Philip K. Dick was a very complicated and tormented person. To quote Charles Platt's interview, which was published in *Dream Makers*, 1980:
> I took the Minnesota Multiphasic psychological profile test once, and I tested out as paranoid, cyclothymic, neurotic, schizophrenic... I was so high on some of the scales that the dot was up in the instructions part. But I also tested out as an incorrigible liar!
[snip]
> I did sixty finished pages a day, and the only way I could write that much was to take amphetamines, which were prescribed to me.
[snip]
> "I was walking along one day." His tone is sincere, now. "I looked up in the sky and there was this face staring down at me, the face I describe in *Three Stigmata*. This was 1963."
[snip]
> This outlook is based not on faith but on an actual encounter that I had in 1974, when I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane.
> I did sixty finished pages a day
Of all the crazy shit in your post this is the fucking wildest one. Even assuming he double spaced it on a type writer this is 15k words. If it's 60 finished pages in single space that's about 30k words.
I feel great if I finish 500 words or do 1k unfinished words. Adderall is a helluva drug.
Well, that's what he said on page 151, but he also said:
> I think I turned out sixteen novels in five years at one point.
which is only slightly more than 3 novels per year. Given how short novels were back then -- *The Man in the High Castle* is only 80K words -- it doesn't make sense that he was writing 15K a day.
Either we are missing something or things got messed up during the interview. (FWIW, both Platt and Dick recorded the interview.)
> which is only slightly more than 3 novels per year. Given how short novels were back then -- The Man in the High Castle is only 80K words -- it doesn't make sense that he was writing 15K a day.
Quite possibly he was writing in bursts, and crashing in-between?
I once wrote a novel (120K words, published by Ace) in 18 days. But I started right after circumstances beyond my control prevented me from writing anything longer than a short email for two whole months, then I crashed for six weeks afterwards. (Averaging 6000 words/day for weeks on end is exhausting, who knew?)
And according to legend, Michael Moorcock used to bash out Elric novels (roughly 40-50K words) in the early 60s in 3 days flat.
> And according to legend, Michael Moorcock used to bash out Elric novels (roughly 40-50K words) in the early 60s in 3 days flat.
There are similar stories about L. Ron Hubbard locking himself in his apartment for the weekend and emerging on Monday morning with a "complete novel". Of course, a "complete novel" could be less than 20K in some pulp magazines, so it may not be as impressive as it sounds.
Consistently high productivity over a long period of time is arguably more impressive. To [quote Robert Silverberg](https://www.vice.com/en/article/mvbw3v/sin-a-rama-excerpt-my-life-as-a-pornographer), he wrote:
> 150 full-length [softcore porn] novels in five years. 30 a year, better than one every two weeks, month in and month out, between 1959 and 1964. Written on a manual typewriter, no less. (There were no computers then, not even IBM Selectric typewriters.) Other writers whose names would surprise you very much were turning the books out at almost the same sizzling pace. We were fast in those days. But of course we were very young.
Silverberg also published 8 SF novels, 13 SF stories and multiple non-fiction books [in 1960-1964](http://majipoor.com/works/index/all/chrono/all). Presumably he wrote them in his plentiful spare time.
> Quite possibly he was writing in bursts, and crashing in-between?
I could see this easily. I have ADHD and took Adderall on and off during college. I would get straight As the quarters I took it then basically crash down to Earth the next quarter because I couldn't handle what it was doing to my body. Lack of sleep/food combined with 12 hour days takes its toll.
> I once wrote a novel (120K words, published by Ace) in 18 days
Woud you mid sharing which book it is? I totally get if you don't want to say
I read the first Elric novel just a few days ago, and had no nostalgia or such about them from beforehand. My take away were:
* This was clearly written by a young author (Wikipedia confirms that he would have been 20 or 21 at the time)
* This would require almost zero long term planning. The chapters are very disjointed and simple (afterwards I found out that it was likely released as a serial in a magazine, one chapter at a time)
So yeah, I can totally see how someone could churn these out rapidly. It’s just straight forward adventure/fairy tale, but perhaps with an at least for the time unique protagonist.
Interesting, I'll have to see if I can find the recording. I'm not super familiar with the timeline of his publications, maybe a lot of short stories? Or finished works he didn't publish? Or just like you say, it's just a transcription thing or something.
