Philip K. Dick – Page 71

MP3 documentary on Stanislaw Lem

Online Audio

Benjamen Walker‘s Theory Of Everything, which we first mentioned back when Ben did a show on Philip K. Dick, has made a similar eclectic audio mini audio document about recently deceased SF author Stanislaw Lem. In the piece both Ben and his friend Bill Marx mourn the death of the influential author and reminisce, in part “about how if Lem didn’t get the Nobel prize for literature before he died [they] would have to go to Stockholm and fuck shit up”. You can download the MP3 about Lem HERE.

And by the way, the original PKD documentlet is available HERE too (it was the very first T.O.E. show).

posted by Jesse Willis

A few readers have emailed asking where I got th…

news

A few readers have emailed asking where I got the cool 2-CD set of John Boonstra interviewing Philip K. Dick. You know the one I reviewed last fall? I got it from Zack Wood, proprietor of ThePhilDickian.com who also has a few other rare PKD gems for sale on audio as well. Wood actually sells 3 different audio interviews with Philip K. Dick and 2 other related audio Dickiana products:

1. The one I reviewed last fall is called Philip K. Dick Telephone Interviews and was conducted by John Bonnstra. This one was thrilling, like you’d tapped into a conversation between PKD and a big fan. The closest thing to being in the room with the man himself. Definitely a must listen for any fan.

2. Another is entitled Piper In The Woods (taking its name from a PKD story) which was conducted by Gregg Rickman. I haven’t heard this one myself but am hoping, maybe someday. Hint hint.

3. The one by Paul Williams of Rolling Stone magazine. This one was used by Williams to do the amazing Rolling Stone article on PKD back in the 1970s. That article was probably the biggest boost to Dick’s forunes after his Hugo win for The Man In The High Castle up to that point. This cassette was actually an issue of the Philip K. Dick society fanzine back in the 1980s. Cool huh?

4.Wood also sells the two X-Minus One 1950s radio dramas based on PKD short stories (both of which are now in the public domain) one’s called Colony and the other is The Defenders. I beleive the Spaceship Radio podcast has released one of these, and the Sci-Fi Friday podcast has released them both. Definitely worth a listen, nicely adapted though as usual the stories themselves work even better. Neither is available on audio in any other form at this time though.

5. And lastly he’s got VALIS: The Opera a 2 CD set created by Tod Machover. This is music inspired by Dick’s V.ast A.lien L.iving I.ntelligence S.ystem and the novel of the same name (VALIS). I haven’t heard it but somebody out there seems to like it. Anybody heard it?

posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Radio 4: Documentary on Philip K. Dick

News

BBC Radio 4 will be airing a half-hour documentary on the transcendant experience near the end of Philip K. Dick‘s life. It’s called “Confessions of a Crap Artist” but the documentary’s title probably isn’t specifically about the PKD novel of the same name.

Here’s the BBC Radio 4 blurb:

“Philip K. Dick is now world famous, thanks to films like Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report. But in the last years of his life he encountered something so strange and troubling he couldn’t stop writing about it. Writer Ken Hollings asks: Was it Phil’s fault God talked to him or was it God’s?”

It airs Monday 16th January 2006 bewtween 20:30-21:00 in the UK. You can use the PublicRadioFan.com website, mentioned below, to calculate when that will be for you. Another option ~~may be~~ is the “Listen Again” feature on the BBC4 website.

… UPDATE! …. HERE‘s a link to the listen again feature for the documentary.

posted by Jesse Willis

A Scanner Darkly is not only a new movie it is a…

A Scanner Darkly is not only a new movie it is also an old Science Fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. When a Hollywood studio adapts one of his novels into a “major motion picture” these days we aural-literary-types are also justly blessed. For both Minority Report and Paycheck Harper Audio released the short stories as audiobook MTIs (movie-tie-ins) as read by Keir Dullea – now, with imminent release of A Scanner Darkly we’re getting what sounds like possibly the best Philip K. Dick Movie-Tie-In audiobook yet! Random House Audio is releasing….

A Scanner Darkly
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Paul Giamatti
CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: RH Audio
Available: February 7, 2006
Price: $34.95 USD
ISBN: 073932392X

Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D–which Arctor takes in massive doses–gradually splits the user’s brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn’t realize he is narcing on himself.

Dick was no stranger to paranoid drug fantasies. Back in 1972 with his fourth marriage in ruins, an unsolved burglary in his home and a serious amphetamine addiction Dick travlled to Vancouver, British Columbia to be Guest of Honor at V-Con, after delivering a landmark speech he attempted suicide. Desperate, Dick begged and gained entrance to a heroin addiction treatment center called X-Kalay despite the fact he wasn’t addicted to heroin. When he eventually retuned to Calfornia he started work a new novel. A Scanner Darkly was the result. Now 33 years later Dick’s novel is being adapted for audio.

