A Life of Philip K. Dick

The Man Who Remembered the Future

De: Anthony Peake

Narrado por: Eric Meyers

"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane." (Philip K. Dick, VALIS)

Philip K. Dick was a visionary writer. From post-apocalyptic San Francisco to Nazi-occupied America, his strange alternative futures have transfixed the world. But his life was every bit as unusual as his fiction.

A Life of Philip K Dick opens a window into PKD's unique mind. Written with close cooperation with two of his ex-wives and a number of his friends, we are taken through his five marriages, his periods living in squalor, and his souring literary success. We are also given unparalleled insight into his transcendental experiences....

PKD claimed to have visions of the future. In his published journal The Exegesis, he explores precognition, time theories, and even alien abduction. Anthony Peake's own interest in metaphysics and altered states of consciousness makes him the ideal author to explore this aspect of PKD's life. Considering all possible reasonings behind these experiences, from esoteric to neurological, Peake offers a scrupulous biography of this enigmatic author.

©2013 Arcturus Holdings Limited (P)2022 Arcturus Publishing

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Anthony Peake is uniquely qualified to analyze Philip K. Dick's life." (E J Morgan, author of A Kindred Spirit)

"Normal Spinrad"

At 40:05 the narrator says "Normal Spinrad," meaning Norman. "Normal" kind of sounds like the name of a PKD character, but otherwise, it's *not* the name of PKD's great fellow writer, and I personally don't know anybody who IS normal, by behavior or name! Needs to be fixed. The book will entertain PKD fans, but it's actually rather tame from Peake. You'll probably dig it.

Happy

Happy to have any PKD reference book

Will be listening to this over and over to soak up the details

my new anti-drug

a sobering tale. did he remember the future or did he dream up fantasies that people latched onto and brought into being?
interesting book.

the Life and Mind of PKD

Fascinating read abput PKD books and his personal life. Last few chapters do a great job of exploring what made his work and his literary imagination unique as is related to his health conditions etc.

Hooray! Finally!

Hooray! finally, a PKD biography on Audible. It is good enough that I also bought a copy for my Kindle. I recommend the book.

The Biography Section Was Alright

The biography part was alright, but I just found the rest to be a waste of time.

Scatterbrained Biography in Need of Editing

The bulk of this book focuses on PKD's love life and gossip surrounding by his love life. Get ready to hear in depth descriptions of all his wives and every girl he talked to. If you're here because you have a fascination in the more paranormal and unexplained aspects of the writer's life, you're going to be disappointed. By the time we reach any discussion on his strange experiences, we're so tired from listening of his social life, the paranormal aspects hold little interest. The book ends with a half baked attempt to find some kind of explanation for PKD's experiences. This simply comes out as a list of every possible explanation. It is tedious and tiring to listen to. Perhaps this worked better in print? The narration is good, but there is only so much a narrator can do when dealing with a book that easily could have been trimmed by 60%.

Paranormal aspects fall flat

It's hard to say whether it's tongue in cheek or sincere, but there is an attempt to present supposed premonitions and coincidences throughout PKD's life as supernatural. For me, these amount to wholly uninteresting just-so stories. For example, PKD experienced an inguinal hernia, became obsessed over the condition, and read a lot about it. Years later, his infant son was allegedly taken to a doctor for apparent discomfort, told he was fine, and PKD was said to diagnose a "life threatening hernia" and ordered immediate surgery. The story changes several times and PKD's assessment is gibberish. He claimed some kind of premonition of a "hydrocele bursting" and dropping down into the scrotum, causing an inguinal hernia. This is nonsense. A hydrocele begins in the scrotum, "bursting" is not really a pathology I've ever heard of, and in any case, is not a cause for an inguinal hernia anatomically superior to this location. Nor does PKD's terminology indicate much understanding of the condition. I would expect someone receiving advanced medical knowledge from an AI in a parallel timeline not to distinguish between direct and indirect inguinal hernias. As described, I wouldn't call this an immediate life threat where the child was rescued from the brink.

The author is very credulous of PKD's alleged precognition and every evidence given is entirely underwhelming. PKD uses a word in a different language which he says he doesn't know and only later learns that he used it correctly. Then it must be noted that he did study the language a little earlier in life, though this is dismissed. A character is arrested in a PKD story, and PKD says he later learns that a character by the same name is arrested in the Bible. This is related as a surprising confluence. Then again, PKD was at times known to travel with a Bible in hand, though he swears he has hadn't read that particular story before writing a vaguely similar one.

PKD was mentally unwell, and prone to grandiosity. Let's not make more of this than need be.