DAVIS: Mr. Dick, the world has only been getting stranger since you left us. We are surrounded with clones, identity theft, patented genes, faster-than-light particles, Aibo, and obsessive virtual gaming. Some scientist in England promises to build a chip called a “soul catcher” that will sit behind your eyeballs and record your life. Doesnt all this sound strangely familiar?
DICK: Over the years it seems to me that by subtle but real degrees the world has come to resemble a PKD novel. Several freaks have even accused me of bringing on the modern world by my novels.
DAVIS: How exactly would you characterize those novels?
DICK: My writing deals with hallucinated worlds, intoxicating and deluding drugs, and psychosis. But my writing acts as an antidote, a detoxifying, not intoxicating, antidote.
(via 21C Magazine)
Videos and transcript here.
Steve Wasserman: Ray Bradbury.
Ray Bradbury: Yeah.
via paperbackgirl:
Wasserman: Right. And do you remember what it was about the physical contact with books which seemed to be so exciting for you?
Bradbury: A lot of it is the smell of books. There are—a lot of those bookstores were used bookstores. Some were high-quality used books and new publications, but the other bookstores were … a lot of used books, and there’s thousands of them in there, and they were covered with dust and the smell of ancient Egypt. So, you go into a used bookstore and surprise yourself. Surprise in life should be everything. You shouldn’t know what you’re doing. You should go into a bookstore to be surprised and changed. So the bookstores change you and reveal new sides of yourself. That’s the importance of a used bookstore.
