Philip K. Dick Final Interview 1982

Hello.

This is John Bluster of the Harford Advocate.

Hi. Hi. This is Phil Rick.

Hello. M you fill.

Yes, of course. Please do.

Okay. Um, it's a pleasure for me to be through to you here. Um, I had a few questions which I wanted to ask. I I want to run this interview in conjunction with a review of bailis that I'm going to be doing for the paper.

Okay.

Is it bailis or val?

Well, I guess val is val is what I usually say.

Okay. Well, you're the one who's entitled to say what you like, so

Okay. Yeah, I made up the acronym, right?

Um, in an interview in um, the SF review that you gave in September of 1976, you indicated that Valis had been sold to Phantom, yet it didn't appear until early this year. What was the cause of the delay?

Um, I did a complete novel draft and then discarded and started all over again and did a totally different version of the book based on the same material. the uh the book that's in print is based on the second version of the novel.

Uh also uh Banam held it up for a while because it had a change of editorship.

The the version that has been published was written in 1978. Uh and uh for some I guess they had a backlog. They didn't print it right away. But the the real the real origin of the delay was the fact that I did for the first time in my life two completely different versions of the same book. The first version appears in the second version as the movie. That's that's the that's the movie that they go see. That that's the original novel.

When I was rereading the uh the SF review interview, that was the impression I was getting and I wanted to uh to know whether I was gleaning that correctly.

That is correct. Yes, exactly. about Nicholas Brady and everything like that. That was in the uh that was in the first version. I wasn't satisfied with the first version. I wanted to do a book that was a novel that was better than my previous novel was Scanner Darkly. And after I even after BAM had purchased Val uh and all it required was really that I did a type of final draft. I simply was not satisfied that I had done the best book I could do. So I preferred to wait and do a better book

because I wanted to surpass a scanner darkly. I didn't want to do a lecture book in scanner

and I was quite pleased in scanner.

The term meta novel is occurring to me here. The the idea of framing an already existing novel by making it a much smaller segment of a novel which is in effect about the process of uh of living the novel. Um I'm gleaning that from John Lily at this point, but uh I don't know where I'm making that connection. In its published form, Val um seems as candid as autobiography, particularly when it's read in conjunction with the Charles Platt interview in Dream Makers.

Yes. And also in conjunction with the introduction of the golden man.

Yes, that's right. And um you described your encounter in 1974 with a transcendentally rational mind, which is a transformation that is central to Val. Does this tutelary spirit that you mentioned continue to guide you?

Uh it hasn't spoken a word to me since I um wrote the sequel developed which is called the divine invasion that uh Simon Schuster is bringing out in May. Uh it um the the voice that speaks to me my priest uh I'm an episcipellian identified as ra r u ah which is the word that appears in the old testament for the spirit of god. It's uh speaks in a feminine voice and uh it tends to uh express statements regarding the messianic expectation.

Mhm.

And uh um it it guided me for a while. It it has spoken sporadically to me since I was in high school as I mentioned I believe in the Plat article plat interview but uh I haven't heard from it for a while. It seemed to fall silent after I did the the sequel to Valance. I expect, you know, if a crisis arrives that it will say something again. It's very economical in what it says. It limits itself to a a few very tur succinct sentences.

Mhm. Um, is there a distinction between this voice and the um you're being invaded and in effect taken over um by a spirit in in 1974. I honestly don't know if I'm hearing the voice of that um entity which I call Thomas.

Yes.

I don't know if they're distinct or not. I really don't know. This is something that's puzzled me for a long time. I I really don't know if I'm dealing with with essentially two entities or one entity.

Um I I as I said I discussed it with my priest and um my description of it indicated to him that it was the um ru which is a Hebrew word. But as to who it relationship with Thomas, I just don't know. I mean, the the the psyche of Thomas is gone from my psyche now. It's been gone since 1974. Um I'm not aware of another psyche in my psyche anymore.

Mhm.

But when I'm falling, I only hear the the voice of the spirit when I'm falling asleep or or waking up. It's either hypnogogic or hypnopic states that I hear it. I have to be very receptive to hear. It's very hard to hear. It's extremely uh faint and dist sounds as if it's coming from millions of miles away.

I'm just thinking I'm going to have to make a special note regarding the use of the word hypnogogic in in the advocate. The last time I used that in print, which is in a review of R. Hitler, the uh copy editor had no idea what the word was, decided that the word didn't exist, and it appeared in print as hypnogogenetic.

Well, I wonder what that means.

I don't know, but I thought it was a great construction.

It's a great new word. We'll have to find We'll have to search around and find a meaning for it. And we've got a good word there.

Well, let me let me see what else I have here. I had I had a marvelous morning going through this huge stack of material. This uh let's see. Um

that's that's the way word should be coined. You should start with a word and then look around for a meaning. I mean, that's an interesting new way of language. Reminds me of Alice, you know. thing, you know, that about don't let words tell you what they mean, you tell them what they mean.

Makes sense to me.

Um, two elements of your fiction which have given me great pleasure for many years are uh well, how many years? Maybe maybe a dozen years. um are are your respect for the individual at work and I want to emphasize that work in menial jobs that nevertheless may demand skill and your perception of the mutability and the passion of human relationships. Um what is your own work background? And if you want to say anything at all about your own, you know, personal background, I know you've been through a couple of marriages. At least there's more. I hate to say how many.

Uh my work background, I uh was in the uh retail record business and uh um and hi-fi components. Um I managed a record store, a fairly large record store, one of the largest on the West Coast uh in the in the 50s. Um and uh I had worked at a um radio repair shop while I was in high school and after high school that later became a television uh retail outlet. And um I was used to essentially a family type of work situation. And um you know in other words where the boss is essentially the father of the family and um in the record store I had five girls working for me. It was a little larger. Um, now I guess that answers that question.

Um, as regards my personal background, uh, an endless succession of of divorces, all stemming from reckless recklessly engaged in and seized upon marriages. Um, I I still have a good relationship with my ex-wives. I mean, in fact, my uh my most recent ex-wife, there are so many that I have to list them numerically. Uh and I are very very close friends and I have three children and uh my youngest is seven and she brings him over all the time. I see her and him every week. So, you know, we're we're on really good terms.

But, uh the the the reason my marriages all break up is because I'm so uh autocratic when I'm writing. I become like Beethoven, you know, I become uh uh completely u bicos, you know, and defensive in terms of guarding my my privacy. It's very hard to live with me when I'm writing.

You've indicated in a few places that uh many of the characters who appear in your fiction are possibly thinly disguised uh variations of people you've known personally.

That is correct.

What effect has this had on them?

They they hate my bloody guts. They they'd like to ren me to shreds. I expect someday that they'll all fall on me and and and beat the crap out of me. Um it it it is normal for a a serious author to draw on his own life and he builds his characters as composits of people he's known. I mean, he doesn't take the person as the person literally is. He builds a composite. Um, nonetheless, it is a proclivity on the part of his friends to identify themselves with his characters and they often do so spiriously. Um, I my characters are all composits. They they they essentially go back to the uh store stores Pearl that I worked in in the ' 50s, 40s and 50s. And um I draw I draw from my own life. I draw from my own personal experiences and I draw from the people I've known. I find that you can only really develop characters based on actual people. There there's no there's really no such thing as as as a character that that springs you know uh ex nilo you know like Athena from the brow of Zeus. I mean uh the the great prototype for this of course is is is James Joyce uh in and the characters that appear in in in the you know the Dubliners and you know in the later books Ulyses and

the portrait of an artist as a young man the author uses himself and he uses people he knows but he develops essentially composite characters I mean that that's that's the name of that game the these are tendencies extracted from actual people the people aren't transferred intact and and and as as they actually are. I mean, this is not journalism. This this is, you know, this is fiction. Basically, it's fiction.

Choosing the elements that you might want out of a particular individual and then putting it into a composite character.

Yeah. In other words, what you do is you take several people and you you you mel them. You don't you blend them together uh drawing elements from each one so that you have something new. And yet there are origins in actual people. I mean especially in the speech patterns no to me this is the most important thing of all is picking up the cadence of actual spoken English because lang English is basically a spoken language because it has that long period you know when it was only as a vernacular

and it it really developed as a spoken language and it's so important to get down speech cadances of people that that's the main thing I'm looking for is is the kind of speech cadences that that people actually show their little their little mannerisms you know and um their word choice.

Norman Spinrad and I guess Brian Aldis have compared you to Dickens. I think Spinrad goes on to compare you to uh Herman Melville in that that same piece. I guess it's an introduction to one of the great press editions. Uh what tradition do you like to think of yourself operating within?

Uh neither of the two that he named. Uh I have I I have not read Dickens and I've not read Melville. Uh the the influence on me was the uh was the French realist novel uh people like Flobear uh and the Russian novelists that the French novelist influenced uh Tanius especially and also some post World War II Japanese novelists who had written in the French department at Tokyo University who were influenced by again by the French realistic novel. Uh to me, Stendal and Floa would be the the quintessence of of that which influenced my structure and my idea of who I should write about and how I should handle the writing.

Mopazon I was reading Mopazon when I was in junior high school. I used to when junior high school I used to carry paperback copy of Mopazon the Mozan short stories around with me. I just need to study them and study them.

Despite um the critical books that have appeared on your work like Philip K. particularly umbrella of light um and your popularity in Europe and pieces like the Rolling Stone piece that Paul Williams did six years ago. And despite that tradition that you just mentioned, your fiction remains in the science fiction ghetto that say Kurt Vonagget escaped, although frankly no one else comes to mind. Do you think of that genre label as a ghetto and do you want to get out of it?

