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- Philip K Dick full interview restored and remastered | childhood, trauma, drugs and VALIS
Philip K Dick full interview restored and remastered | childhood, trauma, drugs and VALIS
Philip K Dick full interview restored and remastered | Childhood, trauma, drugs, and VALIS.
Embark on a mesmerizing journey through the genius of Philip K. Dick with this meticulously restored and remastered interview. Gain unparalleled insights into his formative years, confront the depths of traumatic experiences that shaped his unique perspective, and accompany him on mind-altering journeys that inspired his groundbreaking works. Unravel the intricate threads of the VALIS enigma, a central theme in Dick's thought-provoking narratives. Join us in this immersive exploration, rediscovering the profound intellect and captivating storytelling of the legendary science fiction author.
In May 1979, less than two years before his death, and in anticipation of the publication of Valis, Philip K Dick gave an “in conversation” interview with Charles Platt.
The original, raw recording is available at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/PhilipK.DickRAWInterview
This version was cleaned up using AI noise reduction and remastered by "Write Like a Legend" for use in my upcoming "Unworthy Twin" video (which will use snippets of the interview).
I am making it available to you in full here because I believe every Philip K Dick fan, and anyone interested in writing, should be able to listen to it in high quality and in full.
0:00:00 Intro
0:04:45 Feeling peculiar and different
0:16:50 Early inspirations
0:28:15 Individuality and oppression
0:48:18 Drugs
1:03:19 Childhood and Trauma
1:17:25 Beatific vision
1:42:15 VALIS/Who is she?
1:52:45 End
The interview is wide-ranging, from childhood trauma to feeling divergent and devised as an adult and the strange experiences that led to him writing VALIS and his exegesis.
Through the interview, PKD touches on many of his novels which were influenced by his belief that we all to an extent inhabit our own personal realities:
• Eye in the Sky
• The Man Who Japed
• Time Out of Joint
• Confessions of a Crap Artist
• We Can Build You
• Martian Time-Slip
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
• Ubik
• A Maze of Death
• A Scanner Darkly
• Radio Free Albemuth
• VALIS
#PKDUnleashed#InterviewRestored#VALISMysteries#SciFiLegend#MindBending#PhilipKDickLegacy#SciFiExploration#AuthorInsights#LiteraryJourney#PKDInspiration#MindUnveiled#TimelessWisdom#NarrativeGenius#DimensionalThoughts#SciFiClassic#PKDUnleashed#InterviewRestored#TraumaExploration#VALISMysteries#PhilipKDickInsights#RemasteredJourney#ChildhoodReflections#MindAlteringExperience#PKDVideo#SciFiPhilosopher
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Video Transcript
It's like Henry Miller said in one of the tropics books about his childhood that he
was stoned by other children threw stones at him when they saw him you know I had that
same feeling you know that I they threw stones at me when they saw me.
May 17th in Santa Ana it so happened by chance I read your first published story very recently
in the latest Un-Us magazine.
From that I learned that you first studied writing science fiction when you were living
in San Francisco, is that right?
Oh, I was living in Berkeley.
Yes.
And what I often start up by asking in these interviews, especially if I don't know the
answer, is to what extent you knew what was going to happen next after that first story?
Did you have a list of ambitions?
One, two, three, four, you're going to do this, you're going to do that, or was it just
sort of one thing at a time?
As I said in the introduction and on earth, in Berkeley at that time, it was the goal
of everyone to be a writer, but we didn't conceive of it by and large in terms of being
a published writer, that is, writing as an economic consideration.
People wrote the way, for instance, a person writes a poem, he doesn't expect to make a
That's right, you said you were looked at actually as almost having sold out in some
degree.
Yes, well this really, I think I exaggerated that somewhat, that wasn't the general view,
but it wasn't customary, it was not customary to submit one's writing after one wrote a
story to submit it to a magazine.
And the people who read science fiction were a very distinct, small, separate group of
people cut off from the general Berkeley intellectual community.
They had no, there was no concourse between the science fiction people and the greater
intellectual community, cultural community surrounding the university.
I was in a curious position. I had read science fiction since I was 12 years old and was really
addicted to reading it. I mean, I just loved it. And I also was reading what the Berkeley
intellectual community was reading, which would be like Proust, for example, and Joyce.
And so I occupied two worlds right there, which normally did not intersect.
I remember I worked at a radio and TV sales store, and after work I'd go home and I'd
read Remembrance of Things Past. And really just for enjoyment, and I'd write little artsy
stories, and writing a science fiction story was as natural to me as writing a non-science
fiction story. In fact, in high school I was working on a science fiction story, which
I still have, I still have a copy of it. And I was never convinced that science fiction
was of less value than high literature.
My motivation was entirely a pleasure-pain motivation.
I read what I read because I liked it.
I was extremely rebellious against authority, and if something was considered a classic,
I didn't read it because it was a classic.
I wasn't trying to read classics per se.
I like Proust and I like Van Vogt. I still like Proust and I still like Van Vogt.
Did you go through that sort of alienation experience that some science fiction writers complain about?
How do you mean?
No, the sense that you were reading this stuff and the other people weren't and therefore
you were peculiar and you felt different.
Oh I was plenty peculiar and different anyway.
There was not much of an added burden.
In what ways were you peculiar and different?
