1 00:00:00,500 --> 00:00:03,670 (soft music) 2 00:00:03,670 --> 00:00:05,090 The writer, Philip K. Dick, 3 00:00:05,090 --> 00:00:07,430 has left North America only once, 4 00:00:07,430 --> 00:00:11,130 when in 1977, he attended a conference on science fiction 5 00:00:11,130 --> 00:00:14,230 in France that has now become a cult event. 6 00:00:14,230 --> 00:00:15,800 The subject of this speech 7 00:00:19,470 --> 00:00:23,910 is a topic which has been discovered recently 8 00:00:25,070 --> 00:00:26,923 and which may not exist at all. 9 00:00:28,660 --> 00:00:30,430 While the novelist almost never left 10 00:00:30,430 --> 00:00:32,260 his California suburban home, 11 00:00:32,260 --> 00:00:34,260 he invented extraordinary worlds 12 00:00:34,260 --> 00:00:37,880 infused with science, philosophy, and religion. 13 00:00:37,880 --> 00:00:41,457 Since his death in 1982, Philip K. Dick's 45 novels 14 00:00:41,457 --> 00:00:44,410 and 120 short stories earned him a place 15 00:00:44,410 --> 00:00:45,820 beside the greatest writers, 16 00:00:45,820 --> 00:00:49,230 such as Kafka, Orwell, or Asimov. 17 00:00:49,230 --> 00:00:52,073 I may be talking about something that does not exist, 18 00:00:52,073 --> 00:00:55,183 therefore, I'm free to say everything or nothing. 19 00:00:55,183 --> 00:00:57,600 (rock music) 20 00:01:00,030 --> 00:01:02,270 In his novels, Philip K. Dick 21 00:01:02,270 --> 00:01:05,660 blurs the line between reality and imagination, 22 00:01:05,660 --> 00:01:07,538 the present and the future. 23 00:01:07,538 --> 00:01:08,371 The United States must build its strength. 24 00:01:08,371 --> 00:01:11,082 Throughout his books, true visions arise, 25 00:01:11,082 --> 00:01:14,440 ecological disasters, artificial worlds, 26 00:01:14,440 --> 00:01:19,440 global surveillance, destructive or empathetic robots. 27 00:01:19,490 --> 00:01:22,430 Hollywood has embraced his life's work and turned many 28 00:01:22,430 --> 00:01:24,840 of his novels and short stories into films, 29 00:01:24,840 --> 00:01:28,633 such as Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Total Recall. 30 00:01:30,630 --> 00:01:33,400 Philip K. Dick's stories are about us, 31 00:01:33,400 --> 00:01:35,323 about our present and our future. 32 00:01:37,058 --> 00:01:40,225 (typewriter clacking) 33 00:01:41,497 --> 00:01:44,497 (diners chattering) 34 00:01:46,033 --> 00:01:47,150 Like a lot of people, I become a fan 35 00:01:47,150 --> 00:01:50,030 simply by reading one of his books. 36 00:01:50,030 --> 00:01:51,310 You read one of his books, 37 00:01:51,310 --> 00:01:53,000 you had to read all of his books, 38 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:55,405 so I scoured the used book stores of the Bay Area 39 00:01:55,405 --> 00:01:57,570 and with a great deal of difficulty, 40 00:01:57,570 --> 00:01:59,910 I found or at least most of his novels 41 00:01:59,910 --> 00:02:01,260 and his short story collections. 42 00:02:01,260 --> 00:02:03,771 I read them all and I wrote up a essay 43 00:02:03,771 --> 00:02:07,470 discussing Phil's writing and he called me 44 00:02:07,470 --> 00:02:08,478 out of the blue one day. 45 00:02:08,478 --> 00:02:10,407 I picked up the phone and said, 46 00:02:10,407 --> 00:02:11,952 "Hi, this is Phil Dick." 47 00:02:11,952 --> 00:02:14,630 He told me how much he liked my piece 48 00:02:14,630 --> 00:02:17,513 and I asked him if I could interview him. 49 00:02:20,070 --> 00:02:23,000 So, I went down to Santa Ana, California. 50 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:26,860 We talked about his writing and we talked about his life, 51 00:02:26,860 --> 00:02:28,773 which was just a wonderful conversation. 52 00:02:29,947 --> 00:02:32,697 (tape squeaking) 53 00:02:33,860 --> 00:02:36,070 I was never convinced that science fiction 54 00:02:36,070 --> 00:02:39,303 was of less value than high literature. 55 00:02:40,260 --> 00:02:42,420 In fact, in high school, I was working on a science fiction 56 00:02:42,420 --> 00:02:46,493 story which I still have, so I was in a curious position. 57 00:02:47,480 --> 00:02:52,480 I had read science fiction since I was 12 years old 58 00:02:53,380 --> 00:02:56,200 and was really addicted to reading it. 59 00:02:56,200 --> 00:03:00,790 I mean, I just loved it and I also was reading 60 00:03:00,790 --> 00:03:03,900 what the Berkeley intellectual community was reading, 61 00:03:03,900 --> 00:03:07,630 which would be Proust for example and Joyce, 62 00:03:07,630 --> 00:03:10,370 so I occupied two worlds right there 63 00:03:10,370 --> 00:03:13,326 which normally did not intersect. 64 00:03:13,326 --> 00:03:15,743 (soft music) 65 00:03:18,380 --> 00:03:20,600 When Phil Dick was writing his work, 66 00:03:20,600 --> 00:03:24,680 science fiction was a very marginalized genre. 67 00:03:24,680 --> 00:03:28,280 People wrote for a penny or two a word. 68 00:03:28,280 --> 00:03:30,530 Phil would've been happy to get two cents a word 69 00:03:30,530 --> 00:03:32,300 for a lot of this fiction that he wrote 70 00:03:32,300 --> 00:03:34,630 in the 1950s and '60s. 71 00:03:34,630 --> 00:03:36,130 It was written on pulp paper, 72 00:03:36,130 --> 00:03:38,410 which was why they call it pulp science fiction, 73 00:03:38,410 --> 00:03:40,840 and it had lurid covers of bug-eyed monsters 74 00:03:40,840 --> 00:03:42,270 or BEMs, as they were called, 75 00:03:42,270 --> 00:03:44,303 attacking beautiful, scantily-clad women, 76 00:03:44,303 --> 00:03:48,266 and this is where Phil found the venue for his thoughts, 77 00:03:48,266 --> 00:03:50,733 for his feelings about the world. 78 00:03:53,857 --> 00:03:56,940 I went for high school to a full-time job 79 00:03:56,940 --> 00:03:59,280 in a record store and a radio shop, 80 00:03:59,280 --> 00:04:02,610 and working six days a week, I didn't get a chance 81 00:04:02,610 --> 00:04:04,000 to do much writing. 82 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:06,480 I got married when I was 19, 83 00:04:06,480 --> 00:04:09,460 and I suddenly began, I felt science fiction 84 00:04:09,460 --> 00:04:10,520 was very important. 85 00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:13,200 I had a mysterious quality in the universe, 86 00:04:13,200 --> 00:04:15,823 which could be dealt with in science fiction. 87 00:04:17,053 --> 00:04:18,760 (soft music) 88 00:04:18,760 --> 00:04:20,670 I realize now that what I was sensing 89 00:04:20,670 --> 00:04:25,040 was a kind of a metaphysical world, an invisible realm 90 00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:29,772 of things half seen with supernatural powers. 91 00:04:29,772 --> 00:04:32,522 (big band music) 92 00:04:33,750 --> 00:04:36,038 That was Cooper and Reid Record Store, 93 00:04:36,038 --> 00:04:39,047 and he worked there in the early 1950s, 94 00:04:39,047 --> 00:04:42,290 (big band music) 95 00:04:42,290 --> 00:04:43,520 and he froze up. 96 00:04:43,520 --> 00:04:47,250 He had sort of a panic attack or an agoraphobic attack, 97 00:04:47,250 --> 00:04:49,540 and that's what decided him I have to write full time. 98 00:04:49,540 --> 00:04:51,530 That got him out of selling records. 99 00:04:51,530 --> 00:04:53,393 That got him into writing fiction. 100 00:04:58,130 --> 00:04:59,690 It's been a long road, 101 00:04:59,690 --> 00:05:02,290 but science fiction offered me a route 102 00:05:02,290 --> 00:05:06,170 by which I could publish the kind of thing 103 00:05:06,170 --> 00:05:07,573 that I wanted to write. 104 00:05:08,420 --> 00:05:11,370 I was reading Martian Time-Slip the other night. 105 00:05:11,370 --> 00:05:14,710 Now that is exactly what I wanted to write, 106 00:05:14,710 --> 00:05:16,710 the invasion of one person's world 107 00:05:16,710 --> 00:05:18,053 by another person's world. 108 00:05:19,680 --> 00:05:22,270 Phil began writing copious quantities 109 00:05:22,270 --> 00:05:24,180 of science fiction stories, 110 00:05:24,180 --> 00:05:26,320 and he sent them off, and he sent them off 111 00:05:26,320 --> 00:05:29,250 and he got return, return, return, but eventually 112 00:05:29,250 --> 00:05:31,250 one sold, Roog. 113 00:05:31,250 --> 00:05:32,990 I believe that was his first science fiction story 114 00:05:32,990 --> 00:05:33,823 that he sold. 115 00:05:35,906 --> 00:05:37,750 (eerie music) 116 00:05:37,750 --> 00:05:40,360 Roog, my first story, is a perfect example 117 00:05:40,360 --> 00:05:42,251 of what I was trying to do, 118 00:05:42,251 --> 00:05:44,320 and that was Jung's idea, not mine. 119 00:05:44,320 --> 00:05:48,800 I was showing each person with a different world 120 00:05:48,800 --> 00:05:50,980 and the contents of that world consisting, 121 00:05:50,980 --> 00:05:54,080 to a large degree, of material from his own mind 122 00:05:54,080 --> 00:05:56,450 and which he did not recognize as his own mind 123 00:05:56,450 --> 00:05:57,963 coming back and from outside. 124 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:01,523 Now this is an idea that never left me. 125 00:06:03,047 --> 00:06:05,630 (upbeat music) 126 00:06:06,900 --> 00:06:08,530 Now if you look at Phil Dick's writing, 127 00:06:08,530 --> 00:06:10,710 you see he repeats things from novel after novel, 128 00:06:10,710 --> 00:06:12,050 but he buries them. 129 00:06:12,050 --> 00:06:15,130 Sometimes it's a talking suitcase as a psychiatrist, 130 00:06:15,130 --> 00:06:17,100 sometimes it's a machine you put coins in 131 00:06:17,100 --> 00:06:18,590 that's your psychiatrist. 132 00:06:18,590 --> 00:06:21,795 Sometimes the door gives you rough therapy. 133 00:06:21,795 --> 00:06:23,710 The door refused to open. 134 00:06:23,710 --> 00:06:25,860 It said, "Five cents, please." 