Philip K. Dick Fan Site

Newly Added To The Site: February 2, 2002

Michael Fisher — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:39:06 +0000

I know that many of you may miss new things added like new articles or multimedia that are added to the site and not published on the front page. So I will write a post like this whenever I feel that enough items have been added behind the front page that it warrants a post.

Here is what’s new inside the depths of the site:

Philip K. Dick Fan Site Store I am attempting with the help of Lord RC to create an online store to sell items. Any ideas on what you’d like to see, please comment or email philipkdickfans[at]gmail[dot]com.
Multimedia add several youtube videos and the podcast Philip K. Dick Philosophical Podcast
Variations in the Canonical Text of Philip K. Dick’s Short Stories (by Frank Hollander) which I put into Journals and Fanzines because it is serial in nature and I decided to classify it as a fanzine rather than create an entire new section on the site. For a better introduction than I could write here, please visit the section and take a look.

If you are feeling impatient between updates, you can check the Last Modified On The Site box on the right side of the pages three boxes from the top.

Dickhead (short film) by Ewan Povey and others

Michael Fisher — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:30:46 +0000

A fan sent me a Philip K. Dickesque movie and asked if I could share it. I have embedded it here and put a link to it on the Multimedia page. The film is described by Ewan as “sort of a psychotic comedy about a man who seems to be trapped in a Philip K Dick novel.”

Dickhead from Mark Emmitt on Vimeo.

My comment: You had me involved in this movie until the hammer bit and then I was bored. I think by going outside Philip K. Dick plots and characters the ending doesn’t fit the rest of the movie.

If anyone else would like to provide feedback on the film, please leave a comment below.

Website Milestone Reached

Michael Fisher — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:11:15 +0000

We have just reached a milestone in the history of this website. All of the scholarly content from the old philipkdickfans site has been brought over and reorganized into categories along with being mixed with new content. One of the major goals of the website is to provide a place for fans and academics to write content relating to Philip K. Dick in some manner. And to be a resource for research by making readily available articles, essays, interviews, etc. From this point on only new content will be added (i.e. new to the web site).

I hope that the effort put into reorganizing the content is effective and helps users finds what they are looking for easier than before. It appeared the generally all content was put into an articles category on one long page. Which I think worked at first but became unmanageable when it was too late to easily fix.

I have a small backlog of new things I will be adding to the site that I came across during this push to get all the old stuff back on the site and available online again. I don’t know how fast it will go up because I’m going to slow down some on the site for awhile to catch up on PKD reading among other things.

You may be wondering what has not been brought over. I left off items that I felt didn’t belong on the site or items that could wait before appearing back online. Here is what’s not be converted and my current thoughts on the content:

artwork: Unsure about what to do with this section. It seems fairly small and not used.
covers: I would love to have these but they are at philipkdick.com. Apprarently the collection was moved over there at some point.
email_lists: Waiting on Cal’s change over to become more settled before the information appears here.
fiction: Just like the artwork there wasn’t sure fiction on the site and didn’t appear to be used much. I know there is more fan fiction out there than just what’s here and maybe an entire site could be built just for this?
forums: The old forums were a cesspool of spambots and really damaged the online reputation of the site, I believe. I’m not sure I want to manage them and they were heavily used.
hollywood: I’m a little stumped about what to do with this section right now. I know previous developers were more into Hollywood and closer to it but I don’t know if the section will come back.
news: I started on this and it became more time consuming than I originally thought and on top of that the news was all old. I’m unsure if I will continue bringing the old news over or not.
press room: Same as the news section; all out of date items and I won’t be using a pressroom right now to post news. I don’t beleive in the old style press releases.
games: Unnecessary to the site and irrelevant. Not coming back.
3-D sitemap: I think all sites should have a site map and this one has one in xml for search engine readability but I on the fence about maintaining another one because I feel the architecture is well crafted and users generally can find what they need. It won’t be what wes here before because I could never figure it out.
solarshoe: I am working on a storefront of some type and there is a tentaive stab at one on the site.
ubikcorp: A nice to have but unecessary to the site and I never really saw the point in it.

If anyone has strong feelings about any of these categories, please add a comment. I would love some feedback at this stage as to the direction of the site and any new additions, even some that are mentioned here.

I will also spend some time fixing or making adjustments to the site. One big issue is that now there are a lot of bad links coming in from philipkdick.com that I intend to take care of as much as it is in my control to do so. PKDweb needs some work with broken images and links that I plan on helping fix. I may be working on a task that no one ever sees on the site but that makes it run better or helps with administration. So if you have any idea for something you’d like to see, please say something by adding a comment or emailing philipkdickfans[at]gmail[dot]com.

INTERVIEW: John Alan Simon, director “Radio Free Albemuth”

Michael Fisher — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 03:51:17 +0000

From blogtalkradio:

Phillip K. Dick fans will love hearing about how director John Alan Simon transformed PKD’s vision into his movie by the same name as his novel. Alanis Morisette even stars! Find out more about this visionary director and what he has in store for the future. Learn more about this project at http://independentstreak.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sci-fi-spotlight-radio-free-albemuth.