Um, well, I'm I'm satisfied with my world reputation, which in which I am not uh categorized within the ghetto. Uh, it's really just in the United States that I'm still stuck in the ghetto. I don't really care. Um, it, you know, like I can't even if you ask me at this moment to define science fiction. I couldn't even do it for you. I mean, it's like jazz. I mean, you know, I won't quote any of the cliches, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Um, I I would rather reach a broader audience, but in no way do I repudiate the science fiction audience. But yeah, sure, I'm reprocessing my own life. Well, I've had a a very interesting 10 years. I mean, starting in 1970 when my wife Nancy left me and went off with a Black Panther, uh, much to my surprise and and amazement. Um, as a result of which I hit I hit the bottom. I mean, I just fell into the gutter literally with was just I just crashed into the street in shock when when this happened. U I was, you know, very bajois. I had, you know, wife and a child and a was buying a house, you know, and drove a Buick and everything and wore a suit and tie and and all all those good things. And then all of a sudden, one day my wife left me for a Black Panther and and I wound up in in the street with street people. And then after I got out of that, which was ultimately, you know, a a death trip on my part, once I climbed out of that, I thought, well, gee, I've got some interesting firsthand material that I'd like to write about. Um, I will recycle my own life in terms of a novel. Having done that, then I was was faced with what I would do next after scanner. And it took me a long time to to go from scanner to valance. I mean it's a lot of years of work, a lot of years of planning and that discarded draft of valance before I felt that I had what I wanted. And as I say, the basis of what I had was the the Pickerax novel because once I had lived through the street period, I was used to being with Rogues. I was used to the companionship of of Pickeroons.

Mhm.

I mean, it was it seemed natural to me to to view people in that in that aspect. Now, prior to that, I tended to view people in terms of uh the the artisan, which you pointed out yourself. I mean, because of my years, I I worked like eight years in in retail uh selling, I tended to view people in terms of, you know, the the TV repair men, the radio repair men, the salesmen and so forth. Then later, because of my street experience, I tend I tended to view people as as essentially rogues. And I don't mean lovable rogues, you know, it's not that kind of thing. I mean unscrupulous rogues that that uh were were out to hustle you at any at any moment for any reason. But you know I held nothing against them. I just found them endlessly fascinating. And it was really my fascination regarding the people that that got me into into writing this type of writing. I mean I found the people really interesting and I did not see them being put into novels. I didn't see them being adequately represented in fiction.

you um well your interviewing in the dream makers and and most everything you've written refers obliquely or directly to various psychotherapies and I guess that's obvious in Dallas in particular that you've put yourself through therapy or therapies. What what has been the effect of these therapies on your fiction?

Well, I I'm I've long been fascinated by some of the European uh psychiatric techniques of the existential psychiatrist of Switzerland.

Uh Ludvig binser uh that that school and Jung

Uh, yeah. Jung is is quite obvious in some of your I guess middle period books.

Yeah, I started reading Yung when I was in high school. uh at which point in those days there was very little Jung available and I read all the young that was in English and as it was brought out by uh uh the Bowlingan series you know Pantheon press I read it as you know as more and more was available and uh you know I'm real interested in psych psychiatric techniques uh in a theoretical way because of their their analysis of what constitutes the human mind the thing that I'm really interested in is is the human mind and how it works and I construe psychiatry and psychology as as attempts to plum, you know, the human mind and to find out what it contains and what makes it work and, you know, what what really is consciousness and what what the mind really consists of. U as far as the actual therapy goes, I have yet to see an an adequate uh functional therapy, an adequate, you know, pragmatic therapy that works. They all seem to work equally well. It's real strange. I mean it seems no matter whether you're you know right or uh young or strict Freudian you know or I mean you can go from Melanie Klein who is a very Freudian therapist you know to people who who are coming along now who have no relationship to Freud everything everything everything from Burns Eric Burns views you know on game playing on and it all seems to work about the same I mean you get you seem to get the same bell-shaped curve you know in terms of of of your uh recovery

Mhm.

Uh so I'm not too interested in therapy in terms of its actual practical application. I'm more interested in psychiatry in theory in terms of philosophy of you know going back to Schopenhau which is really the basis Schopenhau and Spinosa being the basis for modern ideas of depth psychology. I mean the ideology of Freud is is is spinosa and chopenhau and that's what interests me because I'm interested in the human mind how it work I'm fascinated by how by how the human mind works and the and the phenomenon of consciousness.

Well that's um it's fairly obvious and that's also you know been the uh the element that has attracted me to your work for uh the longest time I guess. Um, I had a couple of questions about Confessions of a Crap Artist, which which we were talking about earlier. Um, a friend of mine pointed out to me earlier today, and I recall this when I read the book, that various minute details from that book end up in your straight science fiction works, like the element of working as a fire remover. Um, I think that crops up in our friends from Frolics 8. Um, and I think there's the name of some character that also appears in in some later book.

Uh, yeah. In um the Android and Android electric sheep, the Isidor, Jack Isidor appears again,

right?

Um,

both as a name and as a character.

That's that's intended to be the same character.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Exactly. Yeah. I'm I'm interested in that particular character. Matter of fact, there there is really a relationship between that character uh Confessions of a Crap Arts and Val. In a way, you can project Confessions of a Crap Artist into into Val and see the evolution of Jack Isidor. I mean, the the protagonist Horselver fat in Val is really a an evolved uh older um Jack Isidor. I mean, it's Jack Isidor now compared to Jack Isidor in the 50s when Confession of a Crapist was written. in my next book will probably uh project him into the 80s and he will have evolved and changed, you know, again, but it will still be essentially um the same character. I mean, he's not a static character. He is a, you know, he does progress and change and grow and in the 50s he was different from horse over fat. But but I was just looking at the two books the other night, Val and Confessions of a Crap Art, and I realized that that that I in many ways had gone back to Confessions of a Crap Art when I wrote Valance, although I was not conscious of it when I wrote Val. Uh the first person viewpoint um the um involvement with the uh von Danakin sort of u lumping occult. Um that that was true of Visor. He was he was into that all that stuff. I mean this lump and occult stuff was just where he where his head was at. And uh you know this this is sort of the the madness of of the age is is this a ancient astronauts you know from outer space landing you know millennia ago on Earth you know and setting up the great civilizations. I mean if you want to stigmatize the superstitious basis of our of our of our era that would be it. That's really where where it is. and anybody if you're going to depict somebody as a contemporary lunatic, you you'd want to bring in astronauts, ancient astronauts, because this is this is where he's going to go. This this is the area where he's going to surface is he's going to believe that space people landed in ancient Egypt and set the pyramids there, you know, by using large lasers. And this is definitely Jack Isidor still still alive, still talking, still believing everything he's told.

Yep. Yep. Yeah, I can almost say that I recognize the character from an individual in my own experience um who has been creating a history of the planet Saturn since he was about 12 years old and although he's 30 years old continues to do so.

Well, you know, see I have to admit that see like Jack Isidor as I said in the introduction, you know, to Paul Williams in the convention of crap, Jack Isidor is my alter ego. Jack Isidor is like my shadow self in the Yian terms. He is he is me as a mangy crackpot and like you know um I like him you know

that's obvious from Val in particular.

Pardon?

That's the the fact you like him is obvious in Val.

Yeah, I really I really like the guy. He he this this is somebody, you know, who who who reads the Sunday supplements, you know, and and reads these these the the junk these junk occult novels, you know, and or junk occult. Well, they're they're they're put forth as fact. You know, they're on Danish and stuff and just believes it all. You know, there's just nothing he's not capable of believing. I mean, you're you have a person's infinite capacity to believe things. And like, you know, there's a kind of optimism, a kind of a of a beauty in this guless fool, which is what he really is. You know, he's like Parcel. I mean, he's a guless fool. And there's there's a sort of charm in this this personality, you know, because he's not he's essentially not suspicious. He's not hostile, you know, he's not paranoid. He's not, you know, cynical. You see, that's the thing. He's he's just he just kind of wanders around the world as you get in a picker novel, you know, encountering all these these these wonders, you know, everything is to him a great wonder, you know, a miracle.

And, you know, he I think he's a very person although he obviously his mind is completely stuffed with with with with trash. I mean, he's just like a giant glad bag. His mind is a titanic glad bag. Everything enters it, nothing leaves it. You see? If you if you told him there were 14 planets in our solar system, he he'd remember that till the day he died. He he'd never he'd never eject that that datam from his memory banks. You infinite memory for uh uh detail, you know, of of circumstantial facts which have no value to anybody. I I kind of like him. I really do. I feel that very strongly when I read Confessions of Crap Arts. This is really a very beautiful person.

Um, I guess Confessions of a Crap Artist raises the question of um the other unpublished mainstream fiction. Um, do pieces or characters or incidents that are in those novels appear uh transformed in your science fiction work?

Oh, yes. I just plunder them mercilessly. Absolutely. I mean, I I have I have just cannibalized them forever. Um, that's one reason why I have no plans to publish them. Also they're they're they're uh not not uh they're not written in a in a way that I would approve of. Now there they were there were naive products of my earlier period where I had not completely mastered viewpoint uh and structure.

They came before Confessions.

Yeah. Confessions was relatively late in the sequence of mainstream books. I think I only wrote one after that and I wrote none that I was that I really like the way I like Confessions. U almost full confessions to Hardcore Break. They really liked it and in fact they gave me $500 just as a kind of award just just just free money because they had written it although they couldn't publish it because they felt essentially there'd be no readership for it but but they really liked it and they really wanted to bring it out. Now that that book was influenced quite a bit by Nathaniel West. I I was very very very influenced by Nathaniel West for a while and my idea of of the American novel. In other words, here now now we're getting away from the European novel, the French and the Russian and Japanese novel and into a into a idiomatic American novel with Nathaniel West. And when I wrote Crap Artist, I was thinking very much of of Miss Lonely Hearts and and uh just just the whole Nathaniel West view of things.

Yeah. Was that the original title that you had on that novel?

Yep. Yep. Everybody tried to get me to change it, but I wouldn't change it.

Because it's it's easy to look at it as an outgrowth of the many years it took to finally see publication.

Um,

I didn't think it was ever going to get published. I had given up on it. They we we took it out to every publisher in America. Now, in in in Europe, it's in trade editions. In France and England, it's in regular trade editions, not not in, you know, small press editions. It's been very well received in France.

Mhm. Well, which is understandable, you know, because they they there's a name for it for for what Isidor is. It's Barjo in French and there's no English equivalent. I had some French friends here and and they were trying to explain to me what barou means. And um in in French the title is, you know, confession of a bar. And they had his no English equivalent. It's kind of a nitwit, but they know they they never were able to explain what what it exactly meant. But apparently they've got a word for people like Jack Isidor over there.

David Hartwell uh was the publisher of Confessions of the Crap Artist. What's your relationship with him?

Well, I know David. I I met David in 1972 um at at the World Con in LA. And uh I don't I don't know David to anywhere near the extent that I know Paul Williams,

but uh you know, I've talked to him a number of times and uh you know, we have a very cordial relationship. Uh David is very proper. I mean like he's not, you know, counterculture in the way he dresses and the way he talks and he's a very professional person.

