The Eyes Have It
IT WAS quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by lifeforms from another planet. As yet, I haven’t done anything about it; I can’t think of anything to do. I wrote to the Government, and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses. Anyhow, the whole thing is known; I’m not the first to discover it. Maybe it’s even under control.
I was sitting in my easy-chair, idly turning the pages of a paperbacked book someone had left on the bus, when I came across the reference that first put me on the trail. For a moment I didn’t respond. It took some time for the full import to sink in. After I’d comprehended, it seemed odd I hadn’t noticed it right away.
The reference was clearly to a nonhuman species of incredible properties, not indigenous to Earth. A species, I hasten to point out, customarily masquerading as ordinary human beings. Their disguise, however, became transparent in the face of the following observations by the author. It was at once obvious the author knew everything. Knew everything — and was taking it in his stride. The line (and I tremble remembering it even now) read:
… his eyes slowly roved about the room.
Vague chills assailed me. I tried to picture the eyes. Did they roll like dimes? The passage indicated not; they seemed to move through the air, not over the surface. Rather rapidly, apparently. No one in the story was surprised. That’s what tipped me off. No sign of amazement at such an outrageous thing. Later the matter was amplified.
… his eyes moved from person to person.
There it was in a nutshell. The eyes had clearly come apart from the rest of him and were on their own. My heart pounded and my breath choked in my windpipe. I had stumbled on an accidental mention of a totally unfamiliar race. Obviously non-Terrestrial. Yet, to the characters in the book, it was perfectly natural — which suggested they belonged to the same species.
And the author? A slow suspicion burned in my mind. The author was taking it rather too easily in his stride. Evidently, he felt this was quite a usual thing. He made absolutely no attempt to conceal this knowledge. The story continued:
… presently his eyes fastened on Julia.
Julia, being a lady, had at least the breeding to feel indignant. She is described as blushing and knitting her brows angrily. At this, I sighed with relief. They weren’t all non-Terrestrials. The narrative continues:
… slowly, calmly, his eyes examined every inch of her.
Great Scott! But here the girl turned and stomped off and the matter ended. I lay back in my chair gasping with horror. My wife and family regarded me in wonder.
“What’s wrong, dear?” my wife asked.
I couldn’t tell her. Knowledge like this was too much for the ordinary run-of-the-mill person. I had to keep it to myself. “Nothing,” I gasped. I leaped up, snatched the book, and hurried out of the room.
IN THE garage, I continued reading. There was more. Trembling, I read the next revealing passage:
… he put his arm around Julia. Presently she asked him if he would remove his arm. He immediately did so, with a smile.
It’s not said what was done with the arm after the fellow had removed it. Maybe it was left standing upright in the corner. Maybe it was thrown away. I don’t care. In any case, the full meaning was there, staring me right in the face.
Here was a race of creatures capable of removing portions of their anatomy at will. Eyes, arms — and maybe more. Without batting an eyelash. My knowledge of biology came in handy, at this point. Obviously they were simple beings, uni-cellular, some sort of primitive single-celled things. Beings no more developed than starfish. Starfish can do the same thing, you know.
I read on. And came to this incredible revelation, tossed off coolly by the author without the faintest tremor:
… outside the movie theater we split up. Part of us went inside, part over to the cafe for dinner.
Binary fission, obviously. Splitting in half and forming two entities. Probably each lower half went to the cafe, it being farther, and the upper halves to the movies. I read on, hands shaking. I had really stumbled onto something here. My mind reeled as I made out this passage:
… I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. Poor Bibney has lost his head again.
Which was followed by:
… and Bob says he has utterly no guts.
Yet Bibney got around as well as the next person. The next person, however, was just as strange. He was soon described as:
… totally lacking in brains.
THERE was no doubt of the thing in the next passage. Julia, whom I had thought to be the one normal person, reveals herself as also being an alien life form, similar to the rest:
… quite deliberately, Julia had given her heart to the young man.
It didn’t relate what the final disposition of the organ was, but I didn’t really care. It was evident Julia had gone right on living in her usual manner, like all the others in the book. Without heart, arms, eyes, brains, viscera, dividing up in two when the occasion demanded. Without a qualm.
… thereupon she gave him her hand.
I sickened. The rascal now had her hand, as well as her heart. I shudder to think what he’s done with them, by this time.
… he took her arm.