135 00:06:25,860 --> 00:06:27,440 He searched his pockets. 136 00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:29,570 No more coins, nothing. 137 00:06:29,570 --> 00:06:31,240 Form the drawer beside the sink, 138 00:06:31,240 --> 00:06:33,030 Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife. 139 00:06:33,030 --> 00:06:34,949 With it, he began systematically to unscrew 140 00:06:34,949 --> 00:06:38,817 the bolt assembly of his apt's money-gulping door. 141 00:06:38,817 --> 00:06:42,840 "I'll sue you!" The door said as the first screw fell out. 142 00:06:42,840 --> 00:06:46,327 Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door, 143 00:06:46,327 --> 00:06:48,127 "but I guess I can live through it." 144 00:06:49,930 --> 00:06:52,060 A lot of his work is really, really funny. 145 00:06:52,060 --> 00:06:53,542 There's some really hilarious things 146 00:06:53,542 --> 00:06:56,220 in various of Philip Dick's novels. 147 00:06:56,220 --> 00:06:58,157 He never tried to write for popularity, 148 00:06:58,157 --> 00:07:02,010 he never tried to write a bestseller of any sort. 149 00:07:02,010 --> 00:07:04,760 He just wanted to write what he wanted to write. 150 00:07:04,760 --> 00:07:06,960 Although he aspired to write literary fiction, 151 00:07:06,960 --> 00:07:09,670 he tried endlessly to write literary fiction, 152 00:07:09,670 --> 00:07:12,890 he wrote 11 literary novels in the 1950s 153 00:07:12,890 --> 00:07:14,130 that were unpublished. 154 00:07:14,130 --> 00:07:15,100 No one would touch them. 155 00:07:15,100 --> 00:07:17,873 When I purchased my first published story, 156 00:07:20,130 --> 00:07:24,010 somebody said to me, "Do you read that kind of stuff?" 157 00:07:24,010 --> 00:07:28,400 And I said, "Madame, I not only read it, I write it!" 158 00:07:28,400 --> 00:07:30,130 And people would say to me, 159 00:07:30,130 --> 00:07:33,100 well, why don't you write something serious? 160 00:07:33,100 --> 00:07:34,880 Why do you write science fiction? 161 00:07:34,880 --> 00:07:36,920 Write something serious. 162 00:07:36,920 --> 00:07:38,840 By that, they meant important. 163 00:07:38,840 --> 00:07:41,440 Nevertheless, I did as well as I could. 164 00:07:41,440 --> 00:07:46,440 I wrote the most profound, the most imaginative novel 165 00:07:47,530 --> 00:07:51,030 I could and just floated it out into the world 166 00:07:51,030 --> 00:07:53,830 and hoped that eventually, it would receive an audience. 167 00:07:58,380 --> 00:08:02,550 Phil wrote 35 novels, 40 novels, something like that. 168 00:08:02,550 --> 00:08:06,810 35 of them are good to excellent. 169 00:08:06,810 --> 00:08:08,720 Five of them are duds. 170 00:08:08,720 --> 00:08:10,770 All right, okay, sure. 171 00:08:10,770 --> 00:08:12,100 That's a pretty good ratio. 172 00:08:12,100 --> 00:08:13,440 Well, they're rioting. 173 00:08:13,440 --> 00:08:15,330 It's barbarism come back again. 174 00:08:15,330 --> 00:08:16,630 If they smash up that infernal gun, 175 00:08:16,630 --> 00:08:19,360 then honor is satisfied and you needn't go. 176 00:08:19,360 --> 00:08:20,827 They won't smash the gun. 177 00:08:20,827 --> 00:08:23,327 (gun banging) 178 00:08:25,680 --> 00:08:29,250 One of the depressing things about cheap science fiction 179 00:08:29,250 --> 00:08:33,330 is it always shows the feature either a dystopia 180 00:08:33,330 --> 00:08:38,330 or an apocalypse or whatever new thing has happened, 181 00:08:38,400 --> 00:08:40,793 you only look at a few people, 182 00:08:41,890 --> 00:08:43,710 the great Big Brother 183 00:08:43,710 --> 00:08:47,253 and the protagonist fighting the enemy. 184 00:08:48,300 --> 00:08:51,340 You never look at common people 185 00:08:51,340 --> 00:08:53,110 and how their lives have changed 186 00:08:53,970 --> 00:08:57,780 but Philip K. Dick was different. 187 00:08:57,780 --> 00:09:01,740 He liked to see how average people, 188 00:09:01,740 --> 00:09:04,170 how their lives would be changed. 189 00:09:04,170 --> 00:09:08,453 Philip K. Dick didn't write horror 190 00:09:10,740 --> 00:09:15,740 as much as he wrote about the creepy sensation 191 00:09:18,220 --> 00:09:21,567 that all certainties stand upon sand. 192 00:09:26,310 --> 00:09:28,810 (eerie music) 193 00:09:36,720 --> 00:09:41,720 Phil Dick was not afraid of exploring his fears. 194 00:09:44,020 --> 00:09:47,300 This was a man who had real fears. 195 00:09:47,300 --> 00:09:50,453 He lived in an American middle-class life, 196 00:09:52,100 --> 00:09:55,160 but we all know that that's no guarantee 197 00:09:55,160 --> 00:10:00,160 against the sensation that there's a monster under the bed, 198 00:10:01,080 --> 00:10:02,683 there's a monster in the closet. 199 00:10:04,535 --> 00:10:07,070 Some of the great science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury, 200 00:10:07,070 --> 00:10:12,070 Stephen King, Isaac Asimov all had this notion, 201 00:10:13,700 --> 00:10:14,793 things are too good. 202 00:10:16,320 --> 00:10:21,320 The worries in my head are as powerful 203 00:10:22,210 --> 00:10:23,923 as any invading army. 204 00:10:27,613 --> 00:10:29,603 How real is that? 205 00:10:30,690 --> 00:10:32,873 I think we have the central question there. 206 00:10:34,060 --> 00:10:36,900 It would explain my sensation of passing my hands 207 00:10:36,900 --> 00:10:40,693 through matter, through the dashboard of my wheel as I did, 208 00:10:41,880 --> 00:10:45,410 that very unpleasant sensation that nothing around me 209 00:10:45,410 --> 00:10:49,683 was substantial, that I inhabited a world of shadows. 210 00:10:51,712 --> 00:10:54,712 (soft guitar music) 211 00:10:57,584 --> 00:11:00,084 (eerie music) 212 00:11:06,130 --> 00:11:08,403 I've always said he wrote like gold, 213 00:11:09,348 --> 00:11:12,540 but unfortunately he lived in just the opposite. 214 00:11:12,540 --> 00:11:16,470 Wanna keep this PG-rated, but his life 215 00:11:16,470 --> 00:11:20,040 was just a mishmash of just, 216 00:11:20,040 --> 00:11:22,880 seemed like one crisis after another. 217 00:11:22,880 --> 00:11:26,243 He had the books to go home to, to write to escape, 218 00:11:27,690 --> 00:11:30,880 which is, I guess, a luxury for most people. 219 00:11:30,880 --> 00:11:34,050 In hindsight now, I could say he really doesn't fit 220 00:11:34,050 --> 00:11:38,840 the American diagnostic criteria 221 00:11:38,840 --> 00:11:40,890 'cause he had a little bit of everything, 222 00:11:42,950 --> 00:11:46,280 certainly had a large, depressive part of him 223 00:11:50,310 --> 00:11:53,600 and then he had the creative side. 224 00:11:53,600 --> 00:11:55,370 At night in his condo writing, 225 00:11:55,370 --> 00:11:58,200 he was in control of his world, 226 00:11:58,200 --> 00:11:59,700 but when he came out of that world 227 00:11:59,700 --> 00:12:04,080 and had to deal with just the mundane catch a bus, 228 00:12:04,080 --> 00:12:07,083 go to a restaurant, those were things he couldn't do. 229 00:12:08,230 --> 00:12:11,020 Definitely an agoraphobic tendency. 230 00:12:11,020 --> 00:12:12,710 He could just stay in his apartment 231 00:12:12,710 --> 00:12:14,467 if he was left alone. 232 00:12:14,467 --> 00:12:16,240 (eerie music) 233 00:12:16,240 --> 00:12:17,280 Welcome to drug. 234 00:12:17,280 --> 00:12:18,613 Hey. Asshole. 235 00:12:24,050 --> 00:12:26,960 His apartment was his escape. 236 00:12:26,960 --> 00:12:30,480 That was the last fortress of Phil Dick 237 00:12:30,480 --> 00:12:32,763 and he didn't wanna come out. 238 00:12:34,111 --> 00:12:36,611 (tense music) 239 00:12:39,200 --> 00:12:42,310 He's a person that lives inside his mind. 240 00:12:42,310 --> 00:12:44,990 He's a person who has, over the years, 241 00:12:44,990 --> 00:12:47,740 built up this protection mechanism 242 00:12:47,740 --> 00:12:49,130 because he doesn't necessarily 243 00:12:49,130 --> 00:12:50,973 understand the world outside. 244 00:12:55,590 --> 00:12:58,980 It's again, this person moving away from society, 245 00:12:58,980 --> 00:13:02,692 observing society, not being part of society. 246 00:13:02,692 --> 00:13:05,192 (tense music) 247 00:13:08,988 --> 00:13:11,738 (wings flapping) 248 00:13:14,110 --> 00:13:17,290 He struggled a lot, and yet he produced a lot 249 00:13:17,290 --> 00:13:19,290 during this period of time. 250 00:13:19,290 --> 00:13:21,803 The writing was, really, sustained him. 251 00:13:22,666 --> 00:13:27,666 (typewriter clacking) (tense music) 252 00:13:30,200 --> 00:13:32,300 One of the novels that he wrote very, very quickly, 253 00:13:32,300 --> 00:13:33,720 as far as I understand it, 254 00:13:33,720 --> 00:13:35,960 was The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch 255 00:13:35,960 --> 00:13:38,920 because he wrote it, again, in this hovel place 256 00:13:38,920 --> 00:13:40,660 at the bottom of his garden, 257 00:13:40,660 --> 00:13:44,276 and in it, he not only downloaded very, very quickly 258 00:13:44,276 --> 00:13:46,890 the idea of the storyline and everything else, 259 00:13:46,890 --> 00:13:48,850 but he also had experiences like, 260 00:13:48,850 --> 00:13:51,090 he did see a huge eye in the sky 261 00:13:51,090 --> 00:13:52,500 when he was walking back one day 262 00:13:52,500 --> 00:13:54,140 and he then put that in his novel. 263 00:13:54,140 --> 00:13:57,190 So literally, he was incorporating his experiences 264 00:13:57,190 --> 00:13:59,540 as they were happening actually into the novel, 265 00:14:00,401 --> 00:14:02,901 (tense music) 266 00:14:06,980 --> 00:14:09,080 and I think this is how Phil wrote things. 