Monday, August 13, 2007

Warren Ellis on Philip K. Dick

Now I don't consider myself a well-versed SF reader (I'm more of fantasy) but I have read (and enjoyed) Philip K Dick. I'm also familiar with Warren Ellis and his comics work so it's interesting for me to read about the latter's take on the former in what he describes as "the Philip K Dick condition" over at SuicideGirls:
Which is as good a way as any to understand Philip Dick and the 21st Century. What makes Philip Dick more relevant to today is not necessarily the quality of his fantasy, but the complexity of it. And him. Philip Dick was as much an anti-hero as any of his characters. He's a counter-cultural hero whose personality was forged in the fifties, not the sixties. He was a champion of the drug culture who attempted to sell out friends and acquaintances to the FBI. He saw into people, but knew himself not at all. This is a guy who took speed every day for years, and then was told by a doctor that his liver was so fantastically efficient that it processed out any drugs in his system before they had a chance to affect his central nervous system. To which he replied, well, I guess that explains why I like to take speed before I go to bed. The only writer on earth who'd write for ninety-six hours straight and then pass out on the office floor due to the placebo effect.

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