"Dick,_Philip_K._I hope I shall arrive soon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

little children about, said some extraordinarily stupid things that flay. Today, however, I will have to
accept full blame tor what I tell you, since none of you are wearing Mic-Key Mouse hats and trying
to climb up on me under the impression that I am part of the rigging of a pirate ship.
Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about
science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful. A
few years ago, no college or university would ever have considered inviting one of us to speak. We
were mercifully confined to lurid pulp magazines, impressing no one. In those days, friends would say
to me, "But are you writing anything serious?" meaning "Are you writing anything other than science
fiction?" We longed to be accepted. We yearned to be noticed. Then, suddenly, the academic world
noticed us, we were invited to give speeches and appear on panels-and immediately we made
idiots of ourselves. The problem is simply this: What does a science fiction writer know about? On
what topic is he an authority?
It reminds me of a headline that appeared in a California newspaper just before I flew here.
SCIENTISTS SAY THAT MICE CANNOT BE MADE TO LOOK LIKE HUMAN BEINGS. It
was a federally funded research program, I suppose. Just think: Someone in this world is an authority
on the topic of whether mice can or cannot put on two-tone shoes, derby hats, pinstriped shirts, and
Dacron pants, and pass as humans.
Well, I will tell you what interests me, what I consider important. I can't claim to be an authority
on anything, but I can honestly say that certain matters absolutely fascinate me, and that I write about
them all the time. The two basic topics which fascinate me are "What is reality?" and "What
constitutes the authentic human being?" Over the twenty-seven years in which I have published
novels and stories I have investigated these two interrelated topics over and over again. ' consider
them important topics. What are we? What is it which surrounds us, that we call the not-me, or the
empirical or phenomenal world?
In 1951, when I sold my first story, I had no idea that such fundamental issues could be pursued
in the science fiction field. I began to pursue them unconsciously. My first story had to do with a dog
who imagined that the garbagemen who came every Friday morning were stealing valuable food
which the family had carefully stored away in a safe metal container. Every dS members of the family
5
carried out paper sacks of S ripe food, stuffed them into the metal container, Shut the lid tightly-
and when the container was full, these dreadful-looking creatures came and stole everything but the
can.
Finally, in the story, the dog begins to imagine that someday the garbagemen will eat the people in
the house, as well as stealing their food. Of course, the dog is wrong about this. We all know that
garbagemen do not eat people. But the dog's extrapolation was in a sense logical-given the facts at
his disposal. The story was about a real dog, and I used to watch him and try to get inside his head
and imagine how he saw the world. Certainly, I decided, that dog sees the world quite differently
than I do, or any humans do. And then I began to think, Maybe each human being lives in a unique
world, a private world, a world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans.
And that led me to wonder, If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular,
or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more
true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our
world. Maybe we cann ot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say,
His reality is so different trom ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him.
The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are exPerienced too differently, there occurs a
breakdown ofcommunication...and there is the real illness.
I once wrote a story about a man who was injured and taken to a hosPital. When they began
surgery on him, they discovered that he was an android, not a human, but he did not know it. They
had to break the news to him. Almost at once, Mr.Garson Poole discovered that his reality consisted
of punched tape passing from reel to reel in his chest. Fascinated, he began to fill in some of the