Several of your books um h I was I was talking with a friend this afternoon who is about as well acquainted with your work as I am and I was saying, "Well, you know, this is going to going to be going on. What do you think, Jeff?" and he uh he suggested that I ask about several books that in his opinion and not so much in my own start off and then suddenly seem to change direction and we argued about this a little bit and examples of that were Yubic and Galactic Pod Healer as far as he was concerned. Um he wanted to know whether in fact you began one book and ended up writing another in those cases.

That's exactly what happened. And especially it's well it's like Cinderella's older sister. Each was uglier than the other. In the case of Eubic and Galactic Cloud Hill, each got away from me more than the other did. Um I started out and I didn't have any concept of them being being killed and the the post-mortem existence in in Col. Uh it's based on a story that I wrote called What the Dead Men Say.

Mhm.

Um, and I I don't know, I started out and it struck me as I was writing at the opening part that I had essentially on my hands a a a an incredibly pedestrian book. And this is exactly what happened with Galactic Pler in each case. Uh, I I started the book and all of a sudden I realized it was plotting along in this pedestrian manner which is redundant because all plotting along is pedestrian. And all of a sudden I said well I am bored by my own novel and let us see if we cannot inflict on this novel some kind of wave you know some kind of vitality in which case you know as long as it's already so pedestrian I might as well just wing it and just go into you know whatever flights of fancy I can you know summon at this time you see um to counteract this rather plotting uh opening and so yes by by By all means, both books uh they didn't exactly escape me in the sense that I lost control. It's just that they they were essentially unplotted after the first, you know, 40 pages that they were they were they they just, you know, were like improvisation like with jazz, you know, like where I winged it, you know, and

didn't didn't have any particular outcome in mind.

Were there other books that operated that way as well?

Yeah. Would you believe

some maze of death is coming to mind.

Okay, let's say okay man of high castle oddly enough got got into that sort of thing where I had no notes. I had nothing written down except the name of Mr. Tagi and and that was my extent of my notes plus all the research I had done on the Nazis and on the Japanese. I had a tremendous backlog of research. I'd done years I'd done literally years of research, but I did not have a a a plot worked out for Man, the High Town,

but um I used Eing in writing that and it it kind of, you know, kept me uh honest throughout, you know, by continually relating me back, you know, to a sort of center, you see. But a lot of my books, um I I utilize happy accidents, as I like to call them, you see.

Yes.

which is essentially which which is which is kind of jargon for whatever occurs to me as I'm going along. I mean if I'm if I'm writing a book and an idea occurs to me in the process of writing it, I will incorporate that idea. I will not turn down a good idea. It's like you know John Denver said about being a vegetarian he could not turn down a good taco. You know I I cannot turn down a good idea. If I'm writing a book and a good idea comes to me even if it is completely you know 180 degrees away from what I had planned. This is a good idea. I'll put it in.

Well, it makes a lot of sense to me. Um,

what is um your involvement in uh film that's being made based on do Android Dream of Electric Sheep or do you have any involvement at all?

Oh, the Blade Project. Yeah, they went in production this Monday. Yeah. Well, uh it's really interesting because they they won't they won't utter word one to me. Um, I have floated up a number of trial balloons trying to get them to communicate with me. They finally sent me a copy of the screenplay. They sent us through my agent. I know Hampton Fans who who wrote the screenplay for Blade Runner.

Uh, we met in 1974 and uh became rather rather good friends as a matter of fact. And and why they won't communicate with me, I have no idea. I just have no theory about it at all. um they uh they they just you know like maintain a glacial silence in in relationship to me. On the other hand, I haven't really try to contact them. I mean, I could get hold of Fanter if I wanted to probably. I used to have his phone number kicking around. He introduced me to Barbara Hershey and she used to come down with her little boy uh and and to play with with with our little boy. But I really don't know. It's a mystery to me why they haven't got in touch with me. I sent word to Fer through an interviewer from Omni that I wanted to talk to him and I got no response except a copy of the screenplay.

What did you think of Alien?

Oh, I didn't care for Alien at all. I thought Alien was all shock uh technical shock, graphic, visual impact and not ideas. In other words, the the ideas were the the stock monster and spaceship ideas going back to Vanvoke's early stuff in astounding,

right?

um that that I I've seen a couple times. I mean, sure, Geer did a great job on the special effect. I believe Geer did the special effect, huh?

Uh at any rate, he did the set designs that I'm sure he designed the the monster. So,

well, whoever did the monster, I mean, that that that's a hell of a monster if if if you have a great desire to see, you know, the world's most horrifying monster. But really, ultimately, all it boiled down to was, you know, a monster loose on a spaceship. And uh there there was nothing new in the way of ideas. Uh you know I mean I I I deplore the substitution of graphic uh you know visual effects for ideas. I think science fiction is basically a field of ideas and this should carry over into into the movie making.

Mhm.

I mean all they've done all they've really done is somewhere recently the special effects people perfected special effects that they came when all of a sudden they could they could simulate anything. There wasn't anything you could write they couldn't simulate. And these people have just run with that ball to the all the way to the goal line, you know, in disregard of everything else. Uh I'm afraid that's what they're going to do with Bladeunner. Uh from from the screenplay and from what I've read, I've read a number of articles, a number of interviews with Ridley Scott and I it would appears they're going to go ahead. The screenplay are based on my novel lacks most of the ideas that are in the novel. The novel is much more complex and deals in many more ideas than than the screenplay. It is incredibly simplified. They don't they don't even have the mechanical animals which is which is almost one of the central ideas of the novel.

Yes.

I mean it's it's it's a it's a detective thing set in the future of Los Angeles is what is 40 years in the future of LA. You know detective hunting down androids. I mean, um, it's, you know, Philip Phil Philip Marlo meets, uh, you know, the androids from outer space. I mean, I'm, well, you know, I'll tell you one thing. I think it's going to be a successful movie. I think it's going to just simply the the the visual impact is going to be terrific. I've seen some, you know, photographs of some of their pre-production art, and there's no doubt that they're they're they're going to do a very professional and skillful and sophisticated movie, but it's not going to have much m much, uh, idea content.

Have any of your other books an option for films?

Oh, I have several films. Yeah, I have one other film that has been two other films that have been books that have been purchased. I mean, their stories actually. One is the second variety was purchased by a small uh studio called Capital Pictures to make a film called Claw and I'm working in conjunction with them. I mean, Dan Oannon did the screenplay

there. Now, there's another one. My story, we can remember it for you wholesale. Dana Banner did a screenplay for that and Ron Susett who is you know connected with Aliens has purchased that they they've purchased outright. Uh Man in the High Castle is optioned although they haven't gone beyond the optioning stage. They've announced that they're going to go into production on that. So I have actually four four things in the works in Hollywood.

Wow.

The um the film that was inside the inside the novel um was reminding me um at least I don't know I guess in style of the film of the man who fell to earth.

You got it. You got it. That that's that's the the where the idea came. It's like u Madame Bovery going to see Luchia in Madame Bovery.

Okay. In other words, I remember so well that scene where she went to see Luchia and like that crystallized all the nebulous things that were floating around in Madame Bovery's mind. Now, that impressed me enormously. And I saw The Man Who Fell to Earth. I thought it was one of the finest films, not just science fiction film, but one of the finest films I had ever seen. I thought it was incredibly original, incredibly provocative, and rich in ideas, beautiful in texture, glorious in in in in its overall conception. I mean, I just thought the acting was just beautiful, and it was enigmatic, and in no way is is the film valid uh uh the the plot and theme of the man who fell to Earth. But it the idea occurred to me that that a science fiction film, if well done, could could be as rich as a source of of knowledge and information is anything that we normally can derive our knowledge and information from. I mean, the film tremendously impressed me.

Yeah, I was impressed by its texture.

Texture, that's the right word. Yeah, that's a very good word for it. Yeah. uh the hopens with the aud and and and I really loved it and uh look my my use of the film Valance and the novel Val is my homage to you know of the that film the man of solar earth I mean it just was I was one of the greatest experiences of my life to see that

it's it's gratifying to hear uh your appreciation of the manifold earth that's one of my favorite films um along with Zardo's which I find a quirky and very entertaining film. I think that's basically the only two intelligent science fiction films I've seen. Um I don't know if you've seen Borman Zardos.

Yeah, I saw that. I liked it. It was I I wasn't as good, but it was good. I mean, the two both zones were good.

Mhm.

But it Yeah, it was good. It didn't make the impression on me the man of Solar Earth did.

Yeah. I mean there there were things in the men of fell to earth that that my friends and I we went as a group very much like in in Dallas where they go in you know they they go once and then they they Kevin goes once and then he drives the rest of them over and you know we we've just analyzed the manifold incessantly and we cannot explain some of the things in it. I mean like they still remain of luminous you know enigmatic and provocative to it. You know, there appear to be time dysfunctions in it. You know, people wearing ancient clothing or oldfashioned clothing, you know, and things are run backward, you know, and just u Jesus Christ. I mean, that was that was that was a masterpiece. Definitely.

Yeah. I've had similar experiences with that film and with Rogue's previous film, Don't Look Now, although that did not hit the same chords. It hit different chords and remains as as puzzling an object to me. You know what? You know a film I liked that that was like provocative, puzzling, enigmatic and and and scrutable was Alman's three women.

Oh yes.

God, that just when that was over with, I said, you know, that that man melted the c the onlogical categories of time and space and identity, reality. I mean, he did more to melt the basic ontological substance of reality than anything I had ever seen. I mean like um I know that I I've read that he based it on a dream that he had

and although that perhaps might explain it that that whole resolution of that film at the end was was one of the I thought most powerful and provocative things I'd ever seen in in in art and and simply inscrable. I mean there is no normal logic, no normal structure of reality that would account for the way that that ending came with the the transformation in space and and and the roles of those people, you know, the way they wound up at the end of that uh roadside cafe. I mean it it simply challenged the the entire structure reality that we normally deal with. And this of course is where I live. I mean this is this is what I do in my own writing is to challenge the basic structure of reality and to ask you know is it real and if it is not real what is real and if it is semi-real what part of it is real and that kind of thing.

Mhm.

So for me three women just oh it got me where I live really did.

