Ep251 The Twisted Life of Philip K. Dick: Drugs, Pink Light, and Blade Runner

Explore the chaotic and visionary mind of Philip K. Dick, the legendary author behind Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report. In this episode of The Day's Grimm, Brian Michael Day and Thomas Grimm dive deep into a life that was arguably weirder than the science fiction stories it inspired.

From the tragic infancy of his twin sister to his final days on the cusp of Hollywood fame, Philip K. Dick (PKD) lived on the edge of reality. We examine the "amphetamine-fueled" writing sessions where he produced up to 11 novels in two years, his five failed marriages, and the deep-seated paranoia that led him to believe the FBI was monitoring his every move.

A central focus of this deep dive is the bizarre 1974 "2-3-74" event, where Dick claimed a pink beam of light transmitted divine information directly into his brain. This experience sparked an 8,000-page journal known as the Exegesis, where he wrestled with questions about ancient Rome, Gnosticism, and the nature of our reality—decades before "The Matrix" made these concepts mainstream.

Whether he was a prophetic genius or a man struggling with substance-induced psychosis, PKD’s influence on modern pop culture is undeniable. Join us as we break down the drugs, the delusions, and the legacy of the man who dared to ask: "What is real?" 

If you enjoyed this deep dive into PKD's chaotic life, hit the subscribe button and drop a comment below letting us know which author or historical figure we should cover next! 


TIMELINE: 
00:00 - Introduction to Philip K. Dick 
02:55 - The Tragic Death of His Twin Sister 
06:00 - Childhood Phobias and Agoraphobia 
08:20 - Early Writing Career and Poverty 
09:33 - Amphetamine Use and Insane Output 
11:33 - The FBI and the Blown-up Filing Cabinet 
13:10 - Five Marriages Breakdown 
15:55 - The 1974 Pink Light Experience 
18:24 - The Exegesis and VALIS 
21:30 - Blade Runner and Death 
23:30 - Drug List and Writing Habits 
27:42 - The Orange County Group and Steampunk

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Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:36

Hello, hello, hello everyone, and welcome to another thrilling episode of the day's grimm. My name is Brian Michael Day.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

My name is Thomas Grimm.

SPEAKER_06 0:45

Today, we are doing none other than uh PKD in-depth deep dive of Philip K. Dick, the long requested, long-awaited uh author, um, genius. I wish I I wish I had like a cool intro written. Yeah, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

I mean, we're diving headfirst into the twisted, paranoid, and fetamine-fueled mind of Philip K. Dick, the guy who wrote the stories that became Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report.

SPEAKER_06 1:16

My favorite man in the High Castle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

And like a dozen other movies you've probably seen, but here's the thing, or here's the thing. His actual life, way weirder than any of his sci-fi stories.

SPEAKER_06 1:28

Yeah, dude, he uh we're talking Dead Twin Sisters. That's sick, dude. Five failed marriages, government surveillance that may or may not have been real, hallucin hallucinations of ancient Rome, attempted suicide, massive drug abuse, and a finale involving a pink beam of light from God. Or maybe aliens. Phil wasn't entirely sure, though. Uh, and then we've got him pulled up on screen here. Get a good glance at Mr. Uh Philip K. Dick, aka Big Daddy Dick, aka PK Dick, aka Big Fat Dick. Um, this guy, dude, fucking genius, and also likely uh schizophrenic.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

Um definitely troubled. So buckle up. This one gets dark, like really dark, but also kind of hilarious that in uh that tragic, oh my god, this guy needed therapy really bad kind of way.

SPEAKER_06 2:26

Yeah, and honestly, you know what? Uh agreed, yeah. He definitely needed therapy. Um, so just starting off so you guys are aware, time frame-wise, uh, Mr. Big Fat Dick, aka Philip K Dick, Philip Kindred Dick, uh was born December 16th, 1928. Uh in Chyrak. Yeah, in uh none other than Chyrack, and then he died in 1982. So just to give you a time frame of what we're working with here.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

Yeah, but he wasn't born alone. He had a twin sister, Jane's Charlotte Dick. AKA Miss Fat Dick. Born just a few minutes before him, and that's where things immediately got tragic. Jane died six weeks later on January 26th, 1928. The cause? Jesus. Malnutrition. The family couldn't figure out how to feed her properly. I guess this bitch wasn't latching on the reality or the tit.

