Typed Letter, signed ("Love, Phil"), to "Pat" [Patricia Warrick], 10 January 1981, on anamnesis and identity, the events of March 1974, and his novel Valis
$7,500 · Offered by Biblio
Signed
Santa Ana, California, 1981. 5 pages, single spaced, with one small manuscript diagram and occasional corrections. Signed on the last leaf. 1 vols. 4to. Fine. With original mailing envelope. 5 pages, single spaced, with one small manuscript diagram and occasional corrections. Signed on the last leaf. 1 vols. 4to. An outstanding letter from Philip K. Dick (1928-1982), the "Shakespeare of Science Fiction", writes (in part): "And in March 1974 I saw a prison; we are in it; I call it (as in VALIS) the Black Iron Prison, and it is trans-temporal or supra-temporal; it exists at all times and places [...] this is what I conceptually perceived that day when I was shown the golden fish sign; I remembered the cosmic dialectic, the war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, the great dualistic confrontation and combat of Zoroastrianism. I have lived again and again but always played the same role in this battle: I am one of the secret Christians battling the Black Iron Prison, which is the Empire [...]" Elsewhere Dick observes, "Now I know I said most of this in VALIS, and at the risk of repeating myself and seeming to be more obsessed and nuts than I am in fact am I will despite this go on to say, I believe that this unveiling of 'phylogenic' time requires the human brain to perform a function so advanced, so meta-normal, that when the brain does it, the person is not a person any longer, in the sense that we usually use the term; he has transferred himself from one ontolo
- Year: 1981
- Binding: unknown
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