For the thirtieth anniversary of the passing of Philip K. Dick, today, my occasional Guest Blogger Brian Leno has put up a post about how he’s finally getting around to reading that titan of science fiction — and, yes, better late than never.
I never met PKD, though I know many people who did — I’ve even met some of his cousins. Just before I hit the Bay Area, PKD moved south to Orange County, so our paths never crossed.
If he’d stayed around here, I’m sure I would have met him, since I have encountered — at least casually — almost every local fantasy and sf writer of that era. Offhand, Peter S. Beagle is the only name as yet unmet, and Dick Lupoff was offering to take me over to his house only a year or so back. Jack Vance. Robert Silverberg. Terry Carr. Fritz Leiber. Marion Zimmer Bradley. Avram Davidson. And more. I met them all.
In Brian’s post you’ll find a blurb for one of the six volumes of the Selected Letters of PKD I edited. I was chatting with Brian and asked him if he knew exactly why that set appeared in six volumes. New to PKD, he had no idea — but then neither do most people. I decided on six volumes so there’d be one more than the standard five volume set of letters by H.P. Lovecraft released by Arkham House.
We had the material. Why not show it off?