Yeah. I I have thought that uh it would make a terrific pairing to get Robert Alman to direct one of your books. You know, I I cannot see very many directors out there who do the subject matter justice. And uh you know, many is many has been the time quite seriously when I have I thought, well, if a pairing of writer and director needs to get together, this would be one I would enjoy seeing. I never saw his science fiction film Quartet. Quintet, I'm sorry.

Quintet. Yeah.

And I have no idea, you know, what what chords he's pressing with that one. That was pretty good. But uh it uh it repelled me because of the uh the cruelty that the people display. I I have a great aversion to certain forms of physical cruelty and the the depersonalized quality of of the uh narrative. I mean deliberately so. I mean it wasn't directoral fault. It was something he was striving for. the the incredible depersonalization of the people just, you know, was finally inflicted too much pain on me to watch, you know, to see people that depersonalized and that physically cruel to one another.

It was a very skillful film. the um do you want to say anything at all about uh the direction that uh Bis' Val's excuse me conclusion is uh is going to take in the uh the second book that's coming out.

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's resolved in terms of Judaism. Uh the the sequel Divine Invasion which is originally called Val Regain is it's set in the future. It doesn't take it doesn't begin where Val left off. There's a hiatus of oh a couple hundred years but it starts out with the child born again that the child Sophia dies in in valor and u it's it's the the resolution is not a resolution in terms of the occult it's not resolved even in terms of Christianity it's resolved in terms of Judaism and

I did a very, very detailed study of the Torah and the basic tenets of Judaism. For it, I mean, I, in other words, I studied. I studied real hard. I did my homework. I'm not Jewish, so it was something that I normally am not into, but I, I, I, I really studied the basis of Judaism.

And when I went to write the sequel, I, I, I felt, at least, I mean, that was my my subjective impression, that I understood Judaism. And I have, I have now gained this tremendous respect for Judaism. I mean, this tremendous concept in my mind of the Torah. I mean, you know, in other words, which is much more than the Decalogue. I mean, we're not just talking about the Decalogue. I mean, the entire structure of the Torah to me is is one of the most is is is in fact to me the the greatest achievements of human beings in the world is is the, you know, the the the Torah. I mean, I, I really would seriously consider converting to Judaism now that I've studied Judaism.

Um, it just absolutely provided the resolution I wanted. I mean, it's it's sane. It's rational. It's it's rooted deeply in reality. It it's uh it it's humane. It's intelligent. It's it's it's it's it's deeply, deeply moving and and and inspiring and uh, yeah. So, the resolution of violence is is resolved in terms of of of Yahweh and and Torah. Torah is discussed endlessly in the sequel. Uh, I say a great deal about the Torah. Uh, my my feeling about the Torah really is that it is that it is in from a mystical standpoint so sublime as to be aggreg, and that very, very few Christians, speaking as a Christian, I'm speaking as a Christian, when I say very few Christians have any conception of the beauty and magnitude and splendor of the Torah.

But uh, I got the uh finest reference books I could find. I got I got the the book that is published that is by the late Chief Rabbi of the uh British Empire, who is definitely was was one of the great authorities of the 20th century on the Torah, and I got his book, which was in Hebrew and in English and and contained tremendous notes. I mean, enormous notes. It was, you know, 50% notes. And we're speaking of perhaps the the highest authority on the Torah in the English-speaking world. And I just wound up with this admiration for for Judaism that that that just is is to me one of the crowning moments in my life was was to become, you know, uh, aware of of of this great beautiful system of thought.

A a friend of the friend I was talking with this afternoon told him that, um, he was very glad that he had read Gershom Scholem's *Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism* immediately before reading *Valis*, because he said it illuminated the book for him. And that was a comment that just didn't make any sense to me earlier today, but, uh, you seem to be tying it together for me right now.

Oh, yeah. What Sophia the child says when she speaks to them in the second meeting, what what she is speaking is is essentially a combination of the Fourth Gospel, which, in other words, there are some Christian elements, but that she is speaking in terms of the Torah. She is, in a sense, the Torah. Hagia is is the Old Testament designation for the wisdom of God, and she is not speaking merely as a Christian spokesman. She's spokesperson. She's speaking essentially from from the basis of of the Torah itself. The the idea of of the rulers must shelter and protect. Uh, there's a lot of Old Testament thinking there that comes through, and when she speaks her charma to them or commission to them is not just New Testament. It's definitely also, you know, Judaean origin. Yeah. Definitely the influence of of my interest in Judaism is is invalid.

Um, I work at a uh at a full-time job in a uh um printing factory, and I'm in the shipping department. And through a series of circumstances, your uh track tape number 30 has ended up hanging over the shipping department, which confuses people no end when they uh when they see it. But the head shipper is constantly asking, asking long before I ever mentioned uh any of my own interest in the same subject, "What is reality?" And I feel I should ask you that.

What is reality?

Yes.

Okay. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away.

I'm sure he'll thank you. I worked that out a long time. I worked that out in Canada. It's in it's in it's invalid.

You're right.

I I quote myself involved. Uh, if you stop believing in it and it goes away, it was it was it was a projection of your own mind. In other words, you generated it yourself, it's essentially solipsism. Um, but if you stop believing in it and it doesn't go away, you're stuck with the word reality. That is going to have to do. I mean, you're going to have to face the fact that you're not generating it from your own mind. It is being it is a given. It is a given. And anything that is a given that that you did not uh create yourself and project is you're going to have to designate that reality. Whatever the source of that reality may be, whether it's God as Spinoza believed, you know, or whatever, I mean, or Brahman or or it doesn't matter. The fact is you're going to have to call it real. If you can't get rid of it by not believing in it, you're you're stuck with it.

Okay. Um, let me ask you about um, a line that I'm seeing in Richard Lupoff's uh interview preface with you on *A Handful of Darkness* where you talk about "inner projection stories," which you define as stories where internal psychological contents are projected into the outer world and become three-dimensional and real and concrete. Um, did *Valis* dispense with the conventional SF trappings that disguise this intention behind all your writing?

I Well, I don't think there's a link between uh what Lupoff is quoting me on and *Valis*.

Uh, what Lupoff is talking about really pertains to earlier work of mine. Uh, it would be particularly applicable to uh the the *Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch* and uh well up to *A Maze of Death*. *A Maze of Death*. *Stigmata*, and maybe a couple others, and some of the very early stuff, but, uh, *The Martian Time-Slip* would be a very good example, but I don't think it could be said to apply to *Valis*. So once you get into *Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said*, you're out of that phase.

Pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

You were mentioning to me last week, Bishop Timothy Archer.

Yeah, that's the new book. I still haven't heard from Hartwell. He's apparently on vacation for one more week over and above what I had understood. Uh, so apparently he comes back to work tomorrow. And, uh, so you you've caught me at a very interesting time because at this particular moment, I do not know what the state of that novel is going to be.

And, uh, uh, so, uh, it has caused me during this wait to do a lot of profound thinking about my decision to write it. I think I told you I wrote it in preference to doing a uh commercial novelization based on the *Blade Runner* uh screenplay.

Well, you had indicated in your letter that you decided against doing that novelization, although you you were talking about a 27-year-old blonde who might entice you anyway.

Yeah. Well, I decided not to call up. She represents *Blade Runner*. He's uh head of their publishing department, and uh the amount of money involved would have been very great. What they did, what they offered to do was to cut us in on the merchandising rights, but they would have required a suppression of the original novel, *Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?*, in favor of the commercialized novelization based on the screenplay. And, uh, they made several offers, and finally, we computed my agency computed that, uh, that I would accrue, conservatively, about $400,000 if I did the novelization. And, uh, in contrast, if we went the route of re-releasing the original novel, I would make about $12,500. And, uh, later, when I was putting tremendous pressure on us to do the novelization, or to allow them to hire somebody to come in and do the novelization, like Alan Dean Foster.

And we would also get a large amount of money if someone else did the novelization, or twice as much money. But we wanted to bring out the original novel again because we felt that it was a good novel. Uh, and then also, I really did not want to write the novelization, the uh, what I call the El Cheapo novelization. Uh, I didn't want to do this *Bishop Timothy Archer* novel. And, uh, so we stuck to our guns. And, uh, at one point, *Blade Runner* became so, uh, coldblooded, they they threatened to withdraw the logo rights, which would accompany the original novel, you know, tied into the movie release. And we wouldn't be able to say, you know, "The novel on which *Blade Runner* was based." We'd be able to use any, uh, clips from the film. But, uh, finally, we came to an agreement with them, uh, or or it seems that we have come to an agreement with them, but we are adamant about releasing the original novel. We we will release it one way or another, and, uh, we will not budge. And then I have done the *Bishop Timothy Archer* novel, and it is, as I say, in my editor's hands, and he presumably has already read it, and it's just a question of him reporting back to me.

That's David Hartwell.

David Hartwell. Yeah. Now, the payment on that *Bishop Timothy Archer* novel is very, very small. It's only $7,000. And David explained to me that it's because in the mainstream field, I'm I'm essentially a a novice writer. I'm not known, and I'm I'm being paid on the scale that a new writer coming into the field would be paid on. Uh, the contract is a two-volume, two-book contract, and there's a science fiction novel in it, and it pays three times, exactly three times, for the science fiction novel what is being paid for the *Bishop Timothy Archer* one. Now, they wanted the *Bishop Timothy Archer* one first, and I wanted to do it first. So I I wrote it. And, uh, at this point, I may find that I've made a very great error, because I may find that it's not a successful book. It may be that I lost the ability to write a literary novel, if indeed I ever had the ability to do so. Uh, it's been over 20 years since I've written a uh non-science fiction novel, and, uh, it is very, very problematical as to whether I can write a uh mainstream literary quality type novel. Uh, this is definitely an unproven thing. It's definitely an X-factor, an unknown, and I may find that I turned on $400,000, uh, and and wound up with nothing, at least nothing in terms of a literary success. So I would then have to face the fact that I had suffered two defeats, one economic, and the other, uh, having to do with my literary prowess, and the combined impact of this would be very traumatic to me. I mean, I would I couldn't justify it commercially, and I couldn't justify it, uh, in terms of artistic integrity. And so I am extremely nervous and, uh, very anxious about Hartwell's reaction.

*Valis* itself is, you know, just this side of not being science fiction. Personally, I don't consider it science fiction. Um, you know, it could have been published as a mainstream novel and received, who knows what kind of attention that way. I'm sure he got more attention with it, you know, a science fiction dust jacket on it than he would have otherwise. But, you know, it's it seems marginally SF at best.

