PKD in academia

Three days of academic conferences, 28-30 April 2016, regarding Philip K. Dick are spread across two neighboring universities in Southern California.

Beginning at the University of California, Irvine, 28 April, a one-day conference will feature speakers including: Gregory Benford, David Brin, Sherryl Vint, Tessa Dick, Grania Davis, Charles Platt, and others. The conference schedule is online. (Follow here.)

The following two days, 29-30 April, a multi-track event will be held at Cal State University Fullerton. Speakers include: James Blaylock, Tim Powers, Rob Latham, Jonathan Lethem, Howard Hendrix, Bruce McAllister, Jacob Weisman, Tessa Dick, Grania Davis, Gregory Benford, Ursula Heise, and others. The conference schedule is online. (Follow here.)

Links to essays, reviews, book sales

Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room by Geoff Dyer.
The Los Angeles Times today published a book review by Chris Barton about Geoff Dyer's new book, an essay on Soviet-era director Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker. (One of the greatest of all science fiction films, according to your humble blog correspondent.) "For all the witty, self-referential asides that can make the book feel like the smartest 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' episode ever written, it's Dyer's emotional tie to Writer's journey and the wish fulfillment of that vocation that stay with you the longest after the lights finally come up." (follow here)

Rob Latham tackles The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, along with a handful of Dick's science fiction novels in an essay at Los Angeles Review of Books. "Rereading Dick’s early novels through the lens of the events recounted in the Exegesis, just as Dick himself eventually did, shows how consistently the themes of thought-control and ambiguous revelation informed his fiction ..." (follow here)

Graham Sleight’s essay on three of Samuel R. Delany's books appeared in the most recent issue of Locus.
"Dhalgren is that rarest of things: a book that, decades on, has not been normalised. So many innovations of style or content in SF become commodities, to be sold at ever lower prices in ever more ways. Many people have learned a great deal from Delany’s work – I’m thinking particularly of William Gibson’s focus on sensations and the surface of things. But Dhalgren is a book without real successors." (follow here)

The Nebula Awards shortlist of nominees for work from 2011 was announced a few days ago. I've read three of the best  novel nominees:
   God’s War by Kameron Hurley (Night Shade)
   Embassytown by China Miéville (Del Rey)
   Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor)
All three are quite strong. God's War is a first novel and while it's the weakest of the three, it's an exceptional first novel. The three nominees that I haven't read look interesting as well.(follow here)

Lavie Tidhar expresses his disappointment in China Miéville's Embassytown. "(I)t is a niggling feeling; it is a sense of regret, and of puzzlement, that afflicts the non-Anglo reader when coming upon Embassytown. Of missed opportunities, of tired acceptance of the sign that says, This Is Not Your Future." (follow here)

Aqueduct Press is offering Rebecca Ore's new novel Time and Robbery on sale until March 1. (follow here)

New York Review Books is offering a 50 percent off sale on some titles, including science fiction novels Inverted World by Christopher Priest and The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. (follow here)

Based on a Philip K. Dick story

In many ways the film version of The Adjustment Bureau is stronger than the original short story, “The Adjustment Team” (1954), which I am sure is heresy to Philip K. Dick devotees. The story and the movie have little in common. The story is about the counterfeit nature of surface reality. It has no romance, never Dick’s strength, and none of the same characters. No hats, no doorways. It shares only the idea of a mysterious team of people who adjust and edit reality. Questioning the solidity of reality is central to Dick’s work. It also suggests, with more subtlety than the movie, that either a science fictional or fantasy explanation could be applied. The story is early Dick, with undistinguished prose and overtly sexist treatment of women.  The main character is an average guy who works at a real estate office, a typical sort of Dick viewpoint character, not the promising politician running for Senate in the film version.

If it hasn’t happened already, surely soon there will be a Philip K. Dick film festival drawing upon the many adaptations of Dick’s stories. It’s an appealing idea. This list has gotten lengthy: Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), Confessions d'un Barjo (1992, French Canadian), Screamers (1995), Minority Report (2002), Imposter (2002), Paycheck (2003), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Next (2007), Radio Free Albemuth (2010), and The Adjustment Bureau (2011). Most of these are obscure or flawed or both. Blade Runner stands out as the best of the bunch, an influential film that created a stunning future Los Angeles, copied endlessly in other science fiction films.

More Philip K. Dick adaptations are in the pipeline. Ridley Scott, the director of Blade Runner, is attached as executive producer to a four-part BBC mini-series adaptation of Dick’s Hugo award-winning novel The Man in the High Castle (1962). A remake of Total Recall is supposedly in “pre-production.” Director Michel Gondry says he is adapting Dick’s novel Ubik (1969). No doubt there will be others.

That’s fine. Really. It’s not a zero sum game, where every movie based on a Philip K. Dick story means that another science fiction film for grown-ups doesn’t get made. Is it? Charlie Jane Anders at io9.com helpfully suggests 10 unfilmed Philip K. Dick stories that “deserve” to be movies. Um, yeah, that would be great. Except, before I worry about overlooked Philip K. Dick stories that should be filmed, what about some other authors? I feel awkward pointing this out, but Dick died almost 30 years ago. What about stories from the past 30 years?  How about a movie based on a story by Neal Stephenson, or Connie Willis, or Vernor Vinge? Or perhaps China Miéville, or Lois McMaster Bujold, or Paolo Bacigalupi? Or Pat Murphy, or Octavia Butler, or Michael Swanwick? Or Nicola Griffith, or Kelly Link, or Ted Chiang? Or Jeffrey Ford, or Elizabeth Hand, or Margo Lanagan? Or Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke? Or The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon? I could go on. These are some of the people who have turned out the best work in recent years. Where are the film adaptations of their work?