SPEAKER_06 3:22

She was not locked in from a very early age. Now, Phil survived, obviously, but that death haunted him for his entire life. Which I want to pause right here.

SPEAKER_03 3:33

Yeah. You're six weeks old, my guy. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 3:37

I was gonna make the same joke. Like, I was gonna make the same joke.

SPEAKER_06 3:40

How did it, how did that fucking trauma haunt you, you stupid bitch? Uh he'd say, Oh, golly. Anyways, uh, he would later say, and I quote, Jane is the one who died, and I'm the one who lived. I've spent my life trying to find her. Heavy, right?

SPEAKER_03 3:59

End quote. It's so fucking even on his gravestone, he had the his parents bought like a twin burial lot. So like it had hit like his name next to his sister's name, and he had to live like that, like his whole life. Like he would always go to the graveyard and visit with his sister and see his name on the headstone next like right next to her. Like he carried that bag of guilt for at least like 85 years. Yeah. 53 years, my bad.

SPEAKER_06 4:24

That's insane, dude. So it uh his gravestone reads Philip K. Dick, uh 1928 to 1982, and then the grave right next to him reads Jane C's Dick 1928 to 1929. Oh, what a great. Oh, this is fucking horrible.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

Philip wrote about his twin constantly in his novel The Divine Invasion. He quotes um, like where a scene where one of the characters says the one who died was the one who was supposed to live. He also believed at various points that Jane was his other half in some cosmic metaphorical sense. This isn't just sibling grief, it's full-blown existential crisis material.

SPEAKER_06 5:06

And to be fair, when you are a twin, you are physically like when it you are the same thing, like you're the one egg, right? Yeah. So like you're one, it's so you are the same.

SPEAKER_03 5:17

It's not like a metaphorical And there I think there are studies about that, like certain things that twins have weird.

SPEAKER_06 5:24

Yeah, they have to share a lot of shit when they're in there, man. You know? So it's like having a fucking really garbage roommate. Um, so Phil's parents, Dorothy and Joseph, cute, cute fucking names, by the way. Uh Dorothy and Joseph were already a mess. Uh they split up when he was five. His mom was, by multiple accounts, cold and domineering. Uh his dad, distant or coy. Classic formula for a kid who's gonna have issues with a capital I. Uh they moved to Berkeley, California, so not a great place to live. California, I love where most uh skinophri schizophrenics. I can't even talk right now. Yeah, you get it. That's where most of them moved to. Um when Phil was still young, that's when they moved there. Uh, and that's where he grew up. Shy, anxious, and prone to bizarre phobias. I can only fucking imagine. Can we get a Google? Well while I'm reading through this, Corey, Google Philip K. Dick phobias. I want to see what that does for us. Bizarre Philip K. Dick phobias. I want to have an example of this. And when I say bizarre, oh, here we go. Maybe I got some. I mean it. The guy was terrified of everyday stuff, heights, sure, but also ceiling fans, loud noises, people standing too close behind him. Like, dude thought someone was always about to shank him in the back. Let me see if there's some tertiary. Uh, he also suffered from intense fear of obsession with evil or madmen running the world alongside a deep-seated fear of losing his grip on reality. Yeah. Fucking schizophrenic for sure, dude. Uh, distrust of reality, germophobia, and alienation, and the other.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

How do you say this phobia? Agora? Agoraphobia? Which one are you at? The top. Agrophoria. Agoraphobia. Agoraphobia.

SPEAKER_06 7:22

Agoraphobia.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

Which you would think was like me passing out, but it's not, meaning that he couldn't leave his house without having a panic attack. So, yeah, not a great start to life.

SPEAKER_06 7:31

Uh yeah, here's the thing. Phil was smart though. Uh, like terribly smart, like scary smart. He devoured books, philosophy, theology, science fiction, anything he can get his hands on. By his teens, he was reading Plato, Kant, and the weird mystical stuff that would later show up in his novels. Uh, I would also like a fucking example of weird mystical stuff, like The Alchemist. Like, what are we talking about here? Um, he wasn't just escaping into books, he was trying to understand reality itself, which, spoiler alert, he never really, never really managed to understand.

SPEAKER_07 8:05

Never really got a good grip on it.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

All right, let's talk about his writing career. It started in the late 1950s, so he would have been like what mid-20s? And for the first decade or so, it was a slog, a brutal soul-clushing slog.