Not content to wait, he had to start dismantling her on his own. Flushing crimson, I slammed the book shut and leaped to my feet. But not in time to escape one last reference to those carefree bits of anatomy whose travels had originally thrown me on the track:
… her eyes followed him all the way down the road and across the meadow.
I rushed from the garage and back inside the warm house, as if the accursed things were following me. My wife and children were playing Monopoly in the kitchen. I joined them and played with frantic fervor, brow feverish, teeth chattering.
I had had enough of the thing. I want to hear no more about it. Let them come on. Let them invade Earth. I don’t want to get mixed up in it.
I have absolutely no stomach for it.
By Philip K. Dick
Originally published 1953
This story is in Public Domain
IT WAS quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by lifeforms from another planet. As yet, I haven’t done anything about it; I can’t think of anything to do. I wrote to the Government, and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses. Anyhow, the whole thing is known; I’m not the first to discover it. Maybe it’s even under control.
I was sitting in my easy-chair, idly turning the pages of a paperbacked book someone had left on the bus, when I came across the reference that first put me on the trail. For a moment I didn’t respond. It took some time for the full import to sink in. After I’d comprehended, it seemed odd I hadn’t noticed it right away.
The reference was clearly to a nonhuman species of incredible properties, not indigenous to Earth. A species, I hasten to point out, customarily masquerading as ordinary human beings. Their disguise, however, became transparent in the face of the following observations by the author. It was at once obvious the author knew everything. Knew everything — and was taking it in his stride. The line (and I tremble remembering it even now) read:
… his eyes slowly roved about the room.
Vague chills assailed me. I tried to picture the eyes. Did they roll like dimes? The passage indicated not; they seemed to move through the air, not over the surface. Rather rapidly, apparently. No one in the story was surprised. That’s what tipped me off. No sign of amazement at such an outrageous thing. Later the matter was amplified.
… his eyes moved from person to person.
There it was in a nutshell. The eyes had clearly come apart from the rest of him and were on their own. My heart pounded and my breath choked in my windpipe. I had stumbled on an accidental mention of a totally unfamiliar race. Obviously non-Terrestrial. Yet, to the characters in the book, it was perfectly natural — which suggested they belonged to the same species.
And the author? A slow suspicion burned in my mind. The author was taking it rather too easily in his stride. Evidently, he felt this was quite a usual thing. He made absolutely no attempt to conceal this knowledge. The story continued:
… presently his eyes fastened on Julia.
Julia, being a lady, had at least the breeding to feel indignant. She is described as blushing and knitting her brows angrily. At this, I sighed with relief. They weren’t all non-Terrestrials. The narrative continues:
… slowly, calmly, his eyes examined every inch of her.
Great Scott! But here the girl turned and stomped off and the matter ended. I lay back in my chair gasping with horror. My wife and family regarded me in wonder.
“What’s wrong, dear?” my wife asked.
I couldn’t tell her. Knowledge like this was too much for the ordinary run-of-the-mill person. I had to keep it to myself. “Nothing,” I gasped. I leaped up, snatched the book, and hurried out of the room.
IN THE garage, I continued reading. There was more. Trembling, I read the next revealing passage:
… he put his arm around Julia. Presently she asked him if he would remove his arm. He immediately did so, with a smile.
It’s not said what was done with the arm after the fellow had removed it. Maybe it was left standing upright in the corner. Maybe it was thrown away. I don’t care. In any case, the full meaning was there, staring me right in the face.
Here was a race of creatures capable of removing portions of their anatomy at will. Eyes, arms — and maybe more. Without batting an eyelash. My knowledge of biology came in handy, at this point. Obviously they were simple beings, uni-cellular, some sort of primitive single-celled things. Beings no more developed than starfish. Starfish can do the same thing, you know.
I read on. And came to this incredible revelation, tossed off coolly by the author without the faintest tremor:
… outside the movie theater we split up. Part of us went inside, part over to the cafe for dinner.
Binary fission, obviously. Splitting in half and forming two entities. Probably each lower half went to the cafe, it being farther, and the upper halves to the movies. I read on, hands shaking. I had really stumbled onto something here. My mind reeled as I made out this passage:
… I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. Poor Bibney has lost his head again.
Which was followed by:
… and Bob says he has utterly no guts.
Yet Bibney got around as well as the next person. The next person, however, was just as strange. He was soon described as:
… totally lacking in brains.
THERE was no doubt of the thing in the next passage. Julia, whom I had thought to be the one normal person, reveals herself as also being an alien life form, similar to the rest:
… quite deliberately, Julia had given her heart to the young man.
