Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without booms?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today we have a very special show, because something has been published that is so odd, and we have been waiting so long for it.

It's the exegesis of Philip K. Dick. We might say that Philip K. Dick was a man who asked,

where would we really be without books, and decided that in the midst of a soul-searching,

so vast and so dark and so difficult, he started turning everywhere, early religion, philosophy,

all kinds of notes about mystery religions, any place where the word became flesh, whether that was Jesus or a magician performing on stage, that he really needed the things that are beyond the expected to take place. He believed in stigmata, he believed in

religious revelation, and he began in the dark night of his soul to write notes that would

explain how to connect the pieces of his life together,

and this began to take up page after page after page after page of handwritten notes,

always changing his idea about what makes the world whirl.

And eventually, these many years after his death,

as book after book has turned out to be the Bible of a different part of the new age,

the postage, the technical age, the age of conformity,

you know, we've seen, what, Blade Runner, Total Recall,

movies based upon his books, all kinds of different directors and thinkers,

...