267 00:14:09,080 --> 00:14:12,000 It just came to him, and that's why his writing 268 00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:14,540 is so enthralling because you're with him 269 00:14:14,540 --> 00:14:17,730 as he's experiencing and discovering the book 270 00:14:17,730 --> 00:14:19,690 he's writing in front of him. 271 00:14:19,690 --> 00:14:22,060 He would almost imagine the novel 272 00:14:22,060 --> 00:14:24,780 and he didn't know where he was going with the novels. 273 00:14:24,780 --> 00:14:25,857 This is why some of his novels 274 00:14:25,857 --> 00:14:27,857 are very, very confusing. 275 00:14:27,857 --> 00:14:30,357 (tense music) 276 00:14:36,340 --> 00:14:39,077 In the early 1960s, Phil was married to Anne Dick, 277 00:14:39,077 --> 00:14:42,460 and Anne had three daughters from her previous marriage 278 00:14:42,460 --> 00:14:43,497 and the little girl were old enough, 279 00:14:43,497 --> 00:14:46,610 played with Barbie dolls, ad he observed their play 280 00:14:46,610 --> 00:14:49,060 with Barbie dolls, and he used that play with Barbie dolls 281 00:14:49,060 --> 00:14:53,750 to inspire the way that people would play with dolls 282 00:14:53,750 --> 00:14:56,250 in his future world of The Three Stigmata 283 00:14:56,250 --> 00:14:57,980 of Palmer Eldritch. 284 00:14:57,980 --> 00:15:00,566 ♪ You make me feel ♪ 285 00:15:00,566 --> 00:15:04,566 ♪ My Barbie doll is really real ♪ 286 00:15:05,490 --> 00:15:08,600 The colonists on Mars used drugs to translate themselves 287 00:15:08,600 --> 00:15:13,020 into a virtual reality of living as dolls, 288 00:15:13,020 --> 00:15:15,900 and was a way that the Martian colonists 289 00:15:15,900 --> 00:15:17,730 escaped form their miserable lives, 290 00:15:17,730 --> 00:15:19,463 by playing at dolls. 291 00:15:19,463 --> 00:15:24,463 ♪ Beautiful Barbie, I'll make believe that I am you ♪ 292 00:15:27,081 --> 00:15:30,081 (psychedelic music) 293 00:15:32,601 --> 00:15:35,967 We do know that Phil used to take a lot of illicit drugs, 294 00:15:35,967 --> 00:15:37,770 but mostly amphetamines. 295 00:15:37,770 --> 00:15:41,770 Now I believe the concoction of drugs he was taking 296 00:15:41,770 --> 00:15:44,590 and the medication he was taking and the vitamin C 297 00:15:44,590 --> 00:15:49,590 that he was taking all facilitated the opening of his mind 298 00:15:49,810 --> 00:15:52,020 to see the world behind the world. 299 00:15:52,020 --> 00:15:53,310 I never thought of him 300 00:15:53,310 --> 00:15:56,560 in terms of whether there was some brain damage. 301 00:15:56,560 --> 00:15:58,540 I just didn't see any of the clues 302 00:15:58,540 --> 00:16:00,570 that I normally look for. 303 00:16:00,570 --> 00:16:02,160 Phil got there all on his own. 304 00:16:02,160 --> 00:16:05,375 He didn't need LSD to get there. 305 00:16:05,375 --> 00:16:07,870 I was being paid so little per book 306 00:16:07,870 --> 00:16:10,300 that I had to churn out a very large number of books. 307 00:16:10,300 --> 00:16:13,280 I churned out, I think, I published 16 novels in five years 308 00:16:13,280 --> 00:16:17,313 at one point and I had an extremely expensive wife, 309 00:16:18,410 --> 00:16:20,560 extremely expensive children, 310 00:16:20,560 --> 00:16:23,170 and I just wrote like mad, and the only way 311 00:16:23,170 --> 00:16:25,580 that I could write that much was to take amphetamines, 312 00:16:25,580 --> 00:16:27,870 and these were prescribed for me. 313 00:16:27,870 --> 00:16:31,546 I did 60 finished pages a day. 314 00:16:31,546 --> 00:16:34,129 (upbeat music) 315 00:16:45,530 --> 00:16:47,340 I finally stopped takin' 'em. 316 00:16:47,340 --> 00:16:49,600 This is not something that I used to say in the '60s 317 00:16:49,600 --> 00:16:53,250 when drug taking was more popular. 318 00:16:53,250 --> 00:16:57,020 I used to talk like I was really into acid, 319 00:16:57,020 --> 00:16:58,270 but the fact of the matter is, 320 00:16:58,270 --> 00:17:00,028 I took acid two times. 321 00:17:00,028 --> 00:17:02,611 (men laughing) 322 00:17:10,320 --> 00:17:15,210 Phil was 43 and I was 18, but to me, 323 00:17:15,210 --> 00:17:18,200 he looked like a little lost puppy, 324 00:17:18,200 --> 00:17:20,203 he he pretty much was. 325 00:17:21,660 --> 00:17:24,493 He was broke, on his own, 326 00:17:25,940 --> 00:17:29,410 no really close attachments, 327 00:17:29,410 --> 00:17:33,260 and hundreds of miles from the Bay Area, 328 00:17:33,260 --> 00:17:36,793 where he had expected to spend his whole life. 329 00:17:39,360 --> 00:17:44,360 Phil and I were pretty much stuck together 24 hours a day, 330 00:17:45,260 --> 00:17:49,840 seven days a week and very soon, 331 00:17:49,840 --> 00:17:54,840 stuck together with a baby 24 hours a day, 332 00:17:55,620 --> 00:17:57,203 seven days a week. 333 00:17:58,750 --> 00:18:03,560 Frankly, it's really difficult to live with a man 334 00:18:03,560 --> 00:18:06,750 who never leaves the house, 335 00:18:06,750 --> 00:18:10,520 and since he worked alone, as a writer, 336 00:18:10,520 --> 00:18:14,630 he didn't have any contacts at work. 337 00:18:14,630 --> 00:18:17,073 He just sat there at his typewriter. 338 00:18:17,912 --> 00:18:20,745 (whimsical music) 339 00:18:22,530 --> 00:18:25,430 There's just the TV image after all, 340 00:18:25,430 --> 00:18:28,980 the illusion of the media, and behind it, 341 00:18:28,980 --> 00:18:32,313 behind her, another group entirely rules, 342 00:18:33,430 --> 00:18:35,203 a corporate body of some kind, 343 00:18:36,330 --> 00:18:39,343 but who are they and how did they get power? 344 00:18:40,400 --> 00:18:42,600 How long had they had it? 345 00:18:42,600 --> 00:18:43,663 Will we ever know? 346 00:18:45,083 --> 00:18:46,640 (faint speaking) We came so far, 347 00:18:46,640 --> 00:18:50,074 we almost seemed to know what's really going on. 348 00:18:50,074 --> 00:18:52,594 The actuality behind the illusion, 349 00:18:52,594 --> 00:18:55,623 the secrets kept from us all our lives. 350 00:18:58,840 --> 00:19:01,720 He was impossible to live with, but so am I, 351 00:19:01,720 --> 00:19:05,200 so I guess that was a perfect match. 352 00:19:05,200 --> 00:19:06,913 Women were important to Phil in the sense 353 00:19:06,913 --> 00:19:10,380 tha the kept going back to them, 354 00:19:10,380 --> 00:19:14,450 but he kept picking dying women, 355 00:19:14,450 --> 00:19:18,223 very ill women, flawed women. 356 00:19:19,660 --> 00:19:22,053 Classically, we'd call that the rescuer. 357 00:19:23,363 --> 00:19:25,480 The lifeguard is trained to go out 358 00:19:25,480 --> 00:19:28,700 and save the drownding person, but if you resist, 359 00:19:28,700 --> 00:19:32,170 the lifeguard is also trained to hit you 360 00:19:32,170 --> 00:19:33,913 across the jaw and knock you out. 361 00:19:35,260 --> 00:19:36,820 Phil, in some ways, was the lifeguard, 362 00:19:36,820 --> 00:19:39,365 but he hadn't been taught that last step 363 00:19:39,365 --> 00:19:41,453 when the person still pulls you under. 364 00:19:43,691 --> 00:19:48,691 (tense music) (water bubbling) 365 00:19:56,060 --> 00:19:58,573 I wanna put him net to his dad. 366 00:20:00,360 --> 00:20:02,883 Let's see, find a good one. 367 00:20:05,510 --> 00:20:08,953 Just put a beard on Edgar and you have Phil. 368 00:20:11,210 --> 00:20:14,300 He was a Marine in the 5th U.S. Marines, 369 00:20:14,300 --> 00:20:17,100 and he came back and then when I was a little kid, 370 00:20:17,100 --> 00:20:19,520 he used to show me his military equipment, 371 00:20:19,520 --> 00:20:23,880 including his gas mask, and his eyes would disappear 372 00:20:23,880 --> 00:20:26,536 and his face would disappear and he would tell me 373 00:20:26,536 --> 00:20:28,043 about the battle of the mind, 374 00:20:28,043 --> 00:20:30,230 the horrors that he went through. 375 00:20:30,230 --> 00:20:32,940 He would tell me about men with their guts blown out, 376 00:20:32,940 --> 00:20:35,110 and he was telling a little four-year-old child 377 00:20:35,110 --> 00:20:38,670 what it was like to fight in World War I. 378 00:20:39,777 --> 00:20:44,777 (heavy breathing) (eerie music) 379 00:20:46,500 --> 00:20:47,730 But in the brief instant, 380 00:20:47,730 --> 00:20:51,582 Ted Walton's face lost all familiarity. 381 00:20:51,582 --> 00:20:55,200 Something alien and cold gleamed out, 382 00:20:55,200 --> 00:20:57,623 a twisting, wriggling mass. 383 00:20:58,700 --> 00:21:02,780 The eyes blurred and receded as an archaic sheen 384 00:21:02,780 --> 00:21:04,020 filmed over them. 385 00:21:04,970 --> 00:21:06,650 The ordinary look of a tired, 386 00:21:06,650 --> 00:21:09,433 middle-aged husband was gone. 387 00:21:14,280 --> 00:21:19,280 Phil and I both wanted to disconnect from our old friends 388 00:21:19,460 --> 00:21:21,500 and from our families. 389 00:21:21,500 --> 00:21:24,474 There was too much dysfunctionality 390 00:21:24,474 --> 00:21:29,010 in these people who were close to us 391 00:21:29,010 --> 00:21:34,010 and in particular, Phil had a problem with his mother 392 00:21:36,090 --> 00:21:38,693 that when back to early childhood. 393 00:21:40,620 --> 00:21:43,950 In some sense, he felt that she blamed him 394 00:21:43,950 --> 00:21:46,760 for the death of his twin sister. 395 00:21:46,760 --> 00:21:48,060 Phil, throughout his life, 396 00:21:48,060 --> 00:21:51,940 felt that he was only half created in the sense 397 00:21:51,940 --> 00:21:54,310 that a part of him had died 398 00:21:54,310 --> 00:21:56,820 and that part of him had already been buried 399 00:21:56,820 --> 00:21:58,940 and was already in the grave. 400 00:21:58,940 --> 00:22:01,495 Now what is intriguing about this 401 00:22:01,495 --> 00:22:03,960 is that he would've known that there was a grave 402 00:22:03,960 --> 00:22:08,960 on a hillside in Colorado waiting for his name 403 00:22:09,440 --> 00:22:12,310 because the original grave that Jane was buried in 404 00:22:12,310 --> 00:22:17,310 in 1929 actually had her name on it, 405 00:22:17,340 --> 00:22:20,250 and underneath, it was waiting for Phil's name, 406 00:22:20,250 --> 00:22:22,990 and ultimately, when Phil died, 407 00:22:22,990 --> 00:22:25,483 he was buried with his sister. 