SPEAKER_06 8:20

Okay. He uh he wrote his first story, Rouge, that's R-O-O-G, in 1951. I'm not familiar with this one.

SPEAKER_03 8:27

It's about a dog who thinks garbage collectors are aliens trying to steal his family's trash. Yep. That's about the premise. And honestly, it's kind of genius because it's not really about the dog, it's about perception. What's real, what's paranoia, those questions that would define Phil's entire career.

SPEAKER_06 8:44

I think Phil was on amphetamines at a very, very early age.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

Like maybe his sister knew there was something up in the tip milk, you know what I mean? And was like, yo, I ain't drinking that cool late. She said, I'm not built for this life, bro.

SPEAKER_07 8:56

I got that dog in me.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

But here's the problem: science fiction in the 50s and 60s wasn't respected. It was pulp. Hashtag pulp fiction. Cheap paperbacks sold at bus stations while Phil was cranking out novels like a machine. Sometimes two or three per year, but he was making peanuts. We're talking a thousand five hundred per novel, maybe two thousand if he was lucky. He lived in poverty for most of his life.

SPEAKER_06 9:24

And to keep up with the workload, here you guessed it, ladies and gentlemen.

SPEAKER_03 9:32

And Californian amphetamines, you know what I mean? Not that Evansville stepped on shit.

SPEAKER_06 9:37

That San Juan fucking Tijuana. Lots and lots of amphetamines. Uh Phil would pop speed like candy, write for 48 hours straight, crash for a day, then do it all over again. His output was insane. Between 63 and 64 alone, he wrote 11 novels. 11. One one. That's that's almost one a month. That's insane. And a novel is classified as I think over 200 pages or something.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

So I'm surprised he could write. Like, could you imagine being on amphetamines and having to sit still and like write?

SPEAKER_06 10:14

So there's a there's a catch, there's a caveat to that. Because if he actually had some sort of like deficit, some sort of deficiency.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

I did watch a video of like this where like this comedian was talking about like the first time she did cocaine with a bunch of her friends and they were all like hyped up, and she's like, guys, I I think I can read. Yeah. You know, she's like, I I can think straight.

SPEAKER_06 10:35

So and I had to do a study on this in college, uh, when it for like pharmacology or something, but like basically if you're an individual that has the deficiency that requires acetomet or acetamedophine amphetamines, I just had a stroke. Uh if you're if you're someone who needs to take amphetamines to like function normally, and then you abuse it, then it gets weird. So like weird shit happens. But basically, yeah, it wouldn't be like you and me where we're just like bouncing off the fucking walls. I think you.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

I think I could do math and be just fine. Well, maybe.

SPEAKER_06 11:08

Um, but at any rate, so again, from 63 to 64 alone, he wrote 11 novels. That's absolutely bad shit.

SPEAKER_03 11:13

That's crazy because we talked to Austin Maxheimer about like basically uh who was it, Stephen King said basically if you write a page a day, you can turn out a novel a year. And this guy's doing a novel a month.

SPEAKER_06 11:26

Yeah, he's writing a page every fucking 30 minutes. Yeah. Fucking wild. Dude is fucking yoked up.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

But uh there's a cost to that, right? Long-term amphetamine use, not great on your brain or your heart or your mental stability. Just ask Hitler. Phil started to having paranoia dil paranoid delusions. He thought the FBI was watching him, he thought his friends were spies, and at one point he claimed someone broke into his house and blew up his filing cabinet with explosives. The police investigated, no evidence of explosives, just a paranoid rider on too many drugs. Okay, so what happened to the filing cabinet?

SPEAKER_06 12:03

Did it actually catch on fire? I wonder.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Dude, I think maybe he just got mad, you know what I mean? And like up for 50 hours. Well, we got a little information on it right here. In uh 1971, Phil's house in California was broken into his filing cabinet, which contained manuscripts and personal documents, were blown up. Oh, so it did get blown up. Phil insisted that the FBI it was the FBI or CIA. His friends thought he was having a breakdown. But to this day, no one knows what happened. Was it random burglarly? Was it uh drug-related vendetta, or was Phil just so paranoid he imagined the whole thing? History says, eh, and we'll never know.

