Episode 10: Philip K. Dick: Adrift in the Multiverse

Explicit content warning

04/18/18 • 83 min

In 1977, Philip K. Dick read an essay in France entitled, "If You Find this World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others." In it, he laid out one of the dominant tropes of his fictional oeuvre, the idea of parallel universes. It became clear in the course of the lecture that Dick didn't intend this to be a talk about science fiction, but about real life - indeed, about his life. In this episode, Phil and JF seriously consider the speculations which, depending on whom you ask, make PKD either a genius or a madman. This distinction may not matter in the end. As Dick himself wrote in his 8,000-page Exegesis: "The madman speaks the moral of the piece."

REFERENCES

Philip K. Dick, excerpts from “If You Find This World Bad You Should See Some Of The Others”
R. Crumb, The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick
Emmanuel Carrère, I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick
“20 Examples of the Mandela Effect That’ll Make You Believe You’re In A Parallel Universe”
Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
Weird Studies, "Episode 9: On Aleister Crowley and the Idea of Magick"
Weird Studies, "Episode 4: Exploring the Weird with Erik Davis"
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Sun Ra, Space is the Place
Zebrapedia (crowdsourced online transcribing/editing of the Exegesis)
Ramsey Dukes (Lionel Snell), Words Made Flesh
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
Bernado Kastrup, Why Materialism is Baloney
Gordon White, Star.Ships: A Prehistory of the Spirits
Nick Bostrom, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”

REFERENCES

Previous Episode

Episode 9: On Aleister Crowley and the Idea of Magick

The plan was to discuss the introduction to Aleister Crowley's classic work, Magick in Theory and Practice (1924), a powerful text on the nature and purpose of magical practice. JF and Phil stick to the plan for the first part of the show, and then veer off into a dialogue on the basic idea of magic. Along the way, they share some of the intriguing results of their own occult experiments.

REFERENCES

Photo of JF's "large sum" cheque
Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice
The Gospel According to Thomas
James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
Erik Davis, "Weird Shit"
I Ching, The Book of Changes
Joshua Gunn, Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
The Shackleton Expedition
Grant Morrison on how to do sigil magic
Alan Chapman, Advanced Magick for Beginners
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding
Joshua Ramey, "Contingency Without Unreason"
Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande
H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness

Next Episode

Weird Stories: M. R. James' "The Mezzotint"

M. R. James has been hailed as the unrivalled maser of the classic ghost tale, and his powers are at their zenith in "The Mezzotint," a story that first appeared in his 1904 collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. In it, James reimagines the Gothic trope of the haunted picture in a weird new light. The text, read here by co-host Phil Ford, serves as a springboard for Weird Studies episode 11, where we discuss the enduring power of the art object in the age of mechanical reproduction.