On Philip K. Dick

On Lorraine Avenue in Point Reyes Station there is a little yellow house. It's unassuming and just a bit run down. It also has the distinction of being the only house in town blurred out on Google Street View. Why? Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick lived there from 1959-1962. Sitting at the kitchen table, he wrote The Man in the High Castle along with a score of short stories.

I think Phil would have a laugh at the fact that 'they' didn't have him of all people under surveillance.

Point Reyes Station has changed little since Phil lived there. It's almost ironic, as many of his stories deal with worlds and societies morphed beyond what most people would recognize as normal. If only he knew that you could still get a drink at the Old Western Saloon while waiting for the mechanic at Cheda's Garage to fix your flat...

Phil spent only a few years in Point Reyes Station before leaving his wife, Anne, who passed away earlier this year. In the following decade he lived in San Rafael before permanently settling in Southern California. Along the way were a couple of more wives and kids. As most fans know, a stroke killed him less than a year before would have received the wide-spread recognition he had always wanted.

Unlike Vonnegut, I haven't read through Dick's complete bibliography. The reason is that some of his writing is less than good (I'd hate to say outright bad) - the result of an author frantically typing as fast as he could in order to pay the bills. That's okay, Phil, your stories were more 'gems' than 'rough.'

What Phil taught me wasn't a lesson about plot, characters or setting. His lesson was that the reader should feel possessed by the author's vision. If you read enough of Phil's work, you'll know what it's like to be a paranoid schizophrenic. The feeling lingers long after you put down the book or story. Having Phil move into your head is chilling, and whether that was his intention or not, it's what makes the best of his writing so powerful.

I'll never get to meet Phil, but there is some (very unlikely) hope. If we do live in the universe Phil imagined in his Exegesis, there is pretty good chance that the next time I drive by his old house, I might hear the faint sound of a typewriter coming from the kitchen.