Yes. Well, this *Bishop Timothy Archer* novel is essentially the third novel in a trilogy of which *Valis* is the first. *The Divine Invasion* is the second, which is sort of interesting because each book is unique. Uh, *Valis* being, uh, experimental, I would call it experimental science fiction, a pick novel, experimental science fiction. Mhm.

Um, *The Divine Invasion* is is a very conventional structure for science fiction. It's almost fantasy. I mean, it's almost science fantasy. Uh, no experimental devices of any kind. And *Bishop Timothy Archer* in no way is science fiction, but is set. It starts off the day John Lennon is is shot, back in December. Uh, and then it goes into flashbacks. And yet the three do form a trilogy, uh, constellating around a a basic theme. And it really was my desire to do a trilogy on this basic theme. And this is something that has been extremely important to me, uh, in terms of the organic development of my themes and ideas and preoccupations in my writing. So for me to derail myself at this point and do that cheapo novelization for *Blade Runner* would have would probably have been disastrous to me artistically. Although financially, as my agent explained it, I would literally be set up for life. I mean, that much money would probably last me the rest of my life. I I don't think my agent figures I'm going to live much longer. So the the the amount I would get each year on interest alone would probably keep me alive. He figured I could accrue $60,000 a year in interest on that much money. But, uh, it really was necessary for me to do the *Bishop Timothy Archer* novel as a projection of thematic material going back years and years and years in my writing. It founded even stuff as early as *Eye of the Sky*.

And, uh, well, I join. I was very interested to recently finally find a copy of *The Cosmic Puppets*. Uh, read that just before I read *The Divine Invasion*. I was fascinated by the resonance between the two books. You know, you've got this battle between, I'm not sure how they're pronounced, but you you know what I mean. Or our man.

Yeah.

Occurring in *The Cosmic Puppets*. And I was reading this book and I was thinking, you know, for one thing, obviously the cover had absolutely nothing to do with the book. It was the old Ace double. I don't know if it was ever reprinted. And, uh, I was thinking, you know, this is remarkably different from most of the science fiction that you were writing in that period. I guess that was the mid-50s when *The Cosmic Puppets* appeared. And, uh, then along comes *The Divine Invasion*. I'm constantly struck by, well, this is essentially the same conflict that's taking place. It's a very different book, but you're, you know, you're dealing with the same themes.

That is correct. Yes. In other words, these things really go back decades. I'm writing really to the origin of my professional career. Uh, there they're there are constant preoccupations with me. Uh, and, uh, they have their own logic and their own dynamism. I mean, they they unfold by their own, uh, you know, inner organic, you know, drive. And I don't really have the option of boarding that process and just suddenly going into a completely commercialized, uh, thing aimed at 12-year-olds, literally aimed at 12-year-olds, not not speaking in, you know, hyperbole, but, uh, we were told the cheapo novelization based on the screenplay would have to appeal to a 12-year-old audience, and it would be entirely derived from the screenplay, and there would be no room whatsoever for me to, uh, do any. Well, the the real answer is there already is a novel for *Blade Runner* to do, *Androids Dream of Electric Sheep*. I've already written the damn thing once. And, um, it's it's almost like, uh, Dante's Inferno. I mean, the the sentence passed on the writer who is sent to Inferno is that he will then rewrite all his novels, the best ones at least, as cheapo 12-year-old commercial hack stuff. And he'll be sentenced to do this for all eternity. And it would be just a terrible punishment to have to do something like that. And the fact that it would earn me a lot of money just makes it even more grotesque, actually. I mean, it just it just, uh, illuminates the the the grotesqueness of the situation. I mean, I never went into writing for money anyway. I mean, uh, that was never my objective. There's very, very few writers are really in it for money. I mean, uh, it's it's you do find Biggie Splan. I heard him speak once on the radio years ago, and he just said flat out he was doing it for money. He had no no goals, no ambitions, no no purpose in writing except to make money. And he would simply write whatever would make him the most money. Well, I thought at the time, you know, there's there's somebody whose space I can't get into, you know.

Yeah.

Because I I don't for I never did foresee making any any real mega bucks. And, uh, so when it's finally offered to me, you know, I'm I'm I'm more or less apathetic toward the mega bucks. I don't really need the money. I live a rather ascetic life. I don't I don't have very many material wants, and I have no debts. My my condominium has paid off. My car has paid off. My stereo has paid off. I mean, I, uh, you know, it's it's not an enticement that that appeals to me.

That Mickey Spillane quote reminds me of a similar one from Harold Robbins, who had apparently been distributing canned peas before he got into writing. And somebody told him, you know, "Here's another way to make money." And he thought, "Oh, yeah." And that was it. He got into writing. Well, I know one very wealthy writer who I won't mention, and, uh, he's he's a real nice guy, but he's just, uh, he's he's he's in it for the money, and he's got his rewards. I mean, that is he got what he went into it for. He had been a school teacher, and he wasn't making very much money, and then somehow he discerned that he could make a lot of money by writing Gothic novels, you know, that stuff where you got the house with the house that spits goo at you, as somebody wants to describe this kind of stuff. And, uh, no doubt such writers exist, and no doubt such books exist, but I can't just suddenly switch over to being in it for the money. And, uh, there was also the possibility, now this is a very real possibility, that if I tried to do the cheapo novelization for *Blade Runner*, I would actually fail to do, literally failed to be successful in that case. I would be then faced with with a kind of instant karma would have set in, that I would have debased myself and prostituted myself, and then proved myself inadequate to the task. That I literally could not write a commercial novel that would be, uh, you know, something that would sell in the millions of copies. I mean, they're talking about projected sales of from 2 million to 6 million copies. And I would I mean, I could conceivably prove to be, uh, without the talent, because it does take talent to do that kind of thing. Without the talent to do that kind of book, uh, I can't design soup can labels either. You see, even though there's a lot of money in that Andy Warhol can, I can't. And, uh, then then I would be in an ignominious and shameful situation where I where I debased myself fruitlessly. So I wouldn't have the money, and and I would have failed. And I I I kind of foresaw that as the ultimate bad scenario of of all the possibilities. At least this way, I I I attempt the finest book I can write. I mean, I set out to write the best novel I can write. Uh, and there isn't a great deal of money involved, and if I fail, at least I will have made, I will have taken my best shot. That's the thing. I will have taken my best shot. And I think a person always takes his best shot at everything. Whether he pairs shoes, drives a bus, you know, or writes novels, or anything, you know, or sells fruit. I mean, you you you do the best you can. Well, and then you have this terrible fear that you're you you will acquiesce to this and then prove to be to be incompetent. In which case, the gods will all just just fall down laughing. I mean, the gods will just, you know, all limp.

Well, they'll yank the chair out from under you, and then they'll all fall down.

Yeah. And so, like, I really didn't have any, uh, difficulty in making my choice. And I must say that my agent was just marvelous in backing me up. In fact, uh, it was quite clear that he felt that, uh, it was better to make the attempt on a literary novel. Although he has, he's he said he had a lot of trouble reading *Bishop Timothy Archer*. I mean, he he he said that it was the first novel he tried to read during his career as an agent that he couldn't just get through essentially in one sitting. And he had tried for four or five days to read it and only been able to do like 20 pages a day, and he'd gone like for a four-hour walk after reading 20 pages. And he said, "You know, you're just never going to have a big audience on for this novel." And I was thrown into into vast gloom by this. Uh, but then after he finished it, he seemed to like it. But, uh, he he well, you know, I mean, literary novels, I guess, you know, do not necessarily have the, uh, the broad appeal, I guess. Uh, it's sometimes possible to combine these two things, but it's not always possible to combine these two things. Reminds me of that comment that the editor made to Proust, you know, and Proust originally submitted the manuscript for *Remembrance of Things Past*, and the editor returned saying, "It is not proper for a gentleman to dilate for 40 pages on how it feels to fall asleep." But, um, I like the manuscript. I I've looked it over and and I kind of like it. The characterization is very good. Uh, I managed to get into the *Bishop Timothy Archer* novel two very good characters, the the bishop himself, and then the protagonist, which is a young woman, and it's told from the first person interior in her monologue, you know, such as Joyce, *Ulysses*, both. And, um, she's a lot younger than I am. She's a lot more educated than I am. She's a lot smarter than I am, and she's a lot more rational than I am. And she's a marvelous viewpoint character. I mean, I I'm very fond of her, really. She's scrappy, she's bright, she's she's honest, she's, uh, educated, she's stable, she's healthy, she's quite responsible, and I just think she's a a wonderful person. And, uh, I was very much into a postpartum depression after I finished writing it because I was so happy in and enjoying her company, you know, the companionship of her presence in my mind, you know, listening to her dialogue, the way she talks, the way she responds. So, I really loved her. I really fell in love with her. I mean, I I don't know where I got her. She's entirely fictional, as far as I know, and fictitious. I mean, I I I didn't base her on anybody. Uh, she's a Berkeley, she she's a Berkeley girl. She's a graduate from UC Berkeley from the English department. She may be a synthesis of a number of Berkeley women that I've known. But in essence, she seems to be an ad hoc creation, you know, like like, you know, Pallas from the brow of Zeus, just, you know, out of nothing, ex nihilo, as it were. She therefore is not as, um, directly taken from life as Timothy Archer is from James Pike.

That's correct. Yeah. Right. Well, uh, I needed some to to to present the bishop. I had to have a protagonist who was smart enough to understand him and loving enough to forgive him. She had to be both smart and loving. I mean, she had to understand what he was doing, and she had to be able to emotionally understand as well as intellectually understand. Now, that's a tall order, because, uh, the bishop in the book is a very material, very complex person who, uh, does many things which are dubious ethically. And, um, she intellectually understands what he's doing, and yes, she emotionally, she's she's able to love him. I mean, she's his daughter-in-law. She married his son. Um, and so she she she is required, this viewpoint character is required to have a tremendous empathic ability plus a tremendous intellect. In fact, an an intellect and empath and empathic ability that are above and beyond that of the bishop himself. So, in a sense, she is more profoundly a wise person than the bishop himself. And then, of course, the climax of the book really is the effect on her of his death. In other words, it's not his death that is the climax of the book, but the effect that it has on her. And she says that it turns her into a machine, that when she heard he was dead in Israel, that she devolved to a level of a machine, merely, and lost her own human nature. Although at the end of the book, it it is revived by a, uh, a Sufi scholar that is giving seminars in Salelo, is able to restore her to the status of a human being.

