PKD Event update

Hi folks. Sorry to stuff your mailbox, but readers have alerted me that I neglected to include any concrete information about my upcoming course on PKD’s Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Doh! (I blame the archons.)

The five-session weekly class will begin on January 23, in person at the Berkeley Alembic and available for a limited time online. Here is the link.

Here is the original announcement.

(•) The Three Stigmata of Philip K. Dick

I have been thinking and writing about the visionary Californian science fiction writer Philip K. Dick since I graduated Yale in the 1980s. In this five-part series at Alembic, I will take on one of Dick’s most mind-bending and harrowing books, 1964’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, reading it as a prophetic precog flash on our present meta-crisis. I admit I woke up godfearing in the middle of the night a few weeks ago, terrified that I was releasing evil memes into an already toxic logosphere, but this class has been nagging me for years. Dark satires can be good medicine, and medicine can sometimes be nasty. Besides, its funny.

The first evening will serve as an introduction to Dick, his personal and psychological trials, and the religious experiences and concerns that started to emerge around the time he wrote this wild, biting, and creepy novel. Subsequent nights will work through the book in 50-60 page increments per week (read the Vintage edition if you can). Topics will include: virtual reality, consumer psychedelics, Barbie dolls, space-faring billionaires, transhuman augmentation, global warming, Mars colonization, the Eucharist, the cosmic “Outside” (H. P. Lovecraft and Olaf Stapledon), the Gnostic demiurge, the bardo, the nature of evil, the genre of horror, and the breakdown of consensus reality.

We will make the lecture portion of the evenings available for online viewers, but I will continue my practice of not recording the Q&A portion of the evening, which I find creates a better vibe in the room, loosens me up, and rewards those who make the trek and pay the bucks.

 

Thanks for your patience!