408 00:22:27,870 --> 00:22:29,730 It's a common theme in my writing 409 00:22:31,430 --> 00:22:34,962 that a dark-haired girl shows up at the door 410 00:22:34,962 --> 00:22:39,210 of the protagonist and tells him 411 00:22:39,210 --> 00:22:41,090 that his world is delusional, 412 00:22:41,090 --> 00:22:43,211 that there is something false about it. 413 00:22:43,211 --> 00:22:46,400 Well, this did finally happen to me. 414 00:22:46,400 --> 00:22:49,690 I even knew that her hair would be black. 415 00:22:49,690 --> 00:22:54,690 I had an actual complete sense of what she would look like 416 00:22:55,900 --> 00:22:57,063 and what she would say. 417 00:22:59,350 --> 00:23:03,010 I saw a little hard, heart-shaped face 418 00:23:03,010 --> 00:23:07,270 with a widow's crown, black hair, and due to her odd makeup, 419 00:23:07,270 --> 00:23:10,960 eyes outlined in black, a harlequin effect 420 00:23:10,960 --> 00:23:13,170 and almost purple lipstick. 421 00:23:13,170 --> 00:23:17,020 The whole color scheme made her appear unreal and doll-like, 422 00:23:17,020 --> 00:23:19,260 lost somewhere back behind the mask 423 00:23:19,260 --> 00:23:21,403 which she had created out of her face. 424 00:23:23,140 --> 00:23:26,770 In his mind's eye, she was the dark-haired girl, 425 00:23:26,770 --> 00:23:30,280 and Phil, throughout his life, had the search 426 00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:32,830 for what he called the dark-haired girl, 427 00:23:32,830 --> 00:23:37,240 and if you look at the women in his life, 428 00:23:37,240 --> 00:23:40,210 they were a very much of a similar type, 429 00:23:40,210 --> 00:23:43,770 and this is the type that he imagined Jane would have been, 430 00:23:43,770 --> 00:23:46,300 so he was searching for Jane all his life. 431 00:23:46,300 --> 00:23:50,130 He was searching for this lost sister, 432 00:23:50,130 --> 00:23:52,200 this emptiness in his life, 433 00:23:52,200 --> 00:23:55,653 and it must have made him feel instinctively lonely. 434 00:23:57,680 --> 00:24:00,349 In some novels, she's Rachael, 435 00:24:00,349 --> 00:24:03,250 in other novels, she has other names, 436 00:24:03,250 --> 00:24:07,020 but she's the same pattern, the same template, 437 00:24:07,020 --> 00:24:09,200 the same woman. 438 00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:10,950 (crow cawing) 439 00:24:10,950 --> 00:24:13,160 My sister is everything to me. 440 00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:16,160 I'm damned always to be separated from her, 441 00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:18,870 and with her in an oscillation. 442 00:24:18,870 --> 00:24:22,160 I have her in me and often outside me, 443 00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:23,393 but I have lost her. 444 00:24:24,330 --> 00:24:25,830 She did appear. 445 00:24:25,830 --> 00:24:28,090 She was a total stranger, 446 00:24:28,090 --> 00:24:31,730 and she did inform me of this fact, 447 00:24:31,730 --> 00:24:36,320 that some of my fictional works were, 448 00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:38,010 in a literal sense, true. 449 00:24:38,010 --> 00:24:41,600 A couple of times, I pushed him on family issues, 450 00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:44,260 his growing up, childhood. 451 00:24:44,260 --> 00:24:46,090 I got some stuff. 452 00:24:46,090 --> 00:24:47,610 His mother was a Communist. 453 00:24:47,610 --> 00:24:51,540 They lived in Berkeley, and if you reached a point, 454 00:24:51,540 --> 00:24:54,810 it just, he stopped, and it was like no, 455 00:24:54,810 --> 00:24:57,420 I'm not gonna talk anymore, and it was very clear. 456 00:24:57,420 --> 00:25:02,210 He had some very strong boundaries in some areas, 457 00:25:02,210 --> 00:25:05,300 and then in some others, he was just all over the place 458 00:25:05,300 --> 00:25:09,350 kind of loose like a Rubik's Cube in a way. 459 00:25:09,350 --> 00:25:12,113 You just keep flipping up new sides. 460 00:25:13,189 --> 00:25:15,689 (eerie music) 461 00:25:22,153 --> 00:25:25,820 We area living in a computer programed reality, 462 00:25:25,820 --> 00:25:28,450 and the only clue we have to it 463 00:25:28,450 --> 00:25:31,048 is when some variable is changed 464 00:25:31,048 --> 00:25:35,810 and some alteration in our reality occurs. 465 00:25:35,810 --> 00:25:37,970 We would have the overwhelming impression 466 00:25:37,970 --> 00:25:40,393 that we were reliving the present. 467 00:25:42,170 --> 00:25:44,305 Time and time again in Phil's writing, 468 00:25:44,305 --> 00:25:47,100 you get this simulacra, 469 00:25:47,100 --> 00:25:50,950 you get somebody discovering that they're a machine, 470 00:25:50,950 --> 00:25:53,333 not knowing that somebody's a machine. 471 00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,380 There's a classic sequence in Martian Time-Slip 472 00:25:58,380 --> 00:26:00,380 where one of the characters is talking 473 00:26:00,380 --> 00:26:02,400 to the personnel manager of his mind 474 00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:04,619 that he's working in, and suddenly he realizes 475 00:26:04,619 --> 00:26:06,603 this man could be a machine, 476 00:26:06,603 --> 00:26:09,350 that he could almost see the cogs working. 477 00:26:09,350 --> 00:26:12,170 Now this was based upon an incident in Phil's childhood 478 00:26:12,170 --> 00:26:14,380 when he suddenly thought that one of the teachers 479 00:26:14,380 --> 00:26:16,433 was an automaton. 480 00:26:17,374 --> 00:26:19,874 (tense music) 481 00:26:22,153 --> 00:26:23,630 I was looking at her one day 482 00:26:23,630 --> 00:26:26,722 and she was rattling away in this high-pitched 483 00:26:26,722 --> 00:26:28,910 clackity-clack shrill voice, 484 00:26:28,910 --> 00:26:31,100 and suddenly I had the impression 485 00:26:31,100 --> 00:26:33,300 that she was not a human being, 486 00:26:33,300 --> 00:26:35,940 but a mechanical creature 487 00:26:35,940 --> 00:26:39,000 and that all of a sudden, her had would fall off 488 00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:41,345 and a spring would be visible, 489 00:26:41,345 --> 00:26:44,310 and once the idea got into my mind, 490 00:26:44,310 --> 00:26:45,560 I couldn't get rid of it. 491 00:26:49,990 --> 00:26:51,570 Who are you? 492 00:26:51,570 --> 00:26:54,560 What is the essence of you? 493 00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:57,458 At least a dozen Philip K. Dick novels 494 00:26:57,458 --> 00:27:02,180 dealt with this question of what are the boundaries 495 00:27:02,180 --> 00:27:03,433 of the individual? 496 00:27:05,300 --> 00:27:07,880 Actually, this android has the sequence schemes 497 00:27:08,797 --> 00:27:12,165 and we also have some mechanism 498 00:27:12,165 --> 00:27:15,420 for making the facial expressions, 499 00:27:15,420 --> 00:27:19,080 and well, and then we have a software, 500 00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:20,468 it's a very special software, 501 00:27:20,468 --> 00:27:22,193 that would raise, 502 00:27:22,193 --> 00:27:26,020 indeed, well, to control the lip movement. 503 00:27:26,020 --> 00:27:27,563 What is it to be human? 504 00:27:28,620 --> 00:27:31,230 Is it empathy that makes us human? 505 00:27:31,230 --> 00:27:33,840 And of course, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, 506 00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:38,730 we find that in fact, the people that kill the replicants 507 00:27:38,730 --> 00:27:40,770 are in fact less human than the replicants 508 00:27:40,770 --> 00:27:41,890 in many, many ways 509 00:27:41,890 --> 00:27:43,490 because they don't show empathy. 510 00:27:43,490 --> 00:27:47,630 And his androids, in many ways, had more soul 511 00:27:47,630 --> 00:27:51,070 than some of the humans in his novels. 512 00:27:51,070 --> 00:27:54,930 These androids were not, strictly speaking, mechanical. 513 00:27:54,930 --> 00:27:59,410 Most of them were organic, as in Blade Runner, 514 00:27:59,410 --> 00:28:03,723 which was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. 515 00:28:05,530 --> 00:28:08,197 (digital music) 516 00:28:16,610 --> 00:28:20,160 Blade Runner's not about Androids, not at all, 517 00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:21,300 not at all. 518 00:28:21,300 --> 00:28:24,773 It's about us and it's so clever. 519 00:28:28,950 --> 00:28:31,560 Take another look at yourselves as a mankind 520 00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:33,120 and what's the answer? 521 00:28:33,120 --> 00:28:35,530 Who do you think you are and how cute you are 522 00:28:35,530 --> 00:28:37,873 and how lovable and how brilliant? 523 00:28:38,990 --> 00:28:40,780 What's the most ugly part of your body? 524 00:28:40,780 --> 00:28:41,793 It's the brain. 525 00:28:44,210 --> 00:28:46,303 In our heads, that's where we are, human. 526 00:28:47,300 --> 00:28:49,160 Heart, yes, okay, heart, okay. 527 00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:50,040 Our stomach? 528 00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:50,873 Yes. 529 00:28:50,873 --> 00:28:53,520 Okay, Dick, yes, Mr. Dick, okay, 530 00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:56,052 but in the mind, that's where we are, 531 00:28:56,052 --> 00:28:59,783 extremely stupid, we're extremely interesting. 