Dick, Philip K.

8 typed letters signed (mostly "Phil") totaling in 24 pages (8.5 x 11 in; 328 x 215 mm) together with 14 page undated autobiographical essay and over 30 pages of additional various material, ca. April 27, 1977 to February 9, 1978. Housed in a loose-leaf binder, three-hole punches to all pages; some toning.

see cataloguing
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Dick on companionship, philosophy, and his evolving cosmology. The letters to Simpson coincides with the publication of A Scanner Darkly, and includes discussion of the novel’s success and the author’s struggle to transcend the science fiction genre. Also included is an in-depth discussion of Dick’s infamous “golden fish” incident in 1974. Following a dentist visit and a dose of sodium penthothal, the author experienced a series of profound spiritual revelations that he spent the rest of his life to trying to unravel, producing thousands of pages of philosophical writing, eventually published posthumously as “The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick.” The romantic content as it pertains to his relationship with Simpson remains characteristically Dickian in its verbose and metaphysical execution.

The autobiographical essay included herein explores a perplexing incident in the author’s life relating to Dick's friend Bishop James Pike, the central inspiration for Dick’s final novel “The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.” In it he details the experience of a deceased Pike "coming across" and communicating with him in a manner that eerily echoed his 1969 novel "UBIK."  He notes: "I seem to be living in my own novels more and more. I can't figure out why. Am I losing touch with reality?" 

Dick relates how Pike's otherworldly influence has affected a series of changes in his own personality and physiology: he opts for wine instead of beer, suddenty possesses a deep knowledge of ancient religion, and begins to look differently and act with a more sophisticated air. "There is no known physiological process which could account for such fundamental changes in my character [...] I have been transformed." In grappling with these experiences he explores a number of theories including time-travel, and a trauma induced secondary personality (echoing the split personality of the narcotics agent in A Scanner Darkly who begins to put a new drug dealer under surveilance, not realizing that he is actually investigating himself).

Additional  material includes a typescript synopsis of an unwritten novel titled Wink-Out! and a draft of the short story, "The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out Of Its Tree" written during the summer of 1977 and later published in The Collected Stories (1987). Also included are an array of carbon copy letters addressed to/from contemporaries such as author Robert Silverberg and other friends and associates of the couple.

Highlights include:

7 May, 1977: In the history books there are the names of good men and the names of bad men, and the men who succeeded and the men who tried and lost, those who miscalculated. But the names of those who did not act do not appear; they do not even qualify as failures; historically speaking they never even were in the first place; they were only figments. Only when a man chooses to act does he become real; failing does not abolish that, although it makes for tragedy. There is not even tragedy in the lives of those who did not act; there was no life in the first place, nothing there to fail.

[no date]: What is so good about both of us is that although we each have failed we each are willing to take aim again, and perhaps (which is really extraordinary) at an even finer, more difficult target -- a better, even ultimate target, just as the swan's song is his ultimate song. The swan dies trying, and also succeeding; his final song is not a failure but a triumph. All things die, but the swan dies in beauty as he lived in beauty [...] If we finally fail we will have succeeded up until then.

20 May, 1977: Back during the very bad period of my life, from 1964 to 1972, I had a sense that everything had a purpose and an outcome. It was all necessary. However crazy and fucked up I got I managed to retain that sense of impending meaning [...] Meanwhile I was shaping my cosmology. When it finally took form in the March of 1974, based on my mystical revelations I understood poetically that two opposing forces, powers, sides or entities contended in our world, using it as a gameboard or battlefield. Intellectually I could then identify the two absolute forces with the two forces I had formerly seen as mundane: my foe, which became identified with the Sons of Darkness, and my friends, the Sons of Light... To use the Zoroaster's terms. I had been part of a cosmic struggle acted out on our earth. It was a struggle taking place in the arena of human history.

20 May, 1977: I began in 1974 to develop my exegesis: my account of my mystical revelation and an account of the cosmology disclosed to me. This carried through to March of 1977, by which point although without a family (I.e. without my female counterpart) I did at least have a new cosmology, one I could be proud of and fairly secure about -- as to it's accuracy, I mean [...] I was free to live my life in safety, but what sort of life? A mental life only.

20 May, 1977: What you mean to me is that we not only have a benign universe, benign in structure, designed by a benign creator -- it means this: that just as you call yourself a gift [to] me, or the gift-- you are for me not only the emotional matrix of meaning, you having sought me out, I am able to find verification of everything emanating from my mind in the intellectual, conceptual sphere; you make intellectual sense out of my entire fucking lifetime of experiences.

29 October, 1977: I am searching for the essence of man and I am convinced that a superior being has created and governs him. But, at this point, the concept of God no longer satisfies me, I find him (it) non-communicative. This is why I am searching for a new formulations of this entity.

9 February 1978: I wrote Susan Sontag again; she won the National Critics Book Award for criticism, and I wanted to say something to her but I couldn’t think what; the article in the L.A. Times confirmed what I already knew, that she is “critically ill.” She was able to give a speech, and said the award, the first she had ever won, “gave her new hope.” She is so lovely a person; she did so much for me, a total stranger.