So it is not a a bummer ending. I mean, it's a very positive ending, but there is this period where she is just reified. I mean, is totally reified, just tragically reified, and she has complete insight, and she knows it. And when the book opens, she is in that reified state, and then it goes back to the, uh, origins of the state. How did this state occur? How did she become this reified creature? You know, this this this mechanical creature, this very intelligent, but a very mechanical creature. And and and the flashbacks lead up finally to the bishop's death. And then she says, "This is what did it. This is what turned me into a machine." And then it picks up again in the present, the day John Lennon is shot, and, uh, goes on from then.

Yeah. You know, you were mentioning that it opened with, uh, the Lennon assassination. I was just flipping through my notes here, cuz I had a question to ask you about that. Um, in in me, very often the world that I look at, uh, strikes me as being an SF novel, and not necessarily a particularly good one. Um, but I often have the feeling that I am living in a part of the future, at any rate, that I have been reading about, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when I was an adolescent, I was reading science fiction, and I have occasionally a very strong sense, particularly when with the impact of something like the death of Lennon, and then with a lesser impact, but, you know, underlining it perhaps, uh, the the attempts on Reagan and on the Pope. And I wondered what that is like from your perspective, having been writing the stuff that I was reading when I was an adolescent.

Oh, Jesus. I I agree with you completely. I mean, well, my agent said after he finished *Bishop Timothy Archer*, he said, "You know," he said, "in your science fiction, they they all they drive things called flapples and quibbles. And in this one, they drive Hondas." But he said, "It's it's still essentially a science fiction novel." He said, "Although I can't explain exactly how it's a science fiction novel." He said, "But it's really as if the world caught up with science fiction." I mean, in other words, the the years went by, and the the disparity, but, you know, the temporal gap began to, you know, close until finally there was no temporal gap. You know what I mean? We were no longer writing about the future. That, in a sense, the the very concept of, uh, projecting it ahead is now meaningless, because we are there, you know, literally in our actual world. Where in 1950 or 1955, when I'd write a science fiction novel, you know, I would set it ahead. I'd said it's like in the year 2200. And then all of a sudden, I realized, you know, like around 1977, that my God, it's getting to me exactly like these novels we used to write in the 50s, you know. I mean, everything is just coming out to be real. And and and this, of course, then creates in science fiction a completely fantastic type of novel, which is set on the planet of Moraria, you know, or or Mal Malusia, you know, in another galaxy, you know, and the Malusians all have, you know, 18 heads, you know, and the the 16 of the Malusians, you know, have a sexual back together. In other words, totally fantasy science fiction. You see, no connection with Earth. None of the kind of social satire and comment that you get saying such brilliant works as Kurt Vonnegut's *Player Piano*, which is which is a perfect example. I mean, if you read *Player Piano* now, um, you you might just as well go downtown to the big agencies, the big business, big business offices, and just walk in and sit down as as read, you know, *Player Piano*. And this has also been pointed out about Kafka, that when Kafka's stuff was first written, it never occurred to anybody that the real world could resemble something like *The Castle*.

I mean, it was taken to be either satire, black humor, absurdism, uh, some kind of allegory, uh, some kind of religious, you know, mystical thing, or some kind of lunacy. And now the our world and Kafka's world have just, you know, merged together. You know, and this is probably going to be even more true. I mean, we're all going to wind up, you know, like Kafka. We won't turn into cockroaches, literally, but we'll all wind up, you know, in situations like like in *The Castle*, which to me is is the finest of Kafka's works, or or something like *The Hunger Artist*, you know, or *The Penal Colony*. Um, that these these discrepancies between reality and this kind of surreal fiction is just dwindled away to nothing. So much science fiction now is essentially what I would call fantasy. It's not science fantasy.

Yeah. Or or even space adventure. I mean, things like *Star Wars*, you know, it's really it's the Battle of Midway being fought out of space with Douglas Trumbull effects. That was the thing about doing the *Blade Runner* novelization. Douglas Trumbull was doing special effects and that, and my agent said, "Well, you know, just go up there and, you know." Well, he wasn't really trying to get me to do it, but he said, "If you did it, you you just go up there and report on what you saw." And I can just see me coming home and trying to write down on paper a Douglas Trumbull special effect and just blowing it completely, and, you know, just being totally unable to describe what I'd seen. You know, and my my agent said, "It's just reportage, you know, it's all you have to do. You won't have to make up anything." And I thought, "Well, how can anybody do justice to Douglas Trumbull's special effects, you know?" I mean, it's it's it's it's silly. The idea is silly, you know.

Mhm. I mean, it's it it can't nobody can really do it because I had read, you know, like the, uh, *Close Encounters of the Third Kind* book, the novel, and Chris Lord, I mean, those things are so bad that if they did not exist, nobody could imagine them, you know.

Um, but let me let me ask you about *Blade Runner*. Have you gone to the set?

Well, I was supposed to go up there, and, uh, they called me up, and they called me up, and, uh, I temporized and temporized, you know, and vacillated and procrastinated, and finally they warned me there was in the last month of shooting, and then the monks went away, and I I could just see myself going up there, and I I had this this vision in my mind, and I would go up there, and I would be introduced to Ridley Scott, and I'd be introduced to Harrison Ford, you know, who's the lead character. And I'd just be so dazzled. I'd be like Mr. Toad, you know, seeing the motor car for the first time. You know, my eyes would just be as big as saucers, and I'd just be standing there just completely, you know, mesmerized by all this and everything. And then I would watch a scene being shot, and Harrison Ford would say, "Lower that blast pistol, android, or you're a dead android." And I would just leap across the special effects set, you know, just bound across it, you know, like like like a veritable gazelle, and just seize him by his throat and just start spattering him against the wall, and they have to run in and throw a blanket over me, you know, and call the security guards and bring in the Thorazine, and I'd be just screaming, "You you've destroyed my book!" You know, and there'd be a little item in the newspaper, you know, "Obscure author becomes psychotic on a Hollywood set," you know, "minor minor damage," you know, "mostly to the author." And they they'd have to, you know, ship me back down to Orange County and in in a crate with air holes, you know, air vents, and and I'd be just still screaming, you know, "They've destroyed my my work of art." But the thing about Hollywood is Hollywood can kill you even if you don't go there. Like the negotiations we've had with *Blade Runner* have really worn me down in terms of, you know, a claw. I mean, I'm just, uh, I'm just worn out, you know, from from all the intricate negotiations. I mean, they were able to renegotiate a contract where I was supposed to get $25,000, where it dropped to $12,500. And I don't even know how they were able to renegotiate a signed contract. I mean, I was standing there looking at the goddamn signed contract. You know, I said, "You get $10,000 now. You get $15,000 when when the film comes out. That's $25,000." And all of a sudden, I get a call, and it's now down to $12,500. I'm I'm looking at the signed contract, and they did it by saying that we withdraw the logo right, and then we give, you know, we make a counter offer, and it winds up, you know, well, a counter offer is they'll give us the logo rights, but I won't get any any more than, you know, the the the minuscule amount that I essentially already had. And, you know, like I don't even know how this is done. I don't even know how you board a signed contract. I mean, it's like contract, the whole purpose of contract was to bind the parties irrevocably, you know, and and it just, you finally, I got to the point where I thought, "No, I'll go up there." And first of all, I'm on a diet, so I can't eat the rich food they'll serve me. And, uh, what I really hope for is a whole lot of free cocaine, and there won't be any free cocaine. And I'll be real pissed because of that, you know, and I'll keep, you know, petulantly saying, "Where's the cocaine?" He'll say, "No, that's a myth. You've been reading TV Guide, you know, Hollywood's on hard times now." So,

Yeah. Yeah. Think things are not all, you know, lemonade fountains and gumdrops, you know, and all and and now then also there's the beautiful starlet syndrome, you see. And, uh, yet I keep remembering, you know, this is an inducement, you know, we're going to turn you on to these foxy ladies. But, um, I keep remembering people like F. Scott Fitzgerald, you know, I mean, one is always haunted by the spectre of F. Scott Fitzgerald, you know, who goes there, and they just grind him up like in a garbage disposal, you know?

And just sitting here talking to them on the phone for those two months, I started drinking more and more. I started drinking a whole lot of scotch every night. You know, I went from drinking a single glass to, you know, a glass, and finally to two wine glasses of scotch every night. And on Memorial Day, I started bleeding, gastrointestinal bleeding. And it was it was because of scotch, aspirin, take drinking scotch and taking aspirin constantly and worrying about this whole goddamn thing. And I said, "Hollywood is going to kill me by remote control. It's like our war in Vietnam, you know, we conducted all by push buttons, you know, we flew over the villages, you know, at at 20,000, you know, feet and and released, you know, missiles." Well, Hollywood is just flying over my head at 20,000 feet, presses a button, and I start bleeding. You know, gastrointestinal bleeding. *Blade Runner* started yelling at me because of an article that I wrote in *Select TV Guide* about the project because I mentioned androids. They said, "This is very dangerous talk, mentioning androids in connection with this film. We're not using the word android." Well, my book has the word android in the title, for God's sake. You say,

Seems inescapable.

It seems hard to avoid a word that's in the title of your own book, for goodness sake. I didn't know that it was a big secret, and they had already read the Omni article, and it's all mentioned in the Omni article that came out, you know, a couple months ago.

Mhm.

So, I don't know. You know, I apparently, you know, I, you know, lose. You know, "You better watch what you say." And they want to know how I got hold of a copy of the screenplay. That's another thing. I I mentioned I had read the screenplay in an article in *Select TV Guide*, and they said, "How did you get hold of a copy of the screenplay?" And I almost said, "I flew overhead in a helicopter, and I bored through this roof in the middle of the night, and I stole the screenplay, you know." I said, "Well, look, it was given to me by Michael Dilly's lawyer." Michael Dilly is a producer. I I legitimately acquired a copy of the screen. I mean, you know, I didn't dress up, you know, like a secretary in a skirt and high heels and come in and xerox it while no one was watching, you know. I mean, I'm an author, you know, I get to look at the screenplay, you know. I I mean, that's how how did you get a hold of the screenplay? They said, "Say, with emphasis on the word *you*, you know, you in italics and underlined, you know, it's you of all people."

