Total Dick-Head's David Gill gives us the following review of Christopher Miller's novel A Cardboard Universe: A Guide to the World of Phoebus K. Dank. Of course, Dank is a simulacra-of-sorts of pulp science fiction pioneer Philip K. Dick. Gill writes:
As a Philip K Dick scholar, I found it positively Dickian reading Christopher Miller's new genre-bender A Cardboard Universe: A Guide to the World of Phoebus K Dank.
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Douglas Rushkoff is a guest blogger.
I just raced through two novels – not because I had to finish them quickly, but because they moved so quickly.
The first, by my best friend from college Walter Kirn, is an entertaining but (for me, anyway) nightmarish reminiscence on trying to make it through Princeton called Lost in the Meritocracy, based on this essay Kirn wrote for The Atlantic. — Read the rest
Greg Sadowski's anthology Supermen!: The First Wave Of Comic Book Heroes 1939-41 pulls together some of the goofiest, most innocent, most violent superhero comics ever penned, excavating rarities from the dawn of the genre when small studios set out to reinvent pulp literature in four colors. — Read the rest
Jonathan Lethem sez,
Paul Williams, the legendary creator of Crawdaddy! Magazine, fell off his bicycle in 1995 and suffered a traumatic brain injury, which has led to early onset Alzheimer's. His family's having difficulties with his care, and so a few of Paul's friend have set up a website both as a tribute to his life and work and in order to make an appeal for help.
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Surrealist science fiction author Philip K. Dick's birthday is December 16. In celebration. Total Dick-Head blogger Dave Gill will be doing a two-hour radio tribute tonight, from 10pm-midnight PT, on Pirate Cat Radio. Tune in to 87.9 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or listen online. — Read the rest
If I were ever invited to join a secret cabal of culturally wise writers – the kind of club where you'd find Erik Davis, Douglas Wolk, Jonathan Lethem, or Luc Sante all sipping absinthe while deconstructing reruns of Man From Uncle – I imagine it would also host the kinds of women who are writing the books that have ended up in my mailbox this month. — Read the rest
A quick reminder that there are still some tickets left for Thursday's benefit gig in NYC with DJ Spooky, all proceeds to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund:
On August 21, Cory Doctorow, award-winning author and co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing and experimental writer / artist / musician Paul Miller, a.k.a.
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Back in May, we had to cancel a planned benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in NYC due to illness striking one of the organizers. I promised then that I'd be rescheduling it for some time in August and now, here it is! — Read the rest
Science fiction writer Elizabeth Hand has written a thoroughgoing and thoughtful eulogy for Thomas M Disch for Salon today; Disch, one of the grand talents of science fiction, committed suicide on July 4.
Few people make a successful career of contemplating death and suicide; fewer still approach the subject with the genuine ebullience and elegant despair of the prolific, criminally underappreciated writer Thomas M.
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Sound Unbound is a fantastic new collection of essays on digital culture and the future of music, edited by Paul D. Miller aka
DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid — I had the honor of writing the foreword, but that's just for starters. — Read the rest
A recent episode of Public Radio International's To the Best of Our Knowledge dealt with remix, reuse, and plagiarism, talking to some of my favorite people on the subject:
Author Jonathan Lethem talks to Jim Fleming about his "Harper's" Magazine essay, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism."
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In Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel round up sixteen inspiring, mind-altering stories written since cyberpunk's heyday ended and the "post-cyberpunk" era began. No one's really sure what "post-cyberpunk" means, but these stories were written by writers who took the themes and furniture that cyberpunk brought to the field in directions never contemplated by the first generation. — Read the rest
It's a psychedickian day at David Gill's Total Dick-Head blog, the source for Philip K. Dick esoterica and ephemera. Today, David announced that he'll spend the summer reading and blogging his favorite PKD novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. — Read the rest
Jonathan Lethem has chosen Greg Marcks (writer-director of the feature "11:14") to direct the film adaptation of his latest novel, You Don't Love Me Yet. Lethem, a Macarthur-winning sf novelist, had previously announced that he'd give a no-upfront-money option to a director who promised to release all ancillary rights five years after the film's release. — Read the rest
I just finished Jonathan Lethem's latest novel, You Don't Love Me Yet, a funny, quiet, improbable book about an art-rock band in Los Angeles that might be making it big.
I'm an enormous Lethem fan, and have been since Gun With Occasional Music, a hard-boiled detective story by way of Philip K Dick, and I particularly love how versatile he is, every book really different from the last. — Read the rest
My pal David Gill, a longtime Philip K. Dick fanatic who recently completed his graduate thesis on the author, has launched his own PKD blog. (For years, David has contributed great PKD bits to Boing Boing.) The title of his new PKD blog? — Read the rest
Eloisa sez, "Salon has a cool interview with Jonathan Lethem, writer, copyleft fighter, sf extraodinaire, about copyright paranoia and how the current copyright laws stifle creativity."
If you make stuff, it is not yours to command its destiny in the world.
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Debcha sez, "Jonathan Lethem has some unusual terms for the film option for his latest novel, You Don't Love Me Yet; the option is only available to a filmmaker who is willing to release all ancillary rights to it (and the novel) into the public domain five years after the film's debut, so that 'any number of other kinds of artwork based on the novel's story and characters, or the film's: a play, a television series, a comic book, a theme park ride, an opera' could be made. — Read the rest
Science fiction author and MacArthur genius grantee Jonathan Lethem had a stupendous article on copyright and plagiarism in last month's Harper's (be sure to read it right through to the end!).
Now, Siva Vaidhyanathan writes in with the news that, "Tonight on the PRI show 'Radio Open Source,' Christopher Lydon will interview novelist Jonathan Lethem, author Siva Vaidhyanathan, and musicians Mark Hosler (of Negativland) and Mike Doughty (of Soul Coughing) about the politics of plagiarism and originality. — Read the rest
The Godfather of Soul died today. He was 73. James Brown was one of the most influential figures in American pop culture history. Link to Wikipedia bio, and here's coverage in the NYT. Here are some links to vintage video of him in performance: Eyesight, Super Bad, I Feel Good, It's A Man's World, Please Please, Sex Machine, at the Olympia, Soul Power, Ed Sullivan, and an unusual TV interview (shorter clip here) Mr. — Read the rest