532 00:29:02,039 --> 00:29:05,420 The three-dimensional protected backdrop 533 00:29:05,420 --> 00:29:10,360 was utterly convincing, or was it the projected backdrop? 534 00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:11,623 How could he be sure? 535 00:29:12,580 --> 00:29:15,626 Good God, Grunberg, you realize this may be nothing 536 00:29:15,626 --> 00:29:19,130 but an exhibit, you and everybody else. 537 00:29:19,130 --> 00:29:21,133 Maybe you're not real? 538 00:29:22,630 --> 00:29:24,923 Just pieces of this exhibit. 539 00:29:26,042 --> 00:29:29,780 (thunder rumbling) 540 00:29:29,780 --> 00:29:34,240 The production company brought him up to Los Angeles 541 00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:35,390 and he actually visited the set, 542 00:29:35,390 --> 00:29:38,520 and he was blown away by the set and they showed him 543 00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:40,617 some footage of the film and he said, 544 00:29:40,617 --> 00:29:41,727 "No, this is fantastic 545 00:29:41,727 --> 00:29:44,680 "because they took a slideshow of my brain," 546 00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:45,880 or words to that effect. 547 00:29:47,748 --> 00:29:50,165 (soft music) 548 00:29:51,850 --> 00:29:54,000 I wonder how success would've been. 549 00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:57,380 It was so close to his stroke 550 00:29:57,380 --> 00:29:59,560 and the opening of Blade Runner. 551 00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:01,160 He was supposed to go in limousine 552 00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:03,320 with Harrison Ford that night. 553 00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,580 Talk about poetic justice in a way, 554 00:30:06,580 --> 00:30:09,730 and if he had been the normal writer 555 00:30:09,730 --> 00:30:13,592 seeking fame and fortune, but I don't think that was Phil. 556 00:30:13,592 --> 00:30:16,630 He wrote for, like I said, different reasons, 557 00:30:16,630 --> 00:30:18,537 to balance his life out. 558 00:30:19,697 --> 00:30:22,230 (sighing) 559 00:30:22,230 --> 00:30:27,230 I can only imagine just, had he survived, 560 00:30:27,460 --> 00:30:29,480 how he would have handled fame. 561 00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:33,200 Philip Dick's dystopian worldview of a society 562 00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:35,789 where technology is not positive and not cheerful 563 00:30:35,789 --> 00:30:40,530 can be seen to inspire many films 564 00:30:40,530 --> 00:30:42,840 that have been made since his death. 565 00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:45,149 Blade Runner, which is an official adaptation 566 00:30:45,149 --> 00:30:50,149 of a Philip Dick novel, inspired many other tech noir, 567 00:30:51,110 --> 00:30:54,960 as they're sometimes called, such as The Terminator 568 00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:58,840 or The Matrix in which technology is seen as a dark force, 569 00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:00,820 sometimes hat people have to struggle against, 570 00:31:00,820 --> 00:31:03,060 and many, many Hollywood films have come out 571 00:31:03,060 --> 00:31:07,130 since the 1980s that portray that darker view of technology, 572 00:31:07,130 --> 00:31:09,040 quite different than the cheerful, 573 00:31:09,040 --> 00:31:11,055 upbeat presentation of technology 574 00:31:11,055 --> 00:31:12,880 that we find at the time 575 00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:14,500 that Philip Dick was actually writing. 576 00:31:14,500 --> 00:31:18,636 He was a dissident in the world of techno-utopias. 577 00:31:18,636 --> 00:31:19,590 [Television Announcer] America's first attempt 578 00:31:19,590 --> 00:31:22,780 to launch a satellite, a six-and-a-half inch sphere 579 00:31:22,780 --> 00:31:24,890 weighing just over three pounds was checked out 580 00:31:24,890 --> 00:31:27,080 by scientists and declared ready. 581 00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:29,620 A great wave of advance publicity focused attention 582 00:31:29,620 --> 00:31:31,830 at Cape Canaveral, Florida for the launching 583 00:31:31,830 --> 00:31:34,023 of Test Vehicle Three, a Project Vanguard. 584 00:31:34,023 --> 00:31:36,210 If you look at the popular literature 585 00:31:36,210 --> 00:31:38,195 and the popular television, 586 00:31:38,195 --> 00:31:42,210 you see the triumph of technology celebrated. 587 00:31:42,210 --> 00:31:44,630 Well, Phil had nothing to do with that. 588 00:31:44,630 --> 00:31:46,330 That was not his world. 589 00:31:46,330 --> 00:31:49,163 (rocket rumbling) 590 00:31:52,703 --> 00:31:55,620 (rocket exploding) 591 00:31:57,300 --> 00:31:58,810 Something had gone wrong 592 00:31:58,810 --> 00:32:01,750 with an automatic defense system out in space, 593 00:32:01,750 --> 00:32:04,400 and it was acting to its cycle this way 594 00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:05,450 and no one could halt it, either. 595 00:32:05,450 --> 00:32:08,060 The exact cause is classified, 596 00:32:08,060 --> 00:32:09,340 either the satellite program-- 597 00:32:09,340 --> 00:32:12,890 It was war and death, yes, but it was error. 598 00:32:12,890 --> 00:32:15,200 It lacked intent. 599 00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:18,950 He did not feel any hostility from the forces overhead. 600 00:32:18,950 --> 00:32:21,700 They were not vengeful or motivated. 601 00:32:21,700 --> 00:32:25,533 They were empty, hollow, completely cold. 602 00:32:27,160 --> 00:32:32,160 It was not policy, it was breakdown and failure, chance. 603 00:32:34,242 --> 00:32:36,345 (singing in foreign language) That's one small 604 00:32:36,345 --> 00:32:40,799 step for man. (rocket exploding) 605 00:32:40,799 --> 00:32:44,632 (singing in foreign language) 606 00:32:45,950 --> 00:32:47,850 Science fiction was badly named. 607 00:32:47,850 --> 00:32:50,160 It should have been speculative history 608 00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:52,730 because we're constantly obsessed 609 00:32:52,730 --> 00:32:54,469 with how history might've been different 610 00:32:54,469 --> 00:32:57,311 or extending it into the future, 611 00:32:57,311 --> 00:33:02,311 and so it should've been speculations about us, 612 00:33:02,580 --> 00:33:05,176 our great story, how it extends 613 00:33:05,176 --> 00:33:10,176 as a people and as a species or as individuals. 614 00:33:10,598 --> 00:33:14,860 Philip K. Dick was one of the best at this. 615 00:33:14,860 --> 00:33:19,100 He would always explore the alternatives. 616 00:33:19,100 --> 00:33:21,560 What if something was different? 617 00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:23,370 What if the Nazis and Japanese 618 00:33:23,370 --> 00:33:25,261 had won World War II, for example, 619 00:33:25,261 --> 00:33:28,540 in his famous book The Man in the High Castle. 620 00:33:28,540 --> 00:33:30,720 One of Philip Dick's most famous novels, 621 00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,300 and certainly in his lifetime, his most successful novel, 622 00:33:33,300 --> 00:33:35,418 was The Man in the High Castle. 623 00:33:35,418 --> 00:33:37,320 (footsteps thudding) 624 00:33:37,320 --> 00:33:41,770 By the year 2014, we're all used to alternate worlds, 625 00:33:41,770 --> 00:33:43,550 alternate stories, alternate histories 626 00:33:43,550 --> 00:33:46,190 in which something happens and then everything changes 627 00:33:46,190 --> 00:33:47,890 and we're living in a different universe. 628 00:33:47,890 --> 00:33:50,950 Well, at the time that he wrote that book 629 00:33:50,950 --> 00:33:53,783 in the early 1960s, this was much rarer. 630 00:33:55,090 --> 00:33:59,137 The period he wrote in from the early '50s to the early '80s 631 00:33:59,137 --> 00:34:02,880 was a great period of American ascendancy in the world. 632 00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:06,023 America seemed unchallenged in terms of world dominance. 633 00:34:07,098 --> 00:34:08,743 If we're going to be true to our destiny 634 00:34:08,743 --> 00:34:10,208 of being the great defender of freedom 635 00:34:10,208 --> 00:34:13,087 in these dangerous time, then the United States 636 00:34:13,087 --> 00:34:14,260 must build its strength. 637 00:34:14,260 --> 00:34:16,495 We are a great country, but I believe 638 00:34:16,495 --> 00:34:19,713 that we can be a greater country. 639 00:34:19,713 --> 00:34:22,043 Philip Dick presented a United States that was defeated, 640 00:34:24,520 --> 00:34:26,660 genuinely defeated and genuinely occupied. 641 00:34:26,660 --> 00:34:28,733 It was not like the usual sort 642 00:34:28,733 --> 00:34:33,700 of occupation fantasies in which there's a resistance, 643 00:34:33,700 --> 00:34:36,050 we're fighting against the evil occupiers, 644 00:34:36,050 --> 00:34:38,610 which is something that we like to think of. 645 00:34:38,610 --> 00:34:41,820 If the Nazis take over, if the Communists take over, 646 00:34:41,820 --> 00:34:44,720 if the robots take over, there's always gonna be somebody 647 00:34:44,720 --> 00:34:46,460 fighting against the power. 648 00:34:46,460 --> 00:34:49,483 In Philip Dick's world, there is no resistance. 649 00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:52,040 Maybe the Goebbels Government 650 00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:53,240 will fall after all 651 00:34:53,240 --> 00:34:55,500 he thought, as he was ushered into the waiting 652 00:34:55,500 --> 00:34:57,862 SS Daimler staff sedan, but what does it matter? 