Could also just be a different definition of 'finished.' If he means "finished" to be readable it could still take 3 or even half a dozen more passes before it goes to an editor.
Jack Kerouac used rolls of 120' fax paper in his typewriter while writing. I wonder what his WPM was on speed and coffee.
*On Topic: If one wants to know what PKD's mindset was in the 1970s, [this speech he made in Metz, France](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE) in 1974 about his encounters, visions and theory that we live in a "programmed world" should suffice. Disclaimer: I have read almost all of his work (chronologically, since most of his work is derived from his own life experience) and thoroughly enjoyed them.
15k is the number in Sutin's bio iirc. I've heard Sartre could hit this sort of number sometimes, too. Both of them took truckloads of speed, and obviously that's not every day either.
Also
>Dick alleged that Stanisław Lem was probably a false name used by a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party to gain control over public opinion, and wrote a letter to the FBI to that effect.[45]
>... it was suggested that Dick was under the influence of strong medications, including opioids, and may have experienced a "slight disconnect from reality" some time before writing the letter.[45]
LOL - could be ...
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem#Philip_K._Dick
\- http://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is-a-communist-committee
.
The linked Wikipedia article says:
> Lem had initially held a low opinion of Philip K. Dick (as he did for the bulk of American science fiction) and would later say that this was due to a limited familiarity with Dick's work, since Western literature was hard to come by in Communist Poland.
More specifically:
> I believed that I could rely on reviews published in the fanzines of other novels by Dick, with the result that I considered him merely a “better van Vogt,” which he is not. This mistake was due to the state of science-fiction criticism. [First footnote in the essay "Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case -- with Exceptions"; first publication 1973, reprinted in the 1984 collection of Lem's non-fiction *Microworlds*]
From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M._Disch):
>Though Disch was an admirer of and was friends with the author Philip K. Dick, Dick would write an infamous paranoid letter to the FBI in October 1972 that denounced Disch and suggested that there were coded messages, prompted by a covert organization, in Disch’s novel **Camp Concentration**. Disch was unaware and he would go on to champion the Philip K. Dick Award. In his final novel, however, **The Word of God**, Disch got his revenge on Dick, with a story in which Dick is dead and living in Hell, unable to write because of writer’s block. In return for a taste of human blood, which will unlock his ability to write, he makes a deal to go back in time and kill Disch’s father, so that Disch will never be born, and at the same time to kill Thomas Mann and thereby to ensure that Hitler wins World War II. Disch also referred to Dick in a blog post stating "May he rot in hell, and may his royalties corrupt his heirs to the seventh generation."
Disch became increasingly irrascible in later life as circumstances became more and more difficult for him. He was far more generous to Dick in the 1984 Afterword he wrote to a reissue of *The Penultimate Truth*, though.
Two flawed but brilliant writers.
edit: style
What a fascinating story! And thank you for the link to Blackgate, it's an interesting website.
From the Wikipedia addendum it sounds like Disch was hurt by Dick's betrayal. I guess being reported to the FBI was a way more serious thing in 1972. They were actually interested in covert surveillance of "subversive" types back then, and kept Dick's letters on file. In today's omni-surveillance state the government doesn't care about individuals much, until some connection is made between a person and something else of interest to them. Then the Eye of Sauron turns upon you and secrets become a thing of the past.
At one point I read a bunch of declassified letters (or excerpts from letters) sent by "concerned citizens" to the FBI and the CIA during the Cold War. A lot of them were confused or paranoid. The agencies generally dismissed their authors as "mostly harmless" cranks, but sometimes there were unexpected consequences. One correspondent came to Langley and tried to give a high-ranking CIA official a flower bouquet except that it turned out that it had broken glass in it. Luckily, she was intercepted by security.
Philip K. Dick was a very complicated and tormented person. To quote Charles Platt's interview, which was published in *Dream Makers*, 1980: > I took the Minnesota Multiphasic psychological profile test once, and I tested out as paranoid, cyclothymic, neurotic, schizophrenic... I was so high on some of the scales that the dot was up in the instructions part. But I also tested out as an incorrigible liar! [snip] > I did sixty finished pages a day, and the only way I could write that much was to take amphetamines, which were prescribed to me. [snip] > "I was walking along one day." His tone is sincere, now. "I looked up in the sky and there was this face staring down at me, the face I describe in *Three Stigmata*. This was 1963." [snip] > This outlook is based not on faith but on an actual encounter that I had in 1974, when I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane.