You you of all people in the world. What the hell went wrong that we let you see the screenplay? You said I had to assuage their their grim concern.

So, is *Blade Runner* going to be a film where the special effects are the central theme, in effect?

You got it. That's right. Yep. That was what I said in my *Select TV* article. We we saw that in *Alien*. Uh, Ridley Scott is a director who has a visual sense rather than a narrative sense. I mean, I don't think this is disputed. I mean, this this is not a matter of of of me insulting Ridley Scott. Ridley Scott works on visual effects. He he thinks visually. He sees. I mean, and, of course, this is why he's in movies. You know, movies are something you look at and they move. That's why they're called movies. And, you know, this is this is perhaps the way it should be. But I am an author, and I think in narrative terms. I think in terms of of of of a storyline.

Um, I wanted to talk to you about that process that you were sort of referring to yourself earlier about, um, what made you into a writer. You were saying that it wasn't for the money. Um, when did you make your first pro sales, and how long were you writing before that? What got you into it in the first place, I guess?

Well, I, uh, I started my first novel when I was 13 years old. That's that's the God's truth. I taught myself to type while I was in, uh, junior high, and started my first novel when I was in the eighth grade. I don't know if that works out to 13, but I was in the eighth grade. And, uh, it was called *Return to Lily*. And I made my first sale in, uh, November of 1951. And my first stories were published in 1952. And, uh, I had, at the time I graduated from high school, I was writing regularly. I was, uh, very soon writing one novel after another, none of which, of course, sold.

And, uh, I wrote both science fiction and literary type novels. I was living in Berkeley, and all the little reinforcement Berkeley was for the literary stuff. Now, I knew all kinds of people who were doing literary type novels, avant-garde novels, and I knew some of the very fine avant-garde poets in the Bay Area, people like Robert Duncan, you know, and Jack Spicer, and those people, that that whole crowd, Philip Lamantia, and so on. And, uh, they all encouraged me to write, but by and large, there was no encouragement to write science fiction, and there was no encouragement particularly to sell anything, but I wanted to write and sell, and I also wanted to do science fiction. So, you know, my ultimate dream was to be able to do both literary stuff and science fiction. Well, didn't work out that way. I wasn't able to sell literary stuff. Uh, you know, *Confessions of a Crap Artist*, which I wrote in the late 50s, was finally issued by a little publisher, uh, and Whitful Press in an edition of 6,000 copies.

Do you have any plans for that forthcoming essay?

Yeah, I I've done two different outlines. I have two different possibilities. I'll probably wind up, uh, laminating the two outlines together and making one book out of it, which is what I like to do very much, is develop independent outlines and then laminate them into one book. That's where I get my multiple plot ideas is doing that. Um, I I really enjoy doing that. A, uh, paste-up job.

What's the synthesis? In other words,

Obviously, you're reading science fiction, uh, as a young teenager. What contemporary writers do you enjoy reading?

Well, you mean now, or at that time?

Well, both, I guess.

Well, at that time, I was big, big thing as I was living in Berkeley. I was I was reading, you know, what what the the Berkeley intellectual community was reading, which is of course everything from, you know, Fings Way Gone on down to those pathos. Um, I mean, in other words, you could not get into a party unless you had read, uh, Let's see. Uh, I'm trying to think back now what we were reading at that time. Sherwood Anderson and people like that. Uh, Clifford Odets, and so on. And then, of course, you know, the *Ulysses*. Uh.

And then I was reading, uh, some of the lesser-known modern writers that were connected with a series of, uh, Pocket Books called *Discovery*. And these were people like, uh,

I've seen those. I've seen.

Oh, you have seen those. Good. Good. I I bought every one of those. In fact, there's a letter from me printed in one of them, in the second, I think the second one. Uh, William Styron was one of them. Herb Gold was one. I finally met Herb Gold. Um, I was very impressed by those. I mean, I tried to keep up on what was contemporary. I was even reading contemporary Japanese novels, you know, their translation of their work in English. Mhm.

Uh, I read a lot of the French novels, the French realistic novels, Balzac and, uh, Stendhal and Flaubert. And I read, I love Turgenev. And then, of course, we all read Dostoevsky, but I mean, I would branch out into lesser-known people, you know, where it's like instead of just reading Paul, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, you know, I would turn to, uh, some of the lesser-known Russian writers, even some of the surrealist Russian writers that wrote just after the Russian Revolution in 1917. 17. Most people don't even know about them. There was a period of extreme experimentation under under Lenin.

Yeah, that wouldn't be someone like Yuri Olesha.

Christ, I don't even remember who these guys were. I mean, they were real good. I mean, we used to, I mean, I remember reading Hans Fallada's, you know, *Little Man, What Now?*, you know, and I, we read Celine, you know, *Journey to the End of the Night*.

Um, and I read Ernst Jünger's *On the Marble Cliffs*. Uh, and I was also reading a lot of philosophy. That I was even, even that early, I was reading Moses Maimonides' *Guide for the Perplexed*. And my wife came home one time from school and she says, "What is it you're reading again?"

I said Moses Mady's guide to the perplex. He says, "Yeah." Well, she says, "My instructor." She says, "I mentioned that to my instructor." And he says, "You're probably the only human being on the face of the earth today who at this moment is reading Moses." You know, I was just sitting there reading it, you know, eating a ham sandwich and reading. It didn't strike me as I had access to the stacks at the Berkeley UC library.

Uh, uh, I had gone to Berkeley, you know, UC Berkeley for a little long and been kicked out because they wouldn't take ROTC. And, uh, a friend of mine had gotten a, uh, a professor there to sign a, uh, thing that gave me a card, and it gave me stack privileges, which I hadn't had as an undergraduate. I'd go right in the stacks. I, I got all kinds of stuff out. I got, you know, Plautus, you know, the Roman playwright. I guess I checked out a book of Politicus, which was published in 1585. I had a tremendous time, you know, wandering around the closed stacks, the B stacks they call them. And I would come home with the damnest things, you know. I mean, I just kept walking home with a stack of, of really, really obscure books, you know. I just gravitated towards obscure books. Uh, I loved them, you know. I love books. I love the library. To being able to go into the stacks. I mean, I just read, read all the time. I read, read a lot of science fiction. I love science fiction.

"Well, let me ask you about a couple of contemporary science fiction writers. I'll just toss out a couple of names and see if you have any opinion on them. Uh, John Barley is very hot now, obviously."

"Yeah, he's good. He's awfully good. Uh, his 'Overdraws the Memory Bank' I thought was one of the best stories I've ever read. Uh, my agent called my attention to that. He said it was very, very interesting in its resemblance to some of my stuff, and it's, it's absolute diametric opposite to some of my stuff. He, he called it the flip side to some of my stuff, and, uh, yeah, I like him a lot. I think he's an excellent, excellent writer."

"And then A.E. van Vogt is obviously a novelist who had an influence on you."

"Yes. And, uh, I met him originally in 1954 and liked him as a person very much. I have a lot of respect for, for Van as a person too, as well as a writer. I think he's a very, very fine person. I think his writing has been unjustly criticized as being, uh, well, I mean, you know, the criticism that it doesn't hang together, isn't logical. I think, I think it's just very, very, very, very exciting, very original. I read it when it came out originally in 1941, '42, '43 when it was first published. The 'Weapon Shop' stories, and, uh, and, uh, seeing as how I read the stuff when it came out, I can verify that there was nothing like it before Van Vogt. I mean, in other words, when he started doing those 'Weapon Shop' stories, there had never been anything like that in science fiction. He's just not credited with extreme, you know, originality in his writing. And along that, that his writing has. Now we can look back at that stuff and see the flaws. But believe me, to pick up a 1943 Astounding and read a Van, uh, novel, short novel like 'Recruiting Station,' uh, it was just thrilling. And I remember when 'The World of Null-A' came out, I mean, we were just in a trance. We couldn't make head or tail of it either. And all this is pointed out now, this doesn't make sense. Uh, but it was just so thrilling and so exciting, and it had the essential ingredients of science fiction, what Damon and I called the sense of wonder."

"Mhm."

"It was just electric. It was just gorgeous. And Heinlein too, for that matter."

"What about, um, R.A. Lafferty?"

"Lafferty is, is, is a superb writer. He is a superb writer. Not just a science fiction writer, but a superb writer, a writer. I mean, I have read stuff by, by him that is, is, is as good as any writing I've ever read."

"Now, he deeply impresses me."

"Oh, I, I just, I mean, somebody called my attention to his stuff and I just flipped out over, over him. I, I think he is one of the most important American writers today of any kind whatsoever, and will, and will so be regarded by history as, as not just a good science fiction writer, but as a major surrealist, just a major surrealist writer, equal to Nathaniel West. Uh, uh, well, I guess Nathaniel wasn't the best example, but I mean, just an extremely important writer."

"And on another plane altogether, Stephen King."

"Well, I, I tried some of Stephen King's, but my impression, and this may be just because I didn't read very much, seemed, it seemed to be very derivative. I mean, I, I couldn't see the, uh, the, uh, reason for the enthusiasm. It just seemed very derivative. In fact, the reason I started reading this, this friend of mine, she said to me, she says, 'You know, I've been reading these Stephen King stories, and I swear to God, he's, he's writing like you used to write in the 50s.' And I read, you know, his, she had me, and plagiarized me, she meant, you know, the like I had written in the 50s, that kind of stuff. And I read a few of his stories. I thought, 'Christ, we were writing these for, uh, Tony Boucher's F&SF back in the 50s. I mean, this guy's 20 years out of date. This guy's an anachronism.'"

"Let me ask you about 'The Man in the High Castle,' which, um, I have a personal fondness for because it was the first of your books that I read. I remember buying the thing off the spin rack in the back of Salvador's store around the corner from me, and I was wondering what it was. I don't know. I must have been 12 years old or something at the time. It looked like a war novel to me because of that cover that was on the paperback edition."

"Yeah. Right."

"And I thought, 'Geez, this can't be a war novel. This just doesn't make any sense.' But it really was very difficult to discern from the cover that it was SF. What are your memories of writing that book?"

"Oh, well, I've got eight years of talk to tell you about that. I had given up writing science fiction. In the year 1969, the science fiction field totally collapsed. The readership shrank down to 100,000 readers total. Now, to show you how few readers that is, 100,000 total. Uh, 'Solar Lottery' had sold 300,000 copies, you see."