Related links:
Every Philip K. Dick movie ranked from best to worst
The Man in the High Castle to become BCC TV mini-series
Michel Gondry to adapt and direct Ubik: link one and link two
The Adjustment Bureau review

The Adjustment Bureau

A mostly satisfying film, The Adjustment Bureau (2011, directed by George Nolfi) is loosely based on a Philip K. Dick story. A couple meet and develop a relationship in defiance of a mysterious organization with incredible powers that tries to keep the couple apart.

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt star as David, a New York Congressman running for Senate, and Elise, a dancer. The “adjustment bureau” is composed of men with hats who adjust and edit reality to conform to a pattern set down by the Chairman. Where the film succeeds is as a romance. The first meet-cute scene in a men’s bathroom and the second meet-cute scene on a bus are both charming and engaging.

What is the Adjustment Bureau and who are the men in hats? The movie has trappings of science fiction, with doors that cross great distances and machines used to revise people’s thoughts and memories. It wants to be a fantasy, too, suggesting that the men in hats are angels. In the least subtle moment in the movie, one of the adjustment men pointedly looks up to Heaven when he refers to the Chairman. While there is some discussion of fate and free will, little light is shed on the subject.

The final chase scene is nicely done, with David and Elise using the special doors to skip across New York. Unfortunately, the powers of the adjustment men grow and diminish as needed by each plot point in the course of the story. The result is a sense that there is no coherent, underlying idea defining the goals of the Adjustment Bureau or the extent of their powers.

If you combined Wings of Desire (1987, directed by Wim Wenders) and Men in Black (1997, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld) and focused on a romantic couple, the result would be something like The Adjustment Bureau. My advice is to watch the brilliant Wings of Desire, which is vastly superior to either of the other films.

Related link: Based on a Philip K. Dick story

A Link, a Dink, and a Nod

Philip K. Dick's Exegesis
According to The New York Times, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish a two-volume "consolidated" Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, edited by Jonathan Lethem and Pamela Jackson. Volume one is due 2011, followed by volume two in 2012.

“The title he gave it, ‘Exegesis,’ alludes to the fact that what it really was, was a personal laboratory for philosophical inquiry,” Lethem said. “It’s not even a single manuscript, in a sense – it’s an amassing or a compilation of late-night all-night sessions of him taking on the universe, mano-a-mano, with the tools of the English language and his own paranoiac investigations.” (The New York Times article.)

The City & The City by China Miéville wins Clarke Award
The Arthur C. Clarke Award winner was announced: The City & The City by China Miéville. A respectable result and an interesting book, although here at the Strangelove for Science Fiction blog we likely would have voted for one of the other finalists: Gwyneth Jones’ Spirit,  Kim Stanley Robinson’s Galileo’s Dream, Adam Roberts’ Yellow Blue Tibia, Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, or Marcel Theroux’s Far North. We will have to duck the question of which one we would have picked, since we are still reading the finalists. Follow here for the SF Strangelove review of The City & The City. Torque Control has an interesting analysis of the finalists and a report and context regarding the winner.

Adam Roberts goes 'round and 'round with The Wheel of Time

Reading the multi-volume and popular and as yet unfinished Wheel of Time series by the late Robert Jordan can be described as an epic undertaking. Adam Roberts has bravely shouldered the task. So far, he has reported, in witty detail, on volumes one, two, three, four, five, six and seven.

Silverini covers Philip K. Dick

Here is a link (via Tor.com) to a gallery of Italian edition Philip K. Dick book covers by Antonello Silverini. Above is the cover for Martian Time-Slip. For comparison, here is the cover of the first American edition. 

Martian Time-Slip

Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick (Ballantine Books, 1964)

Martian Time-Slip examines the loss of the secure sense of self. I suspect most of Dick’s novels grapple with that subject. This is only the second Dick novel I’ve read and I am willing to acknowledge that this is a significant gap in understanding American science fiction.

The book has the feel of dry, water-rationed, suburban California in the early 1960s, the time and place of its writing. Through the bored housewives and isolated housing, the reader can nearly feel the untrustworthy veneer-thin surfaces of everyday things. Only the native Martians, the Bleekmen, who recall the aborigines of Australia, seem fully rooted in reality.

Housewife Silvia Bohlen uses phenobarbital to ease her dusty, dreary life. Arnie Kotts’ vindictiveness and greed energize him through his day, yet he sees little of what goes on around him. Norbert Steiner, purveyor of nostalgic delicacies from Earth, truffles and caviar, visits his institutionalized autistic son, and then decides to kill himself.

Drugs, alcohol, and too much psychoanalysis (says I, with tongue only partially in cheek) leave these and several other characters vulnerable to the loss of sense of self. Manfred Steiner, the autistic boy, may be experiencing “a derangement in the sense of time,” according to his doctor. The time-slip affects several characters, but Manfred most of all. One particularly horrific dinner party is described in turn by several viewpoint characters, before, during, and after the time the actual party takes place. Some of the characters view the party through a haze of drugs, or hallucinations, or psychotic episodes. The result is powerful and affecting.

A note on the edition: The Library of America has now issued three omnibus collections of Philip K. Dick novels. Jonathan Lethem selected the novels and wrote notes for each volume. Physically, the books are excellent in every way, including a highly readable font. Seek out all three.

Links:
A view of Philip K. Dick’s Mars, courtesy of a recent dust storm in Australia.
Philip K. Dick boxed set from The Library of America or Amazon.
Matthew Cheney at Mumpsimus: Dear Library of America...