bantam, 1981.
The Divine Invasion. New York: Simon And Schuster, 1981.
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. New York: Simon And Schuster, 1982.
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike. Willimantic, CT: Mark V. Zeising, 1984)
Puttering About In a Small Land. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1985.
Radio Free Albemuth. New York: Arbor House, 1985.
Mary and the Giant. New York: Arbor House, 1987.
Short Stories and Other Works
A Handful Of Darkness. Cowan, 1955.
The Variable Man And Other Stories. New York: Ace, 1957.
The Preserving Machine And Other Stories. New York: Ace, 1969.
The Best of Philip K. Dick. New York: Ballantine, 1977.
The Golden Man. New York: Berkley, 1980.
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon. New York: St. Martins Press, 1985.
In Pursuit Of Valis, Selections From The Exegesis, (ed. By Lawrence Sutin). San Francisco: Underwood-Miller, 1991.
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick: 5 Volumes. San Francisco: Underwood Miller, 1987.
The Dark-Haired Girl. Willimantic, CT: Mark V. Zeising, 1988.
The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, Selected Literary And Philosophical Writings, (ed. By Lawrence Sutin). New York: Pantheon, 1995.
Filmography
Blade Runner. Warner Brothers, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford. Based on Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, 1982.
Total Recall. Carolco, directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Based on “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”, 1989.
Screamers. Triumph Films, directed by Christian Duguay, starring Peter Weller. Based on “Second Variety”. 1996
Minority Report. Dreamworks, 20th Century Fox, directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise. Based on the short story of the same name, 2000.
Impostor. Miramax Films, directed by Gary Fleder, starring Gary Sinise. Based on the short story of the same name, 2002.
Paycheck. Davis Entertainment and Lion Rock Entertainment directed by John Woo, starring Ben Affleck. Based on the short story of the same name, 2003.
A Scanner Darkly. Section Eight Productions, directed by Richard Linklater, starring Keanu Reeves. Based on the novel of the same name, 2006.
Next. Revolution Studios, directed by Lee Tamahori, starring Nicolas Cage. Based on “The Golden Man”. 2007
Radio Free Albemuth. Open Studios, directed by John Alan Simon, starring Alanis Morrisette. Based on the novel of the same name, 2010
The Adjustment Bureau. Media Rights, directed by George Nolfi, starring Matt Damon. Based on “Adustment Men”, 2011.
Total Recall. Original Film, directed by Len Wiseman, starring Colin Farrell. Based on “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”, 2012.
King of the Elves. Walt Disney Pictures, directed by Chris Williams. Based on the short story of the same name, in production to release in 2013.
Books About Philip K. Dick
Levak, Daniel J.H., A Philip K. Dick Bibliography. San Francisco: Underwood Miller, 1981.
Pierce, Hazel, Philip K. Dick. Starmont House, 1982.
Rickman, Gregg, Philip K. Dick, In His Own Words. Long Beach, CA: Valentine Press, 1984; new edition 1989, Fragments West.
Rickman, Gregg, Philip K. Dick, The Last Testament. Long Beach, CA: Valentine Press, 1985.
Williams, Paul, Only Apparently Real: The World Of Philip K. Dick. New York: Arbor House, 1986.
Rickman, Gregg, To The High Castle, Philip K. Dick, A Life, 1928-1962. Long Beach, CA: Valentine Press, 1989.
Sutin, Lawrence, Divine Invasions, A Life Of Philip K. Dick. New York: Harmony Books, 1989.
Dick, Anne R., The Search for Philip K. Dick, 1928-1982 A Memoir and Biography. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995.
INDEX
Acts, Book of, 150, 153-54, 155
Aeschylus, 127
agape, use of term, 156
age differences, 144-47
Alien (film), 37
Allen, Woody, 112
androids:
and biochips implanted in brains, 106-9, 111-25
compassion lacking in, 64
intelligence of, 63-64
as metaphor for dehumanized people, 63
as replicants, 26, 33-34, 36, 63
who don’t know they’re androids, 36-38, 64
anonche, use of word, 63
Anselm, Saint, 80
Archer, Angel (character), 54-60, 61, 62, 96
Archer, Timothy (character), 55-56, 62
Aristotle, 77, 78
armagnac, 162-63
authors, see writers
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 97
Bacharach, Burt, 113
Ballantine Publishing Group, 35-36, 167
beauty and pain, 126, 127-28
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 67-68, 77, 97, 98, 120
Beethoven quartets, 110-11
Bible:
authors and translators of, 154-55, 177-78
Book of Acts in, 150, 153-54, 155
Greek language and, 155-56
Revelations in, 190-94
biochips, 103, 104, 106-9, 111-25
“Blade Runner,” as trademark, 20-21
Blade Runner (film), 3, 10, 12, 20-47
book compared with, 32-36
endings shot for, 31
filming of, 170
killing replicants in, 33-34, 36
merchandising tie-ins with, 165-66
ninety-second teaser of, 21-22
opening scenes of, 23-24, 167
original book for, 31
PG rating for, 31, 42
photo book of, 38-39
preview of, 168
screenplay of, 30, 31-32, 38, 39
set designs of, 23-24
sex and, 42
sound track of, 22-23
special effects of, 23-24, 26, 29-30, 167-70
street scenes in, 26-28
world created for, 169
books vs. films, 33
brain:
biochips implanted in, 106-9, 111-25
material structured by, 110-11
music processed by, 99
right hemisphere of, 100, 109
stimulation craved by, 30
Carson, Johnny, 96
chance and determinism, 63
characters:
based on real people, 52-53, 57-60