Every other month, the subscription-based indie press ISOLARII publishes a single book. ISOLARII’s distinctive palm-sized volumes offer thought-provoking texts on exquisitely crafted pages. Their newest release — a 120-page reprint of science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s 1978 speech “How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” — includes an introduction by SFI President David Krakauer.
Titled “Fascism in a Teacup,” Krakauer's introduction is composed in 16 short sections. As he enumerates the ideas in Dick’s speech-turned-essay, Krakauer weaves ideas from physics and philosophy with history and mythology. Krakauer concludes that the essay is all of that — Mickey Mouse with Magic Mushrooms; Fake, Fake, Fake Reality; Chaos Theory by Heraclitus — “along with a manifesto in subjective idealism, an anti-materialist polemic, an appeal to theistic evidentialism, and a Mennipean satire.”
Born in 1928, Philip K. Dick — often referred to simply by his initials PKD — published 44 novels and 121 short stories before his death at age 53. Among his best-known works are the acclaimed novels The Man in the High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep — the basis for the movie "Blade Runner" — and Ubik. Following a series of unusual experiences in 1974, his later work, including his 1978 speech, grapples with the philosophical and mystical.
"Against the surreal backdrop of Disneyland in 1978, visionary science fiction author Philip K. Dick delivers a mind-bending lecture on the fragile nature of reality and the quest for authentic human experience in an increasingly mediated world,” writes ISOLARII in their description of this volume. Dick reflects on the two topics that he explored over and again through his novels and stories: "What is reality?" and "What constitutes the authentic human being?"
These questions were more than intellectual pursuits for Dick in 1978, and his reasoning rings true today. He says, “So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms.” And this bombardment, he writes, leads to inauthentic humans. What follows is an exploration of reality that reviewers have called “weird even by PKD standards” and “marvelously insane.”
“Themes related to the nature of reality are of profound interest to complexity science since they touch on questions of patterning, order, intelligence, robustness, and control,” says Krakauer. “PKD raises several of these and we are now in a position to start to address them. My own objective was to present some of these responses in a lyrical and experimental style.”
How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later is available through an ISOLARII subscription.