Part 15 Philip K Dick 1971 Interview

James Holmes:  What do you think of the ten, you know just list off what you would suggest other people to read which you might consider to be the ten best science fiction books?

Philip K Dick: Well I’ve spent the last two months drawing up a list, I’ve studied every novel that’s been published in the field and here’s my list, would you like to hear it.

James Holmes:  I’d love to hear it.

Philip K Dick:  #1 – Dune by Frank Herbert, second A Canticle for Liebowitz that was a marvelous novel, the first really great American science fiction novel, Cats Cradle Kurt Vonnegut, I would, myself in later thought would substitute Player Piano, but Cats Cradle is very good. Childhoods End by Arthur Clark, Ubik by Richard Phillipps, Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, a really great book, it really deserved the Hugo, Starmaker by Olaf Stapleton an old book in English but good, Circus of Doctor Lau by Jack Finney who lives down here in Canfield and won’t talk to anybody, that was a very fine book. Babel 17 by Chip Delaney and one that I can’t remember now what it was about but I must have liked it, Hole in the Zero by Joseph, I’m sure that’s a shuck, but those are 10 very fine novels in the field.  Hole in the Zero was a horror book but I understand Damon Knight liked it, a horror book none the less, I must have put it on the list for a reason.  I don’t really have, that’s somebody else’s list, that’s from Sunshine Number 24, What do you think of that list, Seriously.

James Holmes:  I like it, I think most of it, I’ll agree with Babel 17, I’d like to see I think Stand on Zanzibar.

Philip K Dick:  Do you really?

James Holmes: Yea, I do.

Philip K Dick:  I was with John off and on while he was writing at least when he was over here, he was telling me about it, and we corresponded and he sent me a copy as soon as it was out, and damn that was a long book wasn’t it? But it was worth reading, I mean I don’t usually read books that long, they usually circulate by a book of the month club and cost a lot of money, but he sent one free. Had it mailed to the United States, sent the dedication on a piece of paper which he had me glue into the front page to save money, but that was a very fine book.  I don’t think it was as good though as The Jagged Orbit.

James Holmes:  Jagged Orbit was more coherent, in terms of plot development and things like that.

Philip K Dick:  That’s what I said in the back jacket, yea, I wrote part of the blurb. That was kind of a reciprocal thing he wrote a blurb for me, and we both said each other’s book was the best one published that year.

James Holmes: Didn’t you think Dune was also pretty long, did you ever read Dune?

Philip K Dick: Yea, Dune is a very good book, Stand on Zanzibar was an effort on his part to do what Dos Passos did in USA, to capture everything in terms of all the raw data and like he got it down but I know John wouldn’t mind if I said this because I said it in a letter.  That like in Jagged Orbit, he digested, refined, excreted the stuff that was not relevant and shaped it more which I think is more the job of the writer. In Stand on Zanzibar, he just kind of pasted in everything that happened in his head, but it was a marvelous book, it really was great. Especially if you got it for free. 

James Holmes: Did you read Einstein Intersection?

Philip K Dick: No.

James Holmes: Delaney did somewhat the similar thing, he wrote it when he was driving around Europe and singing songs for pennies, and he would throw in parts of his diary, and before every chapter you could kind of see the, some kind of relationship between where he was in Europe and what was happening.

Philip K Dick: Well you know like the last, I think it was in the Stand on Zanzibar, wasn’t it, the last chapter of this novel was typed on a Corona portable with a silk ribbon, 842 inches long, and you know I thought to myself, when you pay on the word basis how you,  I don’t know, when he was out here, you know Phil, I’m in the Guinness Book of World Records I wrote the shortest chapter ever written. I said OK, lay it on me John, what was the chapter.  He said I is the word, the letter I, that was all. So I thought the other day, I’m going to beat that, get that out of the Guinness Book of World Records, I’m going to write a chapter with nothing, just 1, chapter 1, and nothing on there.  Already did that but it was rejected by the editor.  But I’m going to get him out of the Guinness Book of World Records. Anyway he was prouder of that than anything else in that book.  In a way I don’t blame him because in a way we all want immortality.  Maybe I could write the longest chapter ever written.

James Holmes: Also on missing on that list, now that I think about it is Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron, or Men in the Jungle, Bug Jack Barron is a bit more palatable.

Philip K Dick: Well I can think of some older books that at the time seemed good to me. For instance, Gravy Planet, and the Pohl and Kornbluth collaboration: Space Merchants.

James Holmes: Space Merchants.

Philip K Dick: That was awfully good, Sturgeons More Than Human had some good parts, especially in the 3rd section. That was originally the middle part was the novel at end Galaxy and he fanned out in both directions. There was Player Piano of Vonnegut, I believe it was his first novel wasn’t it. That I thought was marvelous. That I have re read many times. As a Freudian slip, I found it the other day among my collection of my own novels, I don’t know who put it there, but there it was, and that was great because of the dialog.  That was really as fine dialog as you’ll find, especially between the guy and his wife. In fact I read that and said you know that guy has got more marital problems than I have.  Those were good, Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes was I guess was a fantasy, when the balloon witch floated over head and they punctured it, I said that is really marvelous and then there’s been a few others. 

James Holmes: How about in the fantasy realm, a fan, I mean divorced from science fiction. The Man Who Was Thursday.

Philip K Dick: That was, oh Christ, if I could paste my name over somebody else’s name it would have been on that.  The Man Who Was Thursday, the dream, what was the subtitle, A Nightmare, that and L Ron Hubbard’s Fear, did you read that?

James Holmes: No, I didn’t.

Philip K Dick: That was to me, the most frightening thing I have ever read, that was the beginning of the kind of thing, that like I’ve done, a psychological novel, he marketed it as fantasy but like when the guy would walk down the street he would look back real quick and the people passing, walking the other way were lying down. When he looked back, they got up slowly and stood up again and I remember that once it was a study of a disintegrating mind, a trip into schizophrenia and he got it all down, it was all there.  Perfect, it could never be improved on. That I would say began and ended the whole psychological or true psychotic novel, I mean that is another reason why just thinking about it now, I’ve never really tried to write a psychotic novel because he really did that in Fear.  I know what he was trying to do, and he did it, and when he finished, he never touched it again. never touched anything like that again, didn’t have to. 

James Holmes: Have you heard of Borges? Jorge Luis Borges

Continued in:

Part 16 Philip K Dick 1971 Interview