"Mhm."

"But which was published in 1955. And in '59, we only had 100,000 readers. Many writers had left the field. We, we could not make a living. Most of the magazines had collapsed. All, in fact, had collapsed except for Galaxy and Astounding and, uh, maybe one, one more, Stephen SF. And I had gone to work for making jewelry with my wife, and, um, I wasn't happy in the jewelry business. I didn't enjoy making jewelry. I wasn't any good at it. No talent whatsoever. She had a talent, and she is still a jeweler and a very, very fine jeweler now, making marvelous, marvelous jewelry. Just, it's gorgeous stuff, which she sells to, like Neiman Marcus, you know."

"I mean, it's just, it's, it's, it's great art. But, you know, I, I couldn't, I couldn't do anything except polish what she made. You know, I, I polish up the stuff that she made. So, uh, I decided I'd better tell her I was working on a book. See, so I wouldn't have to polish her jewelry all day long. So, I said I was writing a book, and I had no notes or anything. You know, we owned a little cabin. And I went over there with a little $65 portable typewriter made, made in, uh, Hong Kong. The 'E' was stuck on. And I just sat there and started out with nothing but the name Mr. Tagomi written down on a scrap of paper, no other notes. And I'd been reading a lot of, uh, you know, philosophy. I'd been reading a lot of Zen Buddhism, you know, and I'd been reading the I Ching. And I was really into, uh, all that stuff, you know. It was the rage at that time in the, uh, that was the Marin County. I was living in Marin County. That was the Marin County zeitgeist at that point with Zen Buddhism and I Ching, you see."

"And, uh, I just, you know, started right out and kept on trucking. I, it was either that or go back to polishing jewelry. And when I got the novel finished, when I had the manuscript finished, I showed it to her, and she said, 'Well, it's, it's.' She read it over and she said, 'Well, it's all right.' But she says, 'You'll never make more than $750 off it. I don't, I, I don't even see where it's worth your while to submit it to your agent.' I says, 'Well, why don't I just do it anyway? You know, what the hell?' And, uh, then it was bought by Putnam for $1,500, which isn't a great deal more than she had, uh, prophesied. But, um, they did not publish it exactly as science fiction. They ran an ad for the New York Times, and, uh, it, it, it wasn't severely, uh, advertised, but it did get tremendous reviews. I mean, it was very, very well reviewed. It got an amazing amount of reviews, and part of that was due to the good fortune that it was picked up by the science fiction book club. Had it not been picked up by the science fiction book club, it would not have won the Hugo Award. I mean, because the edition would have been too small."

"In fact, I believe it may have been one of the first, uh, hardcover books to win the Hugo Award. It had only been about four years the Hugo Award up until..."

"But A.C. Davidson at F&SF did a lot to get that book promoted. He did a lot for me. Now, Tony Boucher called that book a failure. I heard him review it on KPSA on the radio, and he said that it was not a science fiction novel. It was actually just a mainstream novel once you got past the alternate world premise, and he did not regard it as science fiction. Later, he came up to me and said that he now felt that it was a breakthrough novel. And Donald Rohan said it was not science fiction. He said, 'It is sick. It is sick, dated, and not science fiction.' So there was some negative criticism of it, but most of the criticism was very positive. P. Schuyler Miller in Astounding reviewed it very, very favorably. It was one of the best reviews I ever got from Astounding."

"I guess Len Deighton is having some success right now with an alternate World War II premise novel. I think what is it XP or XP? It's, it's one or the other. Is, has a fairly similar basis. Someone else wins World War II. I forget in Deighton's case who it is, but..."

"Well, how many people were there in the war? We're limited to just a small number of people."

"It's the Italians in this version."

"Italians in that version. That I'd like to see how he figures out how they did that. That, that's one thing I had to do. Now, I had, I, I must admit that I had thought for years about writing an alternate world novel in which the Axis won World War II. I, I didn't start without written notes, but I had done research. I had done seven years of research at the stacks in the stacks at UC Berkeley. And I looked at prime Gestapo documents because I can read some German. And I looked at prime, prime SS Gestapo documents marked in German for the eyes of the higher police only, which is Gestapo. And I read diaries of, of Gestapo agents. And, uh, I, I had really done my research, but I had to figure out how the Nazis could, if they had won World War II, how they could have done it. And I had structured out the, the decisions that they would have had to make, the changes in history that would have permitted them to win that war. And there was something like about 11 different things that would have had to happen that, that for them to win the war."

"I mean, in other words, there was no one single thing that, that would have done it. And they're not all in 'Man in the High Castle.' U, but if, if I had to, I could actually stand at a blackboard and, and, and chart out the only way that the, the Axis could have won that war. And it would, it would be a very long list of things that would have had to happen. Uh, just for an example, Spain would have had to grant them the right to go through Spain, uh, you know, from France down there to take Gibraltar and close off the Mediterranean, things like that. They have a whole bunch of things to it."

"That, that war was not really as close a call as, as we thought it was."

"Um, for example, there's almost no way they could have defeated Russia. I mean, it just, it is not that easy to defeat Russia, as certain people in history have found out."

"Too damn big, or..."

"I hope, I hope we're not about to find that out ourselves too. Another, another campaign, another campaign directed to taking Moscow in three weeks is going to wind up like all the other campaigns. Moscow in three weeks. I can see Reagan and Haig, you know, sitting there and say, 'Well, hell, man. We'll be in Moscow in three weeks.' And somebody says, you know, 'That expression, "three weeks," rings a bell. I think I've heard that expression before.' Has something to do with a long Russian novel by Paul and the French, you know. And then Haig says, 'Well, all right, four weeks, but we'll definitely NATO's tanks will be in Moscow in four weeks.' You know, that's assuming this nice weather holds out. You know, it's almost worth writing a story about Reagan, you know, figuring if this balmy weather will just hold out another week, you know, there should be no problems."

"I used to have dreams in which I would meet Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, and they would try to explain their foreign policy to me. This was when they were in office. They would sit me down and they would say, 'Well, look, the reason we're invading Cambodia is this,' and they'd show me charts, and I'd argue it out with them to no avail, but I'd wake up feeling satisfied."

"What a way to spend a night."

"But, uh, yeah, having Reagan and Haig in office smacks very much of, of the thing we were talking about earlier in terms of the present as future. You know, it's like I just can't relate to this world with these two guys running the country, you know. It's like, what happened here? Oh, well, these guys, I mean, I, I, you know, I, I think we discussed this before, you know, I've now become somewhat of an amateur student of the, of the Jewish scriptures, you know, the Torah. And I was reading the, the, uh, uh, reading Deuteronomy last night, and, uh, reading some of the notes. And the rabbi here, who is the late Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, had had put in extensive notes. And, um, the, the humane elements of the Torah, which is so old. Deuteronomy is so old that it goes back to pre-literate days among the Jews. I mean, it actually was formulated, a lot of these things before they even had a written language. And I thought, 'My God, the, the, the injunctions in the Torah about, in Deuteronomy, about caring for the needy, caring for the sick, caring for the poor, caring for the helpless, you know, caring for the disadvantaged are built into this thing, you know, which is maybe 3,000 years old and has worked for 3,000 years. And now we're hearing, you know, that the kids don't get hot lunch programs, you know, and the elderly, you know, don't get their social security, you know, and just, it's every kind of nightmare thing, you know, that, that everybody will have to, you know, get by on his own, you know.' I mean, I thought, you know, uh, we're not seeing the clock turned back to 1912 before the graduated income tax, you know, was enacted, you know. We're, we're seeing it turn back. We're, we're seeing it turn back to to Imperial Rome, where, uh, I think it was Seneca said one time, he said, 'There's no use giving food to the starving. It'll just prolong their miserable lives.' He actually said that. And Rabbi Hertz quotes him, you know, saying the Roman attitude towards those who were hungry and those who were sick was, you know, that being hungry, poor, and sick, you deserve to die anyway, you know, and that this was a tremendous collision between Judaism and its humanity and, um, Rome, you know. And I thought, well, my God, you know, I mean, we're turning the clock back to the imperial days, you know, of, of, you know, Caesar Augustus."

"73 Christian era. It would be, it would essentially be, it would be, it would be before the Judeo-Christian, uh, uh, ethics impinged on the empire. And they impinged on the empire not just through the Christians, but also through, uh, you know, Philo of Alexandria, who was the first philosopher. Interestingly enough, it makes you stop and think. He was the first Western philosopher to include as a virtue, the virtue of what he called humanity, which, which he defined as assisting the needy. You know, I mean, this is incredible. And, you know, we're seeing a return to the old imperial system, you know, of, uh, let, let the disadvantaged sink to the bottom, let them die, you know, just let them die. And, and this is so, so tragic and so inhumane, you know, that just simply beggars description, you know. It's, we, there was a book that came out about Nazi Germany in the 40s, and it was called 'Germany Turns the Clock Back.' Uh, and it was by one of the American, uh, reporters over there. I forget which one, but he was a very reputable American reporter, and he was stationed in Germany. And his theory was that the Nazis essentially just turned the clock back a couple thousand years, you know, to kind of a pre-Christian magic system."

"But we are, we are in a time, you know, where, where there is essentially a cruel, a cruel spirit abroad. I mean, you know, across the land, and it just seems to be, you know, gathering momentum. I, I feel, you know, this cruel spirit. I have very close personal friends who are showing symptoms of great cruelty and, and, and, uh, and interest only in their own individual welfare. I mean, these, these are people who at one time had been in the anti-war movement, you know, been very idealistic, are now exhibiting a just a complete narcissism, you know, complete me-first, you know, look out for number one type of thing."

"In fact, I would like to send you a copy of the piece that's going to eventually appear based on..."

"Definitely. I'm very happy to see the piece. You know, you've, you know, I'll have to be quite honest with you. You've asked the best questions anybody's ever asked. I mean, I thought I was going to get these, these, I, you know, there are certain questions that keep cropping up, and they're dumb questions, and, you know, you get to the point where you, you just kind of go nuts when you hear these dumb questions, and they're like, I'll give you just one example: 'Where do you get your ideas?' And, you know, the next person asks me that, I'm just going to start raving like a madman, you know. But you have not asked a silly question, a stupid question, or anything. You've asked beautiful questions. It's been a great pleasure talking to you, John. Really."

"Mad."

"Oh."