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Crumb's account of Philip K. Dick's mystical transformative experience was shown on the Dick episode of the recent TV series "Prophets of Science Fiction," produced and narrated by Ridley Scott, who turned Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" into "Blade Runner."
Scott used another underground comic giant, Ron Cobb, as the designer of the space freighter Nostromo in "Alien."
Dick died shortly after selling "Androids" to Scott, and I don't think he ever saw "Blade Runner."
Of all the things that frighten us -- particularly Westerners -- the scariest thing of all is a profound mystical, visionary or religious experience. Dick and Crumb (and Timothy Leary, John C. Lilly and a few others) understood that mystical ecstacy is a central experience necessary for the full spectrum of human life.
1 comment:
Smartass Note:
Philip Kindred Dick (or PKD) had made a very interesting transition from straight SF magazine writer to beatnik in the late 50s to underground sensation and proto-hippie with stuff like Ubik, Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, Eye in the Sky, A Scanner Darkly etc.
Questioning Reality is one of the central themes in PKD’s work (was that trip to Mars real or planted in your brain ? Is Deckard in Blade Runner human or not ? Who is the cop and who the drug dealer in Scanner Darkly ? Who am I ? Am I real ? What is Reality anyway ?) so it is no surprise he had a vision like Meister Eckhard or Hildegard von Bingen at one time. Also the drugs might have helped a lot.
If anyone cares, here is more on the Exegesis of PKD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exegesis_of_Philip_K._Dick
It is a bit tiresome and rambling, but if someone likes this sort of stuff....(I also have a radio interview somewhere on the subject if anyone cares...)
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