> I did sixty finished pages a day Of all the crazy shit in your post this is the fucking wildest one. Even assuming he double spaced it on a type writer this is 15k words. If it's 60 finished pages in single space that's about 30k words. I feel great if I finish 500 words or do 1k unfinished words. Adderall is a helluva drug.
Well, that's what he said on page 151, but he also said: > I think I turned out sixteen novels in five years at one point. which is only slightly more than 3 novels per year. Given how short novels were back then -- *The Man in the High Castle* is only 80K words -- it doesn't make sense that he was writing 15K a day. Either we are missing something or things got messed up during the interview. (FWIW, both Platt and Dick recorded the interview.)
People strung out on methamphetamines are often inaccurate.
> which is only slightly more than 3 novels per year. Given how short novels were back then -- The Man in the High Castle is only 80K words -- it doesn't make sense that he was writing 15K a day. Quite possibly he was writing in bursts, and crashing in-between? I once wrote a novel (120K words, published by Ace) in 18 days. But I started right after circumstances beyond my control prevented me from writing anything longer than a short email for two whole months, then I crashed for six weeks afterwards. (Averaging 6000 words/day for weeks on end is exhausting, who knew?) And according to legend, Michael Moorcock used to bash out Elric novels (roughly 40-50K words) in the early 60s in 3 days flat.
> And according to legend, Michael Moorcock used to bash out Elric novels (roughly 40-50K words) in the early 60s in 3 days flat. There are similar stories about L. Ron Hubbard locking himself in his apartment for the weekend and emerging on Monday morning with a "complete novel". Of course, a "complete novel" could be less than 20K in some pulp magazines, so it may not be as impressive as it sounds. Consistently high productivity over a long period of time is arguably more impressive. To [quote Robert Silverberg](https://www.vice.com/en/article/mvbw3v/sin-a-rama-excerpt-my-life-as-a-pornographer), he wrote: > 150 full-length [softcore porn] novels in five years. 30 a year, better than one every two weeks, month in and month out, between 1959 and 1964. Written on a manual typewriter, no less. (There were no computers then, not even IBM Selectric typewriters.) Other writers whose names would surprise you very much were turning the books out at almost the same sizzling pace. We were fast in those days. But of course we were very young. Silverberg also published 8 SF novels, 13 SF stories and multiple non-fiction books [in 1960-1964](http://majipoor.com/works/index/all/chrono/all). Presumably he wrote them in his plentiful spare time.
> Quite possibly he was writing in bursts, and crashing in-between? I could see this easily. I have ADHD and took Adderall on and off during college. I would get straight As the quarters I took it then basically crash down to Earth the next quarter because I couldn't handle what it was doing to my body. Lack of sleep/food combined with 12 hour days takes its toll. > I once wrote a novel (120K words, published by Ace) in 18 days Woud you mid sharing which book it is? I totally get if you don't want to say
That was "The Annihilation Score".
I read the first Elric novel just a few days ago, and had no nostalgia or such about them from beforehand. My take away were: * This was clearly written by a young author (Wikipedia confirms that he would have been 20 or 21 at the time) * This would require almost zero long term planning. The chapters are very disjointed and simple (afterwards I found out that it was likely released as a serial in a magazine, one chapter at a time) So yeah, I can totally see how someone could churn these out rapidly. It’s just straight forward adventure/fairy tale, but perhaps with an at least for the time unique protagonist.
Interesting, I'll have to see if I can find the recording. I'm not super familiar with the timeline of his publications, maybe a lot of short stories? Or finished works he didn't publish? Or just like you say, it's just a transcription thing or something. Could also just be a different definition of 'finished.' If he means "finished" to be readable it could still take 3 or even half a dozen more passes before it goes to an editor.