Listen to internet radio with indiestreak on Blog Talk Radio

If the blogtalkradio.com player doesn’t work, you can go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/indiestreak/2012/02/12/interview-john-alan-simon-director-radio-free-albemuth to hear the interview.

Review: The Solar Lottery (1955)

Michael Fisher — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 06:05:04 +0000

In the comments section, please add your your review, your criticism or a link to as post when you have much more to write than would fit in a comment.

Solar Lottery issue of For Dickheads Only

Amazon.com Reviews

Solar Lottery entry in PKDweb

World Of Chance entry in PKDweb

Review by Jason Koornick

VALBS Is Here!

Michael Fisher — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:58:23 +0000

For those of you not familiar with VALBS (Vast Active Living Bibliographic System), the site is a bibliography of Secondary Texts on Philip K. Dick. It contains references to essays, books, interviews, dissertations and even fanzines about PKD. For scholars, students and others researching Philip K. Dick, this is an invaluable resource to identify sources, perform research or even have your own PKD related work listed. David Gill at totaldickhead interviewed Umberto Rossi in 2009 if you are interested in a much more information about VALBS.

Just over a month ago Umberto Rossi, the current curator (as I like to think of him) of VALBS, approached me to see if he could move the site over to philipkdickfans.com to provide a permanent location for the site because he was having hosting issues. The files provided were converted into the pages of the site and combed over to fix any errors found in the conversion. And there were many! Finally we are at the point where we are confident that most of the issues with the conversion have been fixed and have made the site live as the new permanent home for VALBS. There will be a transition period in which both locations will be available but I hope that it will be short and most of the traffic will come to this site and not the older version.

As the first page of the VALBS site states:

This is an interactive bibliography. Corrections and additions are welcome. If you wish to inform us about anything you have published concerning the works of Philip K. Dick, please send a message to teacher[at]fastwebnet[dot]it

So if you see an issue feel free to email and it will be corrected. The link to the VALBS is in the More Philip K. Dick Resources box at the top right of the page.

I’m very happy and proud to bring this resource to philipkdickfans.com!

New Contest Rules: Win An Exegesis :: BookPulse iPad Application

Michael Fisher — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:56:01 +0000

Announcing new contest rules for the contest in which the winner will receive a coupon code for a free Exegesis :: BookPulse for their iPad. For more information about the application see this post, visit the Facebook site, or the iTunes Store Preview.

To enter submit a comment on this post that has the name of the Philip K. Dick character you feel most associated with, most describes you or that attracts you the most, etc.. Include the reason why in the comment. The deadline for entry is next Sunday, February 12th. The best, most interesting and my favorite will be determined to be the winner. Please email philipkdickfans[at]gmail[dot]com if you have any questions or clarifications.

Review: Adjustment Team (The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume Two) (2012)

Michael Fisher — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:12:55 +0000

In the comments section, please add your your review, your criticism or a link to as post when you have much more to write than would fit in a comment.

sfsite.com Review

strangehorizons.com Review

Amazon.com Reviews

Review: The King of the Elves (The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume One) (2011)

Michael Fisher — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:44:38 +0000

In the comments section, please add your your review, your criticism or a link to as post when you have much more to write than would fit in a comment.

sfsite.com Review

strangehorizons.com Review Plus A Review Of The Search For Philip K. Dick by Anne Dick

Amazon.com Reviews

Lord Running Clams’s PKDweb Lives (Again)!

Michael Fisher — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:43:01 +0000

I have been waiting to get my hands on the newer version of Dave Hyde’s PKDweb site for a little while now before I put up a version of that site within a site essentially (or his own site if he wanted it that way). The version that was on the on philipkdickfans.com was from 1999 which I never realized until Dave himself told me. And then he said he had a revision from 2003 that was updated. I pestered him for it and patiently waited and worked out a way for Dave to send it to me. I had the site in my hands just over a week ago and I have been using that time to upload test and make some fixes to it. As a proof of concept I put the old one up on the site first and configured the site to host this type of site within a site. Then I archived the old 1999 one here: http://1999pkdweb.philipkdickfans.com and put the new code in place on the server the other night at http://www.philipkdickfans.com/pkdweb/

Immediately, I realized that we had an issue that Dave developed the site on a PC which is case insensitive and the site is going to live on a case sensitive server. Several of the site links were broken that I fixed and let Dave look at it before going live. Obviously, he gave is okay! So the site is live with some deployment issues. I will be working to fix what I know about in the week or so ahead but if you see a broken link or any other issues, feel free to report it to philipkdickfans[at]gmail[dot]com

Another thing that I recently noticed is that there are many links to Dave’s pages on Wikipedia.org in the Philip K. Dick Bibliography area. I think that says much about Dave’s work on this content. When I asked him about it, he claimed that he didn’t know about it… A project I put on my list is to increase the number of links to philipkdickfans.com and Dave’s content from Wikipedia.org to help interested fans find the site and to help the site’s rankings in search engines. And fix any broken links to his content with the new site change.

I really appreciate all that Dave contributes to the community and I’m very impressed with this site he did by himself without knowing html. Maybe in a few years, we can squeeze a 2010 version out of Dave!?!?