Any Dick fans here?

[anarch]

Philip K., that is...

Just curious if anybody's ever heard this: Somebody told me the other day that Dick's whole Exegesis (parts of it were at the end of VALIS) and all the other, similarly wild stuff he wrote where he basically invented his own personal religion and cosmogony, were all invented because of a bet he had going with L. Ron Hubbard -- $1.00 to the first one who started a cult. I guess L. Ron won...

[Taverner]

1. Not really

The bet was who was to make the most money - Arthur C. Clarke selling his stuff to the government (the idea of satellites) and Hubbard selling his religion.

Obviously the bet got a little out of hand.

Phillip K Dick's "exegis" was pretty much his thought processes after suffering from a stroke...and all of the hallucinations he had afterwards.

[anarch]

5. that might actually be even weirder than what I heard n/t

[Taverner]

6. Clarke actually did write a proposal to the DOD

...for the idea of satellites. They went with it, and being as it was fairly inexpensive - the idea caught on like wildfire.

Clarke has actually been right on about lots of things in astronomy. I forget all of them, but one was the valley where the monolith appears in 2001 actually had a spot in the middle that looks a lot like the monolith...

[Kikosexy2]

2. Wrong Dick...

but I am a fan of the Dick Cheney snarl, snarl, snarl--it's a hoot! But mainly just a fan of 'dick' and size does matter.

[quispquake]

3. I don't think Hubbard had anything to do with the exegisis

Dick had an intense experience that he couldn't explain in 1974, and the Exegesis was his attempt to write down as many ideas to explain the experience as possible...I've got the first book of outtakes from the Exegesis, and man, the ideas are ALL OVER THE PLACE...

BTW: Valis is an AMAZING book...my second favorite after "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich" (where my handle comes from)...

[anarch]

4. it seems genuine to me

It really seems like Dick was struggling to understand a very weird thing that happened to him, and came up with some very weird answers.

References to the experience crop up in most of his later books...I was just re-reading A Scanner Darkly ('cause I heard it's being made into a movie...with Keanu Reeves, of all people...) and I'd forgotten that it even shows up in there.

So probably my friend was just messing with me, but I just wondered if anybody'd heard anything like this.

Also, yes!, VALIS is a totally great read.

[EstimatedProphet]

8. There was a lot of very weird things that happened to him

he incorporated some of them into Radio Free Albemuth, like the radio talking to him, and the highlighted letter from the CIA. Also a great read. PKD is my favorite author.

[Shell Beau]

7. I thought it said Andy Dick fans here.

Of course I am not really a fan of Andy Dick, but decided to look anyway and I read wrong.