Friday, July 27, 2007

Philip K. Dick möter Det ensamma geniet

"Man hör ibland Dick beskrivas som ett ensamt geni, ett freak av begåvning mitt i en annars obesjälad och torftig genre: även Stanislaw Lem kan låta på det viset. Det är naturligtvis helt fel, och tyder på två saker: dels brist på bildning, dels att man lyssnat för mycket på Dicks egen skildring av sin litterära ensamhet. Han ingår i en tradition, där olika temata långsamt odlas fram, och där det förvisso fanns kopplingar tillbaka till en äldre tids fantastiska litteratur. Men instängd i sitt drivhus, eller vad man nu ska kalla det, genomgår science fiction-litteraturen ett antal fascinerande mutationer. Att läsa genrens klassiker i någotsånär kronologisk ordning kan verkligen skänka en känslan av att se något ”växa fram”, för att ”bära frukt” under femtio- och sextiotalet."

"Bakom Dick står en rad av – tidvis – erkända förebilder, främst bland dem A E van Vogt (1912-2000), författare till underbart komplicerade SF-romaner som Slan (bokutgåva 1946), Worlds of Null-A (1948, på svenska Världen och Noll-A) och The Weapon Shops of Isher (1951, svensk titel Vapenhandlarna från Isher). Många av van Vogts temata går igen även hos Dick."
Ola Larsmos djuplodande essä om Philip K. Dick är högintressant läsning.

Vem skriver egentligen en bok? I en radiointervju från 1976 möter PKD ännu en gång Det ensamma geniet.
"And Ballantine deserves to make a bundle on it because Judy-Lyn Del Rey at Ballantine went over the manuscript page by page with me, that's A Scanner Darkly, and told me what it needed to make it into a really competent book. She's able to show me point for point. This is the first time any editor has ever done that with me since The Man In The High Castle, the editor Pete Israel was the editor for Putnam then. And he went over The Man In The High Castle page by page and showed me how it should be changed. And then, now, Judy-Lyn has done that with A Scanner Darkly. And so I've got two good novels under my belt because I had a good editor. The rest of them, they let me flounder around and write whatever came into my head. So, it was all uneven, the good parts and the bad parts wouldn't add up. Judy-Lyn del Rey, I've never had an editor like her before. She is probably the greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins. She showed me how to create a character and I've been selling novels for 22 years. And she showed me how to develop a character. Now that really - my first reaction was dear Judy-Lyn how would you like to take a one way walk off the Long Beach pier? But then I started looking at what she was saying there. And as soon as my fuse had burned out, being very short, it didn't take long, I realized that she was teaching me how to write. And it's too bad nobody did that 25 years ago because then maybe my books would make more sense. But look for A Scanner Darkly because that's - there's a master craftsman came into that book, Judy-Lyn del Rey."

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