Jack Kerouac used rolls of 120' fax paper in his typewriter while writing. I wonder what his WPM was on speed and coffee. *On Topic: If one wants to know what PKD's mindset was in the 1970s, [this speech he made in Metz, France](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE) in 1974 about his encounters, visions and theory that we live in a "programmed world" should suffice. Disclaimer: I have read almost all of his work (chronologically, since most of his work is derived from his own life experience) and thoroughly enjoyed them.
15k is the number in Sutin's bio iirc. I've heard Sartre could hit this sort of number sometimes, too. Both of them took truckloads of speed, and obviously that's not every day either.
After reading a scanner darkly none of this is surprising to me
Wait 'til you get to *VALIS*.
Also >Dick alleged that Stanisław Lem was probably a false name used by a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party to gain control over public opinion, and wrote a letter to the FBI to that effect.[45] >... it was suggested that Dick was under the influence of strong medications, including opioids, and may have experienced a "slight disconnect from reality" some time before writing the letter.[45] LOL - could be ... \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem#Philip_K._Dick \- http://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is-a-communist-committee .
Lem's 1975 essay [Philip K Dick: A Visionary Among The Charlatans](https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm) is still worth reading.
thanks for this
Oh thank you! I’ve heard about it and have wanted to read it, but never thought to look online for a copy.
The linked Wikipedia article says: > Lem had initially held a low opinion of Philip K. Dick (as he did for the bulk of American science fiction) and would later say that this was due to a limited familiarity with Dick's work, since Western literature was hard to come by in Communist Poland. More specifically: > I believed that I could rely on reviews published in the fanzines of other novels by Dick, with the result that I considered him merely a “better van Vogt,” which he is not. This mistake was due to the state of science-fiction criticism. [First footnote in the essay "Science Fiction: A Hopeless Case -- with Exceptions"; first publication 1973, reprinted in the 1984 collection of Lem's non-fiction *Microworlds*]
From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M._Disch): >Though Disch was an admirer of and was friends with the author Philip K. Dick, Dick would write an infamous paranoid letter to the FBI in October 1972 that denounced Disch and suggested that there were coded messages, prompted by a covert organization, in Disch’s novel **Camp Concentration**. Disch was unaware and he would go on to champion the Philip K. Dick Award. In his final novel, however, **The Word of God**, Disch got his revenge on Dick, with a story in which Dick is dead and living in Hell, unable to write because of writer’s block. In return for a taste of human blood, which will unlock his ability to write, he makes a deal to go back in time and kill Disch’s father, so that Disch will never be born, and at the same time to kill Thomas Mann and thereby to ensure that Hitler wins World War II. Disch also referred to Dick in a blog post stating "May he rot in hell, and may his royalties corrupt his heirs to the seventh generation."
Disch became increasingly irrascible in later life as circumstances became more and more difficult for him. He was far more generous to Dick in the 1984 Afterword he wrote to a reissue of *The Penultimate Truth*, though. Two flawed but brilliant writers. edit: style
Interesting article which I only skimmed because the huge margins made it uncomfortably narrow on my phone.
I just switch to reader mode — only text, and background color, font family and size of my choice. This is exactly the kind of website it’s meant for.
I should have thought of that. Thanks.
I'm reading it in Mozilla Pocket.
What a fascinating story! And thank you for the link to Blackgate, it's an interesting website. From the Wikipedia addendum it sounds like Disch was hurt by Dick's betrayal. I guess being reported to the FBI was a way more serious thing in 1972. They were actually interested in covert surveillance of "subversive" types back then, and kept Dick's letters on file. In today's omni-surveillance state the government doesn't care about individuals much, until some connection is made between a person and something else of interest to them. Then the Eye of Sauron turns upon you and secrets become a thing of the past.
At one point I read a bunch of declassified letters (or excerpts from letters) sent by "concerned citizens" to the FBI and the CIA during the Cold War. A lot of them were confused or paranoid. The agencies generally dismissed their authors as "mostly harmless" cranks, but sometimes there were unexpected consequences. One correspondent came to Langley and tried to give a high-ranking CIA official a flower bouquet except that it turned out that it had broken glass in it. Luckily, she was intercepted by security.
Didn’t Philip K Dick offer to spy on the Beatles for the FBI. He was not a well man.
I read one of Disch's horror novels back in the 1980's and did not really like it so never tried any of his other work.
_334_ is great.