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comment by coffeesp00ns
coffeesp00ns  ·  3024 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Sci-fi club no. 33: Blade Runner discussion

I feel like I read a quote somewhere that Phillip K. Dick was high on speed writing a lot of his fiction because he needed to pump out books to support a family. It... might explain a lot.

I've been trying to find the quote - Can't seem to, but I have found a lot of information about Dick and his relationship with drugs, which doesn't seem to have been a good one, on the whole. I mean, most people take drugs because they have a hard time dealing with their shit, and the shit they see in the real world. It makes sense that, if Dick saw the world the way he often described it in his fiction, that he'd want to check out.





bhrgunatha  ·  3024 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I Was Philip K Dick's Reluctant Host on BBC Radio 4 might interest you.

kleinbl00  ·  3024 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I feel like I read a quote somewhere that Phillip K. Dick was high on speed writing a lot of his fiction because he needed to pump out books to support a family. It... might explain a lot.

yo.

page 11, Future Noir.

    Despite this extra income, however, Dick's financial state was still precarious. Casting about for ways to further increase his literary output, Dick hit upon a dangerous solution: amphetamines. Massive quantities of them. This gambit initially paid off with increased productivity, but eventually levied a heavy fine upon Dick's mental health, as we shall see.

    Still, the author never looked upon his early drug usage as anything other than a purely pragmatic answer to money problems. While once speaking to me in 1981, Dick himself justified his amphetamine habit by stating "I took so much speed simply because I had to support myself by writing fiction. And the only way I could do that was to write a lot of it."