653 00:34:57,862 --> 00:35:00,248 Even if Dr. Goebbels is deposed 654 00:35:00,248 --> 00:35:05,200 and Operation Dandelion is canceled, they will still exist, 655 00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:08,029 the blackshirts, the Partei, the schemes 656 00:35:08,029 --> 00:35:11,280 if not in the Orient, then somewhere else, 657 00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:12,926 on Mars and Venus. 658 00:35:12,926 --> 00:35:16,410 We can only hope and try. 659 00:35:16,410 --> 00:35:18,380 We do not have the ideal world 660 00:35:18,380 --> 00:35:19,910 such as we would like, 661 00:35:19,910 --> 00:35:23,460 where morality is easy because cognition is easy, 662 00:35:23,460 --> 00:35:25,134 where one can do right with no effort 663 00:35:25,134 --> 00:35:27,663 because he can detect the obvious. 664 00:35:29,394 --> 00:35:32,200 (horn music) 665 00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:37,030 He wanted to show that what the Nazis did 666 00:35:37,030 --> 00:35:39,900 in World War II was not unique 667 00:35:39,900 --> 00:35:43,284 and it could happen anywhere at any time, 668 00:35:43,284 --> 00:35:48,284 and more specifically, in the United States 669 00:35:48,880 --> 00:35:52,950 after President Kennedy was assassinated. 670 00:35:52,950 --> 00:35:55,615 At 1:25, the motorcade moves into the downtown area. 671 00:35:55,615 --> 00:35:57,840 Death is six minutes away. 672 00:35:57,840 --> 00:36:00,230 Phil was a very empathic human being, 673 00:36:00,230 --> 00:36:03,330 and unlike most of us, when something bad happened, 674 00:36:03,330 --> 00:36:04,940 he reacted to it very strongly 675 00:36:06,350 --> 00:36:11,350 and he understood the impact with Kennedy's assassination, 676 00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:12,940 with Sadat's assassination, 677 00:36:12,940 --> 00:36:15,880 he recognized that blood would flow. 678 00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:18,310 Antiwar demonstrators protest U.S. involvement 679 00:36:18,310 --> 00:36:19,610 in the Vietnam War 680 00:36:19,610 --> 00:36:22,138 in mass marches, rallies, and demonstrations. 681 00:36:22,138 --> 00:36:23,960 Central Park is the starting point 682 00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:25,402 for the parade to the UN building. 683 00:36:25,402 --> 00:36:28,650 The estimated 125,000 men have the marchers, 684 00:36:28,650 --> 00:36:31,450 include students, housewives, beatnik poets, 685 00:36:31,450 --> 00:36:34,377 doctors, businessmen, preachers, priests, and nuns. 686 00:36:34,377 --> 00:36:38,940 (rock music) (artillery shells exploding) 687 00:36:38,940 --> 00:36:41,950 Phil was very much against the actions 688 00:36:41,950 --> 00:36:44,523 in both Korea and Vietnam. 689 00:36:46,460 --> 00:36:48,400 They were called police actions 690 00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:50,820 because they were not declared wars, 691 00:36:50,820 --> 00:36:54,310 but they were wars and they were hell, 692 00:36:54,310 --> 00:36:57,940 and he signed a petition in Ramparts Magazine 693 00:36:57,940 --> 00:37:01,660 promising not to pay any income taxes 694 00:37:01,660 --> 00:37:05,160 till our troops came home from Vietnam, 695 00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:08,520 and that might be why he came to the attention 696 00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:12,790 of certain authorities who did not like him very much. 697 00:37:14,700 --> 00:37:16,803 Anybody like me who grew up 698 00:37:16,803 --> 00:37:20,640 and was part of the Berkeley counterculture 699 00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:25,550 became a marked man during the Nixon administration. 700 00:37:25,550 --> 00:37:27,630 It is impossible to tell how much 701 00:37:27,630 --> 00:37:29,498 of our fears were justified. 702 00:37:29,498 --> 00:37:30,792 What do we need? Revolution. 703 00:37:30,792 --> 00:37:32,690 When? Now! 704 00:37:32,690 --> 00:37:34,570 Not seeing anything in slogans 705 00:37:34,570 --> 00:37:37,230 an organized parties and beliefs and dying 706 00:37:37,230 --> 00:37:40,500 can be a belief worth dying for in itself. 707 00:37:40,500 --> 00:37:43,060 I thought I was without a creed. 708 00:37:43,060 --> 00:37:45,930 Now I realize I have a very strong creed. 709 00:37:45,930 --> 00:37:46,763 Demonstrators, but however, 710 00:37:46,763 --> 00:37:48,250 they can be expected-- Philip Dick 711 00:37:48,250 --> 00:37:50,420 was not an activist in the sense of someone 712 00:37:50,420 --> 00:37:51,500 who was going out in the street 713 00:37:51,500 --> 00:37:52,860 and demonstrating and protesting. 714 00:37:52,860 --> 00:37:56,230 Philip Dick was very aware of the injustices of America, 715 00:37:56,230 --> 00:37:58,470 but Philip Dick did what he could as writer 716 00:37:58,470 --> 00:38:01,530 writing away in his little room all by himself, 717 00:38:01,530 --> 00:38:04,680 pecking away, writing his novels, writing his stories. 718 00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:07,065 Police once told me that I was a crusader 719 00:38:07,065 --> 00:38:10,520 and they had no use for crusaders, 720 00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:12,560 but unfortunately, they didn't tell me 721 00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:15,400 what I was crusading for. 722 00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:20,400 I was afraid to ask what it was I was a crusader for, 723 00:38:20,620 --> 00:38:23,560 and they told me that if I did not get out of the county, 724 00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:26,550 I would be shot in the back or worse some night, 725 00:38:26,550 --> 00:38:28,080 and I merely took their advice. 726 00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:31,980 I left the United States and went to Canada for a while, 727 00:38:31,980 --> 00:38:34,663 but I never found out what I was crusading for. 728 00:38:35,570 --> 00:38:38,033 It may have had something to do with my writing. 729 00:38:38,033 --> 00:38:39,653 I don't think he was overtly paranoid, 730 00:38:39,653 --> 00:38:41,510 but highly suspicious. 731 00:38:41,510 --> 00:38:43,233 He didn't trust the government. 732 00:38:44,570 --> 00:38:46,160 He had gone through a police raid, 733 00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:48,950 I guess, of the Black Panthers in Oakland 734 00:38:48,950 --> 00:38:52,210 and was walking the far left wing side 735 00:38:52,210 --> 00:38:55,040 during or leading up to the war, 736 00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:57,550 so he had some real concrete reasons 737 00:38:57,550 --> 00:39:01,060 to not be, especially in terms of the government. 738 00:39:01,060 --> 00:39:03,620 Phil and I had a poster at one time 739 00:39:03,620 --> 00:39:06,970 that said just because I'm paranoid 740 00:39:06,970 --> 00:39:09,513 doesn't mean you are not out to get me, 741 00:39:11,460 --> 00:39:15,522 and in a sense, that's quite true. 742 00:39:15,522 --> 00:39:16,770 You just have to read his novels. 743 00:39:16,770 --> 00:39:19,310 It's always somebody trapped 744 00:39:19,310 --> 00:39:21,130 and there's all these machinations going on 745 00:39:21,130 --> 00:39:23,290 that this person is being influenced by, 746 00:39:23,290 --> 00:39:25,384 that it's out of his control. 747 00:39:25,384 --> 00:39:28,407 175-- (mumbles) Special force 748 00:39:28,407 --> 00:39:30,400 in there for you. (siren wailing) 749 00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:34,250 My house was broken into, my files were blown open, 750 00:39:34,250 --> 00:39:35,890 my papers were stolen. 751 00:39:35,890 --> 00:39:39,807 I've seen my CIA file, I've seen my FBI file. 752 00:39:39,807 --> 00:39:42,116 Except that in the house, 753 00:39:42,116 --> 00:39:45,223 when I checked the storage drums of the holo-scanners, 754 00:39:46,100 --> 00:39:48,010 I'll pretty well know pretty soon 755 00:39:48,010 --> 00:39:50,210 what everyone in my house is doing 756 00:39:50,210 --> 00:39:54,123 and when they do it and probably even why, myself included. 757 00:39:55,160 --> 00:39:59,003 I will watch all the rooms on a 24-hour basis. 758 00:40:00,493 --> 00:40:03,826 (electric guitar music) 759 00:40:04,980 --> 00:40:06,590 Make sure they don't have a closed-circuit 760 00:40:06,590 --> 00:40:08,360 TV surveillance system. 761 00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:11,640 You'll find cameras are usually located over each entrance. 762 00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:13,540 You'll find them in other areas too, 763 00:40:13,540 --> 00:40:15,790 like where expensive articles are on display. 764 00:40:16,890 --> 00:40:19,221 Phil did seemed to be warning us 765 00:40:19,221 --> 00:40:22,190 through his writing about the control of the state 766 00:40:22,190 --> 00:40:24,540 and how the state is controlling us more and more, 767 00:40:24,540 --> 00:40:26,510 how we are being watched all the time. 768 00:40:26,510 --> 00:40:28,150 Phil was giving warnings. 769 00:40:28,150 --> 00:40:30,570 Now the question is, did Phil know 770 00:40:30,570 --> 00:40:32,040 that he was given warnings though 771 00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:33,793 or was he a form of cipher? 772 00:40:35,223 --> 00:40:39,223 (woman speaks foreign language) 773 00:40:49,274 --> 00:40:51,774 (tense music) 774 00:40:56,610 --> 00:40:59,010 My recent novel was A Scanner Darkly. 