SPEAKER_06 12:45

Nice, dude. I I love the thorough police work there. Um, you know, nothing like a good unsolved amphetamine fueled fire. Right. Uh now, during all this, Phil was also cycling through marriages like they were Netflix subscriptions. Uh five wives, that's five. Uh, that's a lot. So we're gonna run through them real quick. Wife number one, Jeanette Marlin, 48 to 49, lasted less than a year. They were kids. It didn't work. Wife number you just want me to burn through these? Okay. Wife number two, Cleo Apostolides, uh 50 to 59. This one stuck for almost a decade. She supported him while he wrote, but Phil was broke, paranoid, and impossible to live with. She eventually left. Wife number three, Anne Williams Rubinstein. Your people, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. There you go, dude. My favorites. Uh 59 to 65. They had a daughter, Laura. Anne later said Phil was emotionally abusive. He admitted it. He said he was a terrible husband. Uh, awesome, good, retro, fucking nice uh internal wherewithal. Wife number four, Nancy Hackett, 66 to 72. Uh, another kid, Isa. This marriage fell apart during Phil's worst drug years. He was spiraling and Nancy got out. Wife number five, Tessa Busby, 73 to 77. They had a son, Christopher. Uh, by this point, Phil was trying to get clean, but the damage was done. Tessa left too.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

Phil said, Shoot. I've been married five times and was wrong every time. At least he was self-aware, I guess. So three kids. That's three kids.

SPEAKER_06 14:22

Three kids, five wives, and uh a lot of novels.

SPEAKER_03 14:27

I think if I'm correct, somewhere in like he wrote a lot of that time, and like we had already mentioned, like, he wasn't making much money, but a lot of these books, like, he didn't like actually start to be a well-known writer until later in his life. Like, I think until the fourth or fifth marriage.

SPEAKER_06 14:42

So it was my impression, and we'll get through, we'll probably learn this together as I'm reading this with you. But it was my impression that Big Daddy PKD uh did not get famous until he was dead. I think you're right. I thought like a lot of his shit did not get like pop off until like when did it say he died again? I don't remember. 80s. He died in the 80s. Um, but at any rate, like a lot of his shit started popping off in like the 90s. He started having a lot of his novels reprinted. Um, and then obviously in the 2000s, you know, you see TV shows popping up and etc. But at any rate. Um, so let's get into the breakdown here. Uh, here's where things get truly bizarre. In February of 74, Phil had a dental procedure, wisdom tooth extraction. They gave him sodium pentathol, a sedative. When he got home, he was still groggy, so he ordered a delivery of painkillers. What a time to be alive. Uh, just hey, bring me some dope. You know what I mean? Uh the delivery person, a young woman, showed up wearing a necklace with a golden fish symbol. And then, boom, Phil claims he was hit by a beam of pink light. Ah, Jesus Christ, this guy's lost his shit. Uh Phil said this pink light entered his mind and started transmitting information. Jesus. Like telepathy. Uh, yeah, telepathically. He suddenly knew things he hadn't known before. He believed the fish symbol was an ancient Christian uh Ichathis, I don't know what that is, used by the early Christians to identify each other. So let's pause there. Did you know do you know about this?

SPEAKER_03 16:28

How the Jesus fish came to be? I just knew that he taught a dude to fish one time. So, like when the early church started and they were being like heavily like persecuted and stuff like that? Oh, like in a hundred, like in the year. Yeah, like in like the early years or whatever, they would make one person would make a line, like an arch, right? On like uh sand or whatever. And then if the other person was a Christian, they would finish it with the other arch that goes the other way to make the fish. So that's what they're talking about there.

SPEAKER_06 16:57

Okay, so he goes on to believe that it's that used by Christians to identify one another. Thank you for that insightful fucking nugget of knowledge, Thomas. Uh, and that he was being contr uh contacted by a divine intelligence. He called this entity Vallas. VAST, active, living, intelligent system, Vallas. You military guys love your acronyms. Uh, was he military? No. Oh, okay. I was about to say, uh, I don't claim this guy. Now here's the thing. Uh was this genuine mystical was this a genuine mystical experience, or was it the lingering effects of sodium pentathal mixed with years of amphetamine-induced brain damage? Phil himself wasn't even sure, man. Honestly, uh, who jury's out. Um he spent the next eight years, literally the rest of his life, trying to figure out what the hell happened. He filled a journal with over 8,000 pages of notes trying to decode the experience. He called it his uh exegegenesis. Ex Genesis? Ex Gesis? I don't know. It's half theology, half rambling paranoia, and fully unhinged. Some of it reads like brilliant philosophy, some of it reads like a man having a very long, very public nervous breakdown.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

So this exegenesis, I guess is what we're gonna call it, is over a million words long. Good lord. It was published in heavily edited form in 2011. People who've read it described it as fascinating and exhausting. Bill jumps between ancient uh Gnosticism, uh, Jungian psychology, quantum physics, and whether or not Richard Nixon was secretly the Antichrist. Yes.

