Customer Reviews

On Philip K. Dick: 40 Articles from Science-Fiction Studies

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This book is a series of interesting articles that are of (recent) historic interest. There were some real revelations even for me even though I had read many of the source documents (including the published excerpts from the Exergesis). I particularly liked the story of Philip Dick writing letters critical of some people who were actually his fans and sending them to the FBI by posting them in the rubbish bin. If the FBI was going through his rubbish (as he expected) these letters would surface (which they did - but perhaps via his own carbon copies), but if his rubbish was not being examined no harm would be done. He was an unusual man - perhaps in some ways unstable, and yet the body of his work remains to point in other directions.

The negative of this book is some of the pompous academic language used in the reviews. As a testament to academic review the book is not a great advertisement. Perhaps it tells us something of the people who actually deigned to review science fiction - but I am glad they did - I would have just preferred that they use the same open style that Philip Dick did himself - their own style rather than taking on an academic style as if that gives some extra creedence to their words.