DICK PHILIP K.: (1928-1982)

DICK PHILIP K.: (1928-1982) American science fiction writer whose novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) was adapted for the cult movie Blade Runner (1982). An interesting T.L.S., Love, Phil, one page, 4to, n.p. (Santa Barbara, California), 15th April 1981, to Professor Patricia Warrick. Dick forwards an enclosure (still present) ´of what may be a resolution of my seven years of attempting to construct a model of reality´, adding that the solution came to him in a series of recent sleep revelations ´where I actually saw how the system works´, and further explaining ´My model is that of a computer-like entity....it relates both to Taoism and to computers. This may be it, Pat. Initially I had a vision of reality as a rapid procession of static, discrete frames replacing each other at enormous velocity; we turn these frames - - each of which is unique, slightly different from the one before it and the one following it - - into a continuous flow by means of the modem we call causality. But in fact "causality" is illusory; our minds project it onto the procession of discrete frames in order to connect them into a flow. This is a necessary modem, for otherwise we will not be able to discern the constants (eide, Forms) within the procession of frames; all would be chaotic flux to us, without the modem of causality. The system is thinking, but it thinks (as I say on the enclosed page) during its off or non-being void phase of the binary pulse-flicker, so we´re totally unaware of it thinking, Our reality is shot full of information, both quantitative (bits) and qualitative (constructed/converted out of the bits). Pat, this is the first model I´ve had confidence in!´. Accompanied by the enclosure referred to by Dick, a typed essay entitled Sleep Insight, one page, 4to, n.p. (Santa Barbara, California), 15th April 1981, in which the author expands on the theories outlined in his letter, also making reference to Jakob Boehme, Charles Hartshorne and Alfred Whitehead, stating that ´the Muslims are correct; the universe is destroyed "every day" (actually every trillionth of a second) and "re-created"´ and concluding ´So my envisioning is essentially Boehme´s, updated in terms of computers and information-processing systems. The similarity to the Taoist alternation of yin and yang is very obvious´. Accompanied by the original envelope. VG, 2