SPEAKER_06 18:51

Oh, not my boy Nixie, dude.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

He really thought that time had stopped in 70 AD and we're all living through an illusion controlled by the Roman Empire. Yes, again, years of amphetamine use, folks. Oh god, that's that's rough, dude. I feel I feel kind of bad for big pet. Dude, could you imagine if the world really like ended in fucking 70 AD and like the Romans? Maybe that's why we all think about the Romans. Maybe the Romans really did pair up with the Egyptians, you know what I mean? And uh maybe, dude. Maybe we're in some Roman Egyptian, maybe Caesar's out there still banging Cleopatra.

SPEAKER_06 19:30

Dude, Loki, you kinda hope that's the case, you know. I think that's the best case scenario, honestly. Um, but there's a weird part. Um, even though Phil was probably having a prolonged psychotic episode, his final novels written after the Vallis experience are some of his best works. Um, and we'll kind of go through those right now. 1981, The Divine Invasion, uh, 1981, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, uh, 1982 form what's the what's called the Vallas Trilogy. Uh, these books wrestle with the big questions what is God, what is reality, and are we living in a sympathy? Don't fucking do that to you. I don't like that when you do that. Uh sound familiar? Yes. Uh Phil was asking those questions in the 1970s, decades before The Matrix.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

Uh made them cool. He was ahead of his time or completely insane, and maybe both.

SPEAKER_06 20:33

It sounds like the Matrix ripped off my boy, Big Papa K Dick. Maybe. That's what it sounds like to me. Uh, by the early 1980s, Phil's death was shot. Phil's health was shot. Phil's Phil's health was shot. Uh years of amphetamines, poor diet, and stress had wrecked his body. He had high blood pressure, heart problems, and he'd also attempted suicide twice. Um, real bummery failed both times. You know what I mean? You hate to you hate to fail. You hate to fail, and then you hate to fail again. You know what he's doing.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Yeah, both in the 70s, once with pills and once by slashing his own wrist, both times he failed, or maybe he didn't really want to die. Who knows?

SPEAKER_06 21:14

Uh, 1982, things were actually looking up. Um, Hollywood was finally interested in his work. Ridley Scott was making Blade Runner based on Phil's novel. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

SPEAKER_03 21:29

Uh that was the novel, by the way. That was the novel that Blade Runner was based on.

SPEAKER_06 21:34

Oh, based on Phil's novel. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Sick, dude. Nice. Um, Phil visited the set and was blown away. He said it looked exactly like the world he'd imagined. For once in his life, he felt validated. Uh, but on March 2nd, 1982, just three months before Blade Runner was released, Phil had a stroke. He was fifty three years old. He never regained consciousness and died on March 2nd.

SPEAKER_03 22:01

He never got to see Blade Runner. Yeah. And he didn't live to see the Blade Runner remake either.

SPEAKER_06 22:09

You think you know it could have been a hit.

SPEAKER_03 22:12

He never actually got to see how much of his work would influence pulp culture before he died. He died broke, paranoid, and largely unknown.

SPEAKER_06 22:22

I wonder. Are you still taking your speed and stuff up until you're damn?

SPEAKER_03 22:30

I think at one point he was causing we'd have to look up all the drugs because I'm pretty sure at one point he was like doing speed and acid. Today though, Philip K. Dick is a legend. His books have been adapted into major films that scholars study his work today. He's considered one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, but he never got to enjoy any of it. A lot of people, you know, some people in the comment, we mentioned him once, like the man in the high castle. And somebody's like, Are you gonna do a breakdown on him? Which is why we're doing this episode.

SPEAKER_06 23:00

Hell yeah. Shout out to that dude in the comments too. And also, Corey was kind enough to pull up some um The Need for Speed. Yep. Philip K. Dick. Adderall, abuse, and psychosis. Uh hold on. Is there can you just get like a list of drugs that he like reportedly had done? I don't know. Philip K. Dick Drugs, uh drugs, drug list. Yeah, let's do that. Let's see if that pops anything up. And then just switch over to AI mode.

