I AM ALIVE AND YOU ARE DEAD

I'm not that widely read in science fiction. I'm well-versed in Mike Moorcock's work, obviously, but I'm also au fait enough with Philip K. Dick's back catalogue to know when something's "phildickian". For example: I'd watch THE MATRIX for the first time and go "hey, that's a bit UBIK". So finally (it's only been out in English for, what, nearly two years?), the library service got round to buying Emmanuel Carrere's biography of Phil Dick, I AM ALIVE AND YOU ARE DEAD: A JOURNEY INTO THE MIND OF PHILIP K. DICK.

The subtitle is really the important bit: Carrere is a novelist by trade, and the book is pretty much a work of fiction, stringing the elements of biographical fact into a (yes, phildickian), novel about the guy's supposedly deranged mental processes. I'd go so far to say that the nominal subject of this book is no more really Phil Dick than the character Horselover Fat is, in the (brilliant) VALIS. Instead, Carrere works hard to fulfill his agenda of making Dick's personal history fit with the subject matter of his books, sometimes with more success than others.

So anyway, if you want to learn more about Dick and his work, this book's hard to beat, mainly because it offers handy little potted versions of his novels scattered throughout, like a more fleshed out version of the tiny Pocket Essentials Guide To Philip K. Dick by Andrew Butler that helped me work out what to read and what to avoid in the guy's voluminous back catalogue a few years ago. Carrere's (or his translator's) style reads effortlessly, making this a slick read through what could have been a sticky subject (see also: mental breakdowns, transcendental experiences, a lifetime of hilariously casual misogyny). Plus, it made me want to go out and read a couple of Dick's works I'd managed to miss before, which is a good sign.



(Again, also: I love it when I'm heavy on the parentheses - that used to be my style, man.)