775 00:40:59,920 --> 00:41:03,530 A narcotics agent winds up reporting on himself, 776 00:41:03,530 --> 00:41:08,440 turning over information on himself to these higher-ups. 777 00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:09,700 Phil Dick presented a world 778 00:41:09,700 --> 00:41:12,770 in which all authority figures lie to us all the time, 779 00:41:12,770 --> 00:41:14,857 so you see that in novel after novel 780 00:41:14,857 --> 00:41:16,300 and story after story, 781 00:41:16,300 --> 00:41:18,370 and I think he was trying to warn us. 782 00:41:18,370 --> 00:41:20,860 He was sitting away in his little room typing away, 783 00:41:20,860 --> 00:41:22,270 and he was giving us a warning, 784 00:41:22,270 --> 00:41:24,020 he's giving us a sending, he's giving us, 785 00:41:24,020 --> 00:41:26,180 I guess, the equivalent of an I Ching reading 786 00:41:26,180 --> 00:41:30,126 of our future world and saying folks, don't do this. 787 00:41:30,126 --> 00:41:32,876 (bomb exploding) 788 00:41:39,180 --> 00:41:41,150 If Phil Dick were alive and writing today, 789 00:41:41,150 --> 00:41:43,540 I think he'd be appalled at how much 790 00:41:43,540 --> 00:41:46,750 of his dark vision of the future had come true, 791 00:41:46,750 --> 00:41:49,220 what with the surveillance society, 792 00:41:49,220 --> 00:41:52,083 what with the collapse of the ecology. 793 00:41:54,090 --> 00:41:57,340 In The Penultimate Truth, he presents a world 794 00:41:57,340 --> 00:41:59,470 in which humanity is hiding underground. 795 00:41:59,470 --> 00:42:02,110 Humanity has been told that an atomic war has broken out. 796 00:42:02,110 --> 00:42:07,050 People are kept underground to make robots 797 00:42:07,050 --> 00:42:10,298 not as soldiers to fight the war, 798 00:42:10,298 --> 00:42:14,250 which ended after a brief battle, 799 00:42:14,250 --> 00:42:18,730 but actually to have robot servants for the elite 800 00:42:18,730 --> 00:42:22,970 who live above ground in vast, landed estates 801 00:42:22,970 --> 00:42:26,940 because the world is not really polluted and it's a lie. 802 00:42:26,940 --> 00:42:29,433 The big lie is that atomic war has broken out 803 00:42:29,433 --> 00:42:33,730 and that the world's surface is an ash heap 804 00:42:33,730 --> 00:42:35,930 and everyone has to hide and live underground. 805 00:42:35,930 --> 00:42:39,093 Well, you have the big lie of the Iraq War, 806 00:42:39,093 --> 00:42:40,640 you have the big lie of all the lies 807 00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:42,800 that are being poured out constantly by our government 808 00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:44,130 and other governments around the world 809 00:42:44,130 --> 00:42:45,303 down to the present time. 810 00:42:45,303 --> 00:42:47,344 The gravity of this moment 811 00:42:47,344 --> 00:42:49,474 is matched by the gravity of the threat 812 00:42:49,474 --> 00:42:53,789 that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction poses the world. 813 00:42:53,789 --> 00:42:56,289 (tense music) 814 00:43:02,609 --> 00:43:06,359 (helicopter blades whirring) 815 00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:10,910 Some day, he said to himself, 816 00:43:10,910 --> 00:43:12,500 it'll be so hot that nothing 817 00:43:12,500 --> 00:43:14,350 will keep this place from melting. 818 00:43:14,350 --> 00:43:16,810 He recalled the day his LP record collection 819 00:43:16,810 --> 00:43:20,100 had fused together in a lump back around '04 820 00:43:20,100 --> 00:43:21,490 due to a momentary failure 821 00:43:21,490 --> 00:43:23,580 of the building's cooling network. 822 00:43:23,580 --> 00:43:26,020 Now, he owned iron oxide tapes. 823 00:43:26,020 --> 00:43:28,370 They did not melt. 824 00:43:28,370 --> 00:43:30,640 And at the same moment, every parakeet 825 00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:34,384 and Venusian ming bird in the building had dropped dead. 826 00:43:34,384 --> 00:43:37,134 (faint shouting) 827 00:43:38,670 --> 00:43:40,330 You and I can wake up and say wow, 828 00:43:40,330 --> 00:43:43,560 that was a crazy dream or that was a bad dream. 829 00:43:43,560 --> 00:43:46,460 Well, I'm not sure, at times, 830 00:43:46,460 --> 00:43:51,423 Phil separated dreams and dream states from non-dreams, 831 00:43:54,230 --> 00:43:55,500 which would probably scare the hell 832 00:43:55,500 --> 00:43:57,560 out of the average person or you and I. 833 00:43:57,560 --> 00:44:00,466 You're not sure whether you're dreaming or not dreaming. 834 00:44:00,466 --> 00:44:02,924 Look at me, look at me. 835 00:44:02,924 --> 00:44:05,757 (digital beeping) 836 00:44:07,250 --> 00:44:09,410 Positive for Howard Marks. 837 00:44:09,410 --> 00:44:12,050 Mr. Marks, by mandate of the District of Columbia 838 00:44:12,050 --> 00:44:14,510 PreCrime Division, I'm placing you under arrest 839 00:44:14,510 --> 00:44:16,260 for the future murder of Sarah Marks and Donald Dubin 840 00:44:16,260 --> 00:44:18,040 to take place today, April 22nd, 841 00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:20,090 at 0800 hours, four minutes. 842 00:44:20,090 --> 00:44:21,910 No, I didn't do anything! 843 00:44:21,910 --> 00:44:24,493 Sarah! Give the man his hat. 844 00:44:24,493 --> 00:44:27,459 Oh God. In Minority Report, 845 00:44:27,459 --> 00:44:32,459 the government finds three precognitive mutants 846 00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:37,223 who get glimpses of violence in the future. 847 00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:41,480 And say this person is going to commit this crime 848 00:44:42,660 --> 00:44:46,040 and off the police go, 849 00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:49,163 and they stop the crime from happening. 850 00:44:53,136 --> 00:44:55,971 Showing seven units in 451, 451, 851 00:44:55,971 --> 00:44:56,804 (mumbles) in progress. 852 00:44:56,804 --> 00:45:00,930 81st and-- Can predictive crime 853 00:45:00,930 --> 00:45:04,070 become as accurate in real life 854 00:45:04,070 --> 00:45:06,537 as Philip K. Dick portrayed it? 855 00:45:06,537 --> 00:45:09,303 14 over 50, just checking on critical location. 856 00:45:11,430 --> 00:45:16,318 There is a program PredPol, predictive policing, 857 00:45:16,318 --> 00:45:20,940 in which cities, police departments, 858 00:45:20,940 --> 00:45:24,791 are analyzing neighborhoods and traffic patterns 859 00:45:24,791 --> 00:45:29,791 for anything that might predict the arrival of crime, 860 00:45:31,070 --> 00:45:33,540 and this has already worked very well in many cities. 861 00:45:33,540 --> 00:45:36,085 They say that social conditions here, 862 00:45:36,085 --> 00:45:40,530 various other factors, mean we should have extra police 863 00:45:40,530 --> 00:45:42,393 in this area this weekend, 864 00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:46,603 and this has been a relative success. 865 00:45:46,603 --> 00:45:48,930 (siren wailing) 866 00:45:48,930 --> 00:45:51,456 When I implemented predictive policing, 867 00:45:51,456 --> 00:45:55,968 for the last 12 weeks now, I've seen a steady decline 868 00:45:55,968 --> 00:45:59,230 in my actual property crime, 869 00:45:59,230 --> 00:46:03,200 so it has demonstrated to me that there is efficacy 870 00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:04,577 in the predictive policing, 871 00:46:04,577 --> 00:46:08,430 and it really is just focusing our enforcement efforts 872 00:46:08,430 --> 00:46:11,090 of all our police offers here assigned at Pacific 873 00:46:11,090 --> 00:46:13,530 to be in those specific areas. 874 00:46:13,530 --> 00:46:15,820 I truly believe this technology 875 00:46:15,820 --> 00:46:20,066 and further technology as it relates to crime reduction 876 00:46:20,066 --> 00:46:22,316 is really the future. 877 00:46:22,316 --> 00:46:24,816 (tense music) 878 00:46:30,210 --> 00:46:32,440 My God, my life, 879 00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:37,032 which is to say my 2-74/3-74 experience is exactly the plot 880 00:46:37,032 --> 00:46:40,811 of any one of my 10 novels or stories, 881 00:46:40,811 --> 00:46:42,450 (horn honking) 882 00:46:42,450 --> 00:46:44,863 even down to fake memories and identity. 883 00:46:45,740 --> 00:46:48,773 I'm a protagonist from one of PKD's books. 884 00:46:49,670 --> 00:46:50,503 Jeez. 885 00:46:52,220 --> 00:46:56,220 Mixture of Imposter, Joint and Maze, 886 00:46:56,220 --> 00:46:58,725 if not Ubik as well. 887 00:46:58,725 --> 00:47:01,225 (tense music) 888 00:47:08,620 --> 00:47:11,673 VALIS was warning us through Phil, 889 00:47:12,620 --> 00:47:16,150 using Phil as a medium by which we could be warned 890 00:47:16,150 --> 00:47:18,840 about the outcomes of what we are now doing, 891 00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:19,970 which is an interesting aside, 892 00:47:19,970 --> 00:47:21,680 which would make him a profit, 893 00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:24,770 specifically, a profit downloading information 894 00:47:24,770 --> 00:47:29,030 from elsewhere to warn humanity of the way 895 00:47:29,030 --> 00:47:30,640 they should not go forward. 896 00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:33,130 Yet the last thing he told me, 897 00:47:33,130 --> 00:47:35,240 this business that the psycho-neutronic gun 898 00:47:35,240 --> 00:47:38,210 was gonna save the world and that the scientists 899 00:47:38,210 --> 00:47:39,340 are all getting together 900 00:47:39,340 --> 00:47:41,857 and they've invited him to Amsterdam. 901 00:47:41,857 --> 00:47:46,410 He was convincing and I thought I bet if I open his bag, 902 00:47:46,410 --> 00:47:48,200 there's a plane ticket in there 903 00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:50,253 and you're going to Amsterdam next week. 904 00:47:51,273 --> 00:47:54,520 (tense music) 905 00:47:54,520 --> 00:47:56,450 People claim to remember past lives. 