SPEAKER_04 23:29

See what it says.

SPEAKER_06 23:30

Yeah, click at the AI, dude. Let's see what happens here. Dude, fucking AI's got this. Oh yeah, daddy. So it looks like here. Uh real life substances. Dick's writing career was famously fueled by heavy pharmaceutical use, particularly during the 60s. He did amphetamines, um, which we've spoken on uh in depth. Psychedelics, LSD, and mescaline. Mescaline was big in the 70s, dude. Um, and then what is that? Is that like just beginner acid? No, I think uh you'd have to Google it. I think that comes from a cactus.

unknown 24:07

60 pages a day.

SPEAKER_06 24:09

Bro, I'm telling you. Yeah, 60 plus pages a day. He often claimed he wrote every book published before 1970 while on speed. I was joking earlier about a page every half hour, but uh, what's the math on that? You know what I mean? 60 pages a day. I mean, that that's fucking dude, that's insane. 60 divided by 24. So yeah, I mean, that's like fuck. I was joking, but yeah, just five pages. Yeah, homeboy was writing four pages an hour, bro. Two and a half an hour. Oh, two and a half an hour. That's insane. But yeah, and then um also establishment, uh, what does this say? Oh, he took uh phenotiazines and lithium carbonate, which he views as tools for social pacification that could turn humans into androids. Oh yeah. Yep, dude.

SPEAKER_03 25:09

Which is wild.

SPEAKER_05 25:10

Greg, hurry up, take some of this lithium carbonate.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

What are the takeaways here? Philip K. Dick was a genius, but he was also a deeply troubled man who spent his entire life asking questions that he couldn't answer. What's real? What's an illusion? Who are we really? Are we androids? Can we take enough medicine to become androids? And maybe that's why is still maybe that's why his work still resonates today because of those questions. They're not philosophical, they're human.

SPEAKER_06 25:39

Uh Phil lived in his own head. Probably not a great place to live. Uh and it was a terrifying place. Um, but out of the c out of that chaos came some of the most profound, weird, and visionary stories ever written.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

And yeah, he died broken alone, but his legacy, that pink beam of light he saw in 1974, maybe it was madness, or maybe it was something more. Phil would have said, we'll never know for sure. And honestly, that's the most Philip K. Dick answer there is.

SPEAKER_06 26:14

That checks out, dude. That that checks out. I do want to know um who was Corey use AI for this. Who was Philip K. Dick's best friend? Like who was his best friend?

SPEAKER_03 26:26

Probably his sister or the muse.

SPEAKER_06 26:31

Just uh where does he search at? Go all the way to the bottom. Go all the way to the bottom, Corey. Down, down, down. Yeah, ask anything. Go down here. Who was Philip K. Dick's best friend? I want to know who this guy who was this guy or girl that was with him most of his life that didn't do us all a favor. Not his wives. Not one of his five wives. Not his kids, apparently. While Philip K. Dick had many friends across different stages of his life, several individuals are frequently cited as his closest companions. Here are the folks that we have to blame for his fucking idiocy. Uh Tim Powers, Ray Nelson, James Blaylock, Paul Williams, and Robert Henlein. Now, how could read underneath Tim Powers? Tim Powers often described as one of Dick's closest companions during the last decade of his life in Orange County. Powers has written extensively to debunk myths about Dick, describing him as a quote, normal, funny, rational, and generous person, end quote, and a quote stalwart friend, end quote. Okay, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_07 27:41

Uh can we fucking reference?

SPEAKER_03 27:43

If somebody thinks he's normal, funny, and rational, maybe they're doing some of the speed and LSD with.

SPEAKER_06 27:49

This is his fucking mescaline dealer, likely, dude. Yeah. Where can you highlight what you're talking about? What are you talking about, brother? Yeah, right there. Oh, oh, under James Bond. Copy and paste it into Google. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do that, dude. I want to know what the orange county group is.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

This is like the Emerald Triangle of Masculine users.

SPEAKER_06 28:15

So highlight it and then Command C. Yeah, Command plus C, and then go in there and just yeah, Command V and enter. Did your this Robert guy loan them money for the IRS?

