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    The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
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    The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
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    The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
    Audiobook52 hours

    The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

    Written by Philip K. Dick

    Narrated by Fred Stella

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Based on thousands of pages of typed and handwritten notes, journal entries, letters, and story sketches, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the magnificent and imaginative final work of an author who dedicated his life to questioning the nature of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the relationship between the human and the divine. Edited and introduced by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, this is the definitive presentation of Dick's brilliant, and epic, work.

    In the Exegesis, Dick documents his eight-year attempt to fathom what he called "2-3-74," a postmodern visionary experience of the entire universe "transformed into information." In entries that sometimes ran to hundreds of pages, in a freewheeling voice that ranges through personal confession, esoteric scholarship, dream accounts, and fictional fugues, Dick tried to write his way into the heart of a cosmic mystery that tested his powers of imagination and invention to the limit.

    This volume, the culmination of many years of transcription and archival research, has been annotated by the editors and by a unique group of writers and scholars chosen to offer a range of views into one of the most improbable and mind-altering manuscripts ever brought to light.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateNov 7, 2011
    ISBN9781455837366
    Author

    Philip K. Dick

    Over a writing career that spanned three decades, PHILIP K. DICK (1928–1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, as well as television's The Man in the High Castle. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, including the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and between 2007 and 2009, the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

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    Reviews for The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

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    • 5/5
      An Amazing ride with the tortured genius that was Philip K. Dick
    • 4/5
      Great audio book philp k dick is out there .
    • 4/5
      An intricate and complex journey into the mind of famed sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick. Although the logic in this is disturbed, there is still much to be gleamed in examining Dick's innermost thoughts and contemplations. His journey- his exegesis, is profound and multi-arced, swinging across all sorts of different forms of writing, comprehension, and analysis. For those seeking to know more about the writer, this is essential reading.4 stars.
    • 5/5
      A trip through the mind of one of my favorite Sci-Fi authors. These nine hundred pages were a mere tenth of the written material Dick created after 1974 to explore his mental breakdown/religious experience; it took me a year to read every page and footnote and glossary explanation. Every line was fascinating to me, since I too am an author of science fiction dealing with the nature of reality. In the sections where he writes about developing his stories, or considers their meaning, I can see similarities in our process. The inclusion of his drawings and sketches of his ideas could come right out of my own piles of scrap paper. Unfortunately, the technical secrets to his literary genius are not included. Too bad we can’t correspond with each other ... or maybe we can ... maybe we are? Note: The five stars are MY rating. You have to be a little nuts to read this!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Hold on to your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen.

      The majority of PKD fans are familiar with the fact that in early 1974, the author received what some consider to be a hallucination or epileptic attack, but he perceived as a vision, or religious revelation. He saw a pink beam of light, which bombarded his mind and senses with a massive stream of information.

      He spent the majority of the rest of his life chronicling what he had experienced, seen, and heard, in manic chronicling, written at the inhuman speed of his novels. In a letter to a friend, he wrote: "I feel like a character in one of my novels, where reality is falling apart..."

      The Exegesis we see here is the result of his notes. A team of apparently superhuman editors have taken this enormous mass of material and organized and compacted it into about 900 dense pages. They are wildly different: Some are candid letters to friends, family, and workmates: others are dense philosophical treatises, as he expands his syncretic PreSocratic-Platonic-Gnostic-Buddhist-Spinozan-Gestalt-Heidiggerian framework in a frantic searching for understanding. A descent into a labyrinth.

      The collected results are sometimes baffling, almost incoherent. One feels a lingering sense of doubt, that the man really has gone insane, that the amphetamines and paranoia have caught up to him. But that is a disservice. If he is mad, he is aware of it. He jokes about it being God one day, aliens the next, and a Soviet mind probe the third day in one of his letters.

      Furthermore, you may often find a profound little aphorism which peers into the nature of reality, or an unusually lucid analysis of his novels, or a chronicling of history. I was astonished to find a little remark by him, buried, about how to make this into a coherent book. But is there a conclusion to it all? Certainly not. The only thing resembling a summary comes near the end, perhaps as PKD felt his end was near.

      Is this revelation? Is this a prophecy? Is it madness, but the rare form of madness which blurs or magnifies genius, as William Blake or Nikola Tesla? I am certainly not the one to judge. The sheer mass and density of this work will certainly dissuade the vast majority of his readers, used to swift and lucid parables which he usually produces. It is to his credit that he turned these warped journeys into interesting literature. Those who have the gall to take this work on, and have the time and energy to do so, may yet find some Prophecy of the Information Age.

      2 people found this helpful