906 00:47:56,450 --> 00:47:58,180 I claim to remember a different, 907 00:47:58,180 --> 00:48:00,690 very different present life. 908 00:48:00,690 --> 00:48:04,000 I know of no one who has ever made this claim before, 909 00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:07,620 but I rather expect that my experience is not unique. 910 00:48:07,620 --> 00:48:09,530 What perhaps is unique is the fact 911 00:48:09,530 --> 00:48:11,453 that I am willing to talk about it. 912 00:48:12,831 --> 00:48:15,331 (tense music) 913 00:48:18,380 --> 00:48:23,270 Phil was fascinated by the idea of orthogonal time, 914 00:48:25,210 --> 00:48:27,470 in other words, a sort of time 915 00:48:27,470 --> 00:48:30,120 that runs perpendicular. 916 00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:32,950 So, we're on a time and this time 917 00:48:32,950 --> 00:48:35,960 is running perpendicular to ours, 918 00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:38,363 and at some point they intersect. 919 00:48:39,900 --> 00:48:43,150 They overlap just for a moment, 920 00:48:43,150 --> 00:48:47,550 and he's apparently experienced something like that, 921 00:48:47,550 --> 00:48:50,660 a contact with people in a timeline 922 00:48:50,660 --> 00:48:54,350 that was not the same. 923 00:48:54,350 --> 00:48:57,803 They claim to be from our future, 924 00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:03,393 trying to fix something that had happened in their past. 925 00:49:04,630 --> 00:49:07,750 Maybe he was lucid, he was literally lucid 926 00:49:07,750 --> 00:49:11,730 in the sense he was seeing through this reality 927 00:49:11,730 --> 00:49:14,210 into another reality, 928 00:49:14,210 --> 00:49:17,790 and literally, by seeing that other reality, 929 00:49:17,790 --> 00:49:20,450 it may have actually drove him slightly crazy, 930 00:49:20,450 --> 00:49:23,490 but then again, if we were perceiving a world 931 00:49:23,490 --> 00:49:26,410 that he was perceiving, would you not also go, 932 00:49:26,410 --> 00:49:28,380 as we would call it, crazy? 933 00:49:28,380 --> 00:49:30,580 Sometimes I wondered whether he was testing out 934 00:49:30,580 --> 00:49:35,220 a new plot on me or maybe he's really crazy. 935 00:49:35,220 --> 00:49:37,170 I just never quite knew, 936 00:49:37,170 --> 00:49:41,680 so he kept me really on my toes. 937 00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:44,413 At that time, I had no idea what I was seeing. 938 00:49:45,580 --> 00:49:49,080 It resembled nothing that I had ever heard described. 939 00:49:49,080 --> 00:49:53,160 It resembled plasmic energy, it had colors, 940 00:49:53,160 --> 00:49:56,900 it moved fast, it collected, and then dispersed. 941 00:49:56,900 --> 00:49:59,720 Phil became convinced that this voice in his head, 942 00:49:59,720 --> 00:50:02,990 that this manifestation that had been with him 943 00:50:02,990 --> 00:50:06,000 all of his life was eventually to manifest itself 944 00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:08,830 more fully in his life during what he called 945 00:50:08,830 --> 00:50:13,512 his 2-3-74 experiences, where he called it VALIS, 946 00:50:13,512 --> 00:50:18,140 he called it artificial intelligence, he called it Sophia. 947 00:50:18,140 --> 00:50:19,663 He had many terms for it. 948 00:50:24,630 --> 00:50:28,303 In '74, there came upon me, 949 00:50:29,480 --> 00:50:34,120 at the trough of my life, at a point where I saw nothing 950 00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:37,380 but inexplicable suffering, there came to me 951 00:50:37,380 --> 00:50:40,850 the beatific vision which calmed 952 00:50:40,850 --> 00:50:43,993 all my sense of horror at the world, 953 00:50:45,070 --> 00:50:47,250 the divine power that I perceived 954 00:50:47,250 --> 00:50:51,190 as master of this world was either cruel, 955 00:50:51,190 --> 00:50:55,780 wanton, blind, insensible, 956 00:50:55,780 --> 00:50:59,171 destructive, or evil. (phone ringing) 957 00:50:59,171 --> 00:51:03,541 Yeah, I think I got the call in the evening. 958 00:51:03,541 --> 00:51:06,540 I'm thinking around 7:00, eight o'clock at night 959 00:51:08,040 --> 00:51:11,840 and he said he was being interviewed 960 00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:15,750 and his eyes, his vision was failing 961 00:51:15,750 --> 00:51:17,450 and the fellow interviewing him 962 00:51:17,450 --> 00:51:20,367 was saying, "You don't wanna see the truth 963 00:51:20,367 --> 00:51:22,220 "or you don't wanna see this," 964 00:51:22,220 --> 00:51:24,535 whatever their topic was, 965 00:51:24,535 --> 00:51:25,527 and that's when I said, 966 00:51:25,527 --> 00:51:27,467 "Phil, you wanna see the emergency room 967 00:51:27,467 --> 00:51:28,834 "is what you wanna see." 968 00:51:28,834 --> 00:51:32,270 This is not something to intellectualize. 969 00:51:32,270 --> 00:51:35,400 This is something to deal with in a very real way, 970 00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:37,280 and he swore he'd go. 971 00:51:37,280 --> 00:51:40,460 Tessa witnessed some of the extraordinary experiences 972 00:51:40,460 --> 00:51:41,810 that happened to Phil. 973 00:51:41,810 --> 00:51:45,548 Tessa experienced the radio coming on when it was unplugged. 974 00:51:45,548 --> 00:51:48,680 Now Tessa could have been hallucinating as well, 975 00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:51,640 but then if Tessa and Phil were both hallucinating, 976 00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:53,600 we have a (speaks in foreign language) here. 977 00:51:53,600 --> 00:51:58,600 It was sort of the last bit of evidence 978 00:51:59,350 --> 00:52:02,403 that convinced me that this really was happening. 979 00:52:04,325 --> 00:52:07,547 I am the infinitude of the void 980 00:52:07,547 --> 00:52:10,480 and you know me as I am. 981 00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:12,580 Do you believe what you saw? 982 00:52:12,580 --> 00:52:16,630 Do you accept that where the infinite is I am, 983 00:52:16,630 --> 00:52:19,630 and where I am, there is the infinite? 984 00:52:19,630 --> 00:52:21,700 I said yes. 985 00:52:21,700 --> 00:52:24,817 God said, "And your theories are infinite, 986 00:52:24,817 --> 00:52:26,287 "so I am there." 987 00:52:28,650 --> 00:52:31,970 One of the most peculiar elements of evidence 988 00:52:31,970 --> 00:52:36,970 of Phil's precognition was a letter that Phil wrote in, 989 00:52:38,527 --> 00:52:40,960 and I will confirm the date here, 990 00:52:40,960 --> 00:52:45,960 on May the 9th, 1974, and in a footnote, 991 00:52:46,090 --> 00:52:47,423 he writes the following, 992 00:52:48,290 --> 00:52:50,630 I was up to 5:00 a.m. on the last night. 993 00:52:50,630 --> 00:52:53,030 I did something I never did before. 994 00:52:53,030 --> 00:52:56,070 I commanded the entity to show itself to me. 995 00:52:56,070 --> 00:53:00,610 A sort of dreamlike period passed, them of hypnagogic images 996 00:53:00,610 --> 00:53:03,943 of a stark, single, horrifying scene. 997 00:53:04,950 --> 00:53:09,950 Inert but not still, a man lay dead on his face 998 00:53:10,020 --> 00:53:14,456 in a living room between a coffee table and the couch. 999 00:53:14,456 --> 00:53:16,956 (tense music) 1000 00:53:20,420 --> 00:53:22,040 And that's how he was found 1001 00:53:23,130 --> 00:53:26,810 the day the paramedics took him to the hospital, 1002 00:53:26,810 --> 00:53:27,873 where he died, 1003 00:53:31,430 --> 00:53:33,560 and I can't explain any other way 1004 00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:38,083 than to say that he remembered the future. 1005 00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:45,580 I haven't gone to the hospitals very often, 1006 00:53:45,580 --> 00:53:47,300 but when I heard that the next day, 1007 00:53:47,300 --> 00:53:49,910 he'd had a stroke, I got in the car 1008 00:53:49,910 --> 00:53:51,820 and went to the hospital, 1009 00:53:51,820 --> 00:53:53,690 not that I knew what to do when I got there, 1010 00:53:53,690 --> 00:53:55,690 but it just seemed like the right thing, 1011 00:53:57,598 --> 00:53:59,110 and it was painful. 1012 00:53:59,110 --> 00:54:01,170 It just kinda like you watching, 1013 00:54:01,170 --> 00:54:04,012 seeing a giant who had fallen and he just, 1014 00:54:04,012 --> 00:54:07,430 hospital bed with all the tubes and the wires 1015 00:54:07,430 --> 00:54:09,423 and the beeping noises and just, 1016 00:54:10,449 --> 00:54:12,090 that's not you, Phil. 1017 00:54:12,090 --> 00:54:13,513 Where's the real Phil? 1018 00:54:14,610 --> 00:54:16,140 What bothers me the most 1019 00:54:16,140 --> 00:54:19,290 is that he was unable to speak 1020 00:54:19,290 --> 00:54:22,490 and he wanted to tell me something, 1021 00:54:22,490 --> 00:54:27,490 so I brought in a pen and a pad of paper, 1022 00:54:27,740 --> 00:54:32,740 but they had his right arm on a splint, 1023 00:54:32,790 --> 00:54:36,003 so I have no idea what he wanted to say, 1024 00:54:37,360 --> 00:54:39,473 but he really wanted to say it. 1025 00:54:41,110 --> 00:54:43,000 After all, you have to consider 1026 00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:45,030 we're only made out of dust. 1027 00:54:45,030 --> 00:54:47,560 That's admittedly not much to go on, 1028 00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:51,150 but even considering, I mean, it's a sort of bad beginning. 1029 00:54:51,150 --> 00:54:52,970 We're not doing too bad, 1030 00:54:52,970 --> 00:54:56,440 so I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation 1031 00:54:56,440 --> 00:54:59,254 we're faced with, we can make it. 1032 00:54:59,254 --> 00:55:01,671 (rock music)