Paul Giamatti (who had a supporting role in the film version of Paycheck) is set to read the unabridged audiobook! His twitchy on-screen persona should make A Scanner Darkly an awesome listen – Giamatti is the epitome of a PKD protagonist. Here’s some evidence of that – back 1994 in an interview conducted for MoviePoopShoot.com interviewer Josh Horowitz talked to Giamatti about the adaptation of Dick’s films:

JH: Speaking of which…is Paycheck more than just a paycheck?
PG: (LAUGH) Well, you know…I mean, I really do like [director] John Woo. I almost did that Windtalkers movie which I never saw.

JH: That kind of movie has to be a no-brainer to do anyway. It’s a big budget film with John Woo based on a story by Philip K. Dick.
PG: Yeah, Philip K. Dick is another reason to do it although they never do his stuff right. They turn them into these big action movies when there’s really no action in them and the heroes in them are nerdy, geeky, loser guys.

JH: So you’re saying Ben [Affleck] should have been your sidekick instead of vice versa?
PG: (LAUGHS) There you go. Exactly. It should be a guy like Steve Buscemi or somebody like that. It’s a weird guy to use as a basis for action movies.

Well said Paul!

You listen to him Hollywood, but even if you dont… please keep adapting PKD to film, we need more of his audiobooks.

posted by Jesse Willis

There’s an old fashioned radio show that may dra…

There’s an old fashioned radio show that may draw your interest. It currently airs on Wednesdays between 3:00pm and 5:00pm – the Philip K. Dick Show airs on KUCI 88.9FM which is the University Of California Irvine’s radio station. Host “djzj” plays music and reads from Philip K. Dick’s work. The show is available only in the streaming audio format for folks who live outside of the UC Irvine area.

“djzj” says this about the show:

“i’m a big fan of pkd and tend to string out a kind of dickian world on the show…i like to think of myself along the lines of the dj in dr. bloodmoney, a pkd book about a post apocalyptic world… i have a co-host ‘baby dragon’ who reads select passages from the pkd opus. i start and end the show with vangelis ‘blade runner’ soundtrack. one of the main things about the show is to promote local bands, socal and so-on. i also talk about things like…was jesus an android? we live in a horror movie…alien rabbits,and anything that randfomaly pops into our heads, i sometimes will air excerpts of pkd himself talking, gleaned from the pkd website…”

Sounds cool!

posted by Jesse

Review of Philip K. Dick Recorded Telephone Interviews

Philip K. Dick Recorded Telephone Interviews
Conducted by John Boonstra
2 CDs – Approx. 111 Minutes [UNABRIDGED EXCERPTS]
Published: 1991
Themes: / Non-Fiction / Science Fiction / Interview /

These discs combine telephone interviews conducted 3/11/81 and 6/28/81. Portions appeared in The Hartford Advocate and The Twilight Zone Magazine. I’ve interviewed dozens of interesting people in the years since, but no conversation has been quite so exhilarating. It was a privilege to have even this brief contact with PKD…”
— John Boonstra

This is a set of 2 CD-Rs with printer paper labels and a photocopy of a handwritten insert written by the interviewer John Boonstra. The packaging and media is straight out of the Staples catalogue. But the content… oh the content… It’s the ultimate! Disc 1 is one long uninterrupted audio track. It starts with a ringing telephone, answered by a “Hello?” And if you’ve heard his voice anywhere else you instantly know it is Philip K. Dick.

Boonstra conducted by telephone these two interviews. Boonstra was better prepared than we have any right to expect – he was familiar with the vast majority of his subject’s writing and anxious to engage someone who he clearly admired greatly. Dick himself is full of life, overflowing with funny anecdotes, eager to talk and expound and is a true delight to hear in such an unfiltered setting.

Admittedly the sound quality isn’t great. A constant tape hiss mars both interviews, but the voices are both loud and clear, and in stereo. Dick’s voice comes out of the left speaker and Boonstra’s out of the right. They talk for nearly two hours over the course of the two interviews and I was riveted the entire time. Unfortunately the last portion of the first interview is completely cut off and the first portion of the second interview is entirely missing. Boonstra prompts Dick now and again with well researched questions and Dick never shies away, giving us the inside dope on many aspects of his professional and private lives as well as explaining the research that went into many of his later books including, The Cosmic Puppets, The Man In the High Castle, Martian Time-Slip, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Galactic Pot-Healer, Confessions Of A Crap Artist, VALIS, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer and others.

If you like Philip K. Dick’s novels you’ll love these interviews! I just wish there were more of them. Unfortunately Dick died less than a year after the second interview was recorded. I got two CD set from Zack Wood: click here to check out his site and tell him SFFAUDIO sent you!

Posted by Jesse Willis