SPEAKER_03 28:31

The Orange County group, often referred to as the Thursday Night Gang, was a close-knit circle of science fiction and fantasy riers. Thursday night best friends. Yeah, bro.

SPEAKER_06 28:44

Uh this group is most famous for its three younger members who were all students at Cal State Fullerton at the time and are now credited as the co-founders of the steampunk genre. Okay, there you go. So especially like culturally big. Yeah, dude. So you got Tim Powers, Dick's closest companion in his uh later years. Dick famously dedicated Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to Tim and his wife, Serena. James P. Blaylock, a fantasy novelist who frequently hosted Dick for evenings of talking and drinking. And you got KW Jeter, uh KW Jeter, an aspiring writer whom Dick mentored. Uh Jeter later wrote, authorized secret. What does that mentorship look like?

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Hey man, we're gonna we got an eight ball of speed, we got a little bit of LSD, yeah, and we got a shitload of papers and pencils.

SPEAKER_06 29:41

Um, and KW's like, so are there prostitutes coming? No, it's just drugs and pencils. Could you imagine the typewriter back then, dog? Like you can't even read the letters on it anymore, it's just burnt. Right. The fucking keys are just roasted. Um, so yeah, it seems like it was just a best buddies group. Oh, Google where mescaline comes from. This sounds like a like a fucked up group of D D. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Where does mescline come from? And that's the last question I want to Google, Corey. Where does mescline Good luck spelling that? Mesc M-E-S. No, it's A, but yeah, you're good. Yeah, mescline come from. I think it's a cactus, and I don't want to misspeak because somebody in the comments will roast me for it. But it is a hallucinogen, is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid, primarily found in several species of cacti, native to the North and South America. Uh, it can also be produced synthetically in a laboratory. Okay, let's amazing. Roll the dice on that if you want to. Hell yeah, dude. Um, compound is most concentrated in the following cacti: the peyote, San Pedro, Peruvian torch, Bolivian torch, and some other plants, actually. That's interesting. Hmm. So not just cacti. Uh, but yeah, there you go, gentlemen. That's where so if you're ever out in the fucking desert and you're dying, just fucking be careful.

SPEAKER_07 31:02

Be careful what cactus you're eating, dude. Especially in Baru, uh Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

SPEAKER_06 31:11

I don't know, dude. Uh Big Daddy, Philip, aka Papa, K Ding Dong, uh, this guy. Okay, and the reason that we even started talking about him was in that episode, and I forget what even episode it was, but we were talking about this one with Scott Conrad. Yeah, and we were talking about Man and the High Castle on like how good of a show it was, how good the book was. Um, which now that I'm thinking about it, at any rate, it's just a phenomenal book, and it's a phenomenal take. And if you've never read the book or watched the series, you should. But now knowing PK Dick as well as I do, that whole show makes the whole book, the whole story makes so much more sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 31:51

It makes so much sense, dude.

SPEAKER_06 31:54

Really does. Have you seen Man in the High Castle? I have not. Oh my god. Have you seen Man in the High Castle, Corey? Oh, dude, you guys are fucking missing out, dude. It's an amphetamine fucking fever dream. Yeah, clearly. I mean uh but yeah, man, that's um that's uh February's topic. Um, Mr. Philip K. Dick, aka Big Daddy Ding Dong.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Um I also think it's hilarious that like uh his middle name is Kinder. Like Philip Kindred Dick. And then like his sister's initials was whatever C's Dick. Thought it was funny. Yeah, C's Dick, dude. But if you've enjoyed this deep dive into Phil's chaotic life, hit that like and subscribe button. Drop a comment with who you want us to cover next. Maybe if you got a crazy PK Dick fact that we didn't cover, put that in the comments.

SPEAKER_06 32:53

Hell yeah. Or a topic. It could be a topic, a person, a place, a thing, a ghost. It doesn't matter. You you fucking bring it up and we'll we'll do it. I don't give a shit, dude. But yeah, I was real pumped on PK Dick. Uh sorry, dude, in the comments that it took so long for us to do it, but we finally made it. So we out here. Um but short of that, another thrilling episode of the day's grim, right, dude? Yeah, dude. Hell yeah. Thank you, Corey. Thank you, Corey. Uh my name is Brian Michael Day. My name is Thomas Grimm.

SPEAKER_03 33:19

And until next time. I know you've seen it, bro.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

BBL.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

I like to know me.