It didn’t relate what the final disposition of the organ was, but I didn’t really care. It was evident Julia had gone right on living in her usual manner, like all the others in the book. Without heart, arms, eyes, brains, viscera, dividing up in two when the occasion demanded. Without a qualm.
… thereupon she gave him her hand.
I sickened. The rascal now had her hand, as well as her heart. I shudder to think what he’s done with them, by this time.
… he took her arm.
Not content to wait, he had to start dismantling her on his own. Flushing crimson, I slammed the book shut and leaped to my feet. But not in time to escape one last reference to those carefree bits of anatomy whose travels had originally thrown me on the track:
… her eyes followed him all the way down the road and across the meadow.
I rushed from the garage and back inside the warm house, as if the accursed things were following me. My wife and children were playing Monopoly in the kitchen. I joined them and played with frantic fervor, brow feverish, teeth chattering.
I had had enough of the thing. I want to hear no more about it. Let them come on. Let them invade Earth. I don’t want to get mixed up in it.
I have absolutely no stomach for it.
By Philip K. Dick
Originally published 1953
This story is in Public Domain
Narrated by Brent Robison.
Narrated by Brent Robison.
POST RECITAL
TALK
BR: Well, I never thought I’d be embodying Philip K Dick. That was fun.
TN: We’re lucky this story was in the public domain. It was originally published in 1953 and its copyright was never renewed. I haven’t read a lot of his work, but I know this is a little out of the ordinary for him, since most of the work he’s known for is generally in the science fiction category.
BR: I’ve read a collection of his short stories, but I haven’t read any of his novels. I have seen some of the movies made from his work -- Blade Runner, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, the series The Man in the High Castle -- but they typically don’t match up with his stories very well.
TN: I understand he had an interesting life, full of various kinds of trauma -- a suicide attempt, paranormal experiences, mental health problems, drug addiction, five marriages. I’m sure all that had a deep influence on his writing and his philosophy. But since neither of us has much direct knowledge of his work, we decided to interview someone who does.
BR: So we have my friend, and a past contributor to this podcast, Samuel Claiborne, on the phone with us right now. And let me apologize in advance, just in case the phone connection isn’t great as we go through the interview. Samuel, thanks for joining us.
SC: Thanks for having me.
TN: Okay, let’s start with this: how much of Dick’s work have you read?
SC: I’ve read all of his novels at least once, and several of them three, four, even five times. I own all of his short stories and have read most of them, but… even though I generally like science fiction stories more than novels, the opposite is true with Dick. His novels are, to me, far superior to his short stories.
BR: Ah, okay. I know a lot of experts say that the novel VALIS may be his most important work. Do you agree with that? And why?
SC: I don’t. I’m probably a philistine or an apostate… I think that PKD, which is what we Dick snobs call him, was past his peak when he wrote VALIS. Maybe too many drugs. I think some of his best books are almost unknown, including Dr. Bloodmoney, which is this very humane and sweet early book that has some Dr Strangelove notes in it, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. A book called Ubik, which is really hysterical and amazing, and is sort of like this, you know, Russian doll. A book he wrote with Roger Zelazny, called Deus Irae, which included a lot of recycled short story material, but was a great novel an incredibly inventive and funny. The Divine Invasion, the novel I believe he wrote before VALIS, is a favorite of mine, and, these days of Trump-world kind of rings true, that evil is possibly in charge of the planet. His most famous novel, The Man in the High Castle, which won him, I think, a Hugo and a Nebula award, is a great novel. It’s been bastardized by Amazon, but… into a decent series, but the novel is fantastic.
BR: Yeah, well, I loved the series. Watched it twice as a matter of fact.
SC: Yeah, it’s totally enjoyable. You know, for a purist, they’ve gone off in other directions, but it was thoroughly enjoyable.
TN: So, going back to VALIS again -- is it an acronym?
SC: Yes, VALIS stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, and according to him, VALIS was a real entity, an alien super-intelligence that started communicating with him telepathically in real life. Was that his drug use or mental illness? Maybe, but he actually did see a potentially lethal medical problem with his young son that the doctors had missed, that would have killed his son, and he credited VALIS with giving him that information.
BR: Wow, that’s trippy.
TN: I’m interested in the fact that he claimed he was simultaneously living parallel lives in different time periods, one as Philip K Dick, and the other as Thomas, a Christian persecuted by Romans in the first century. What do you make of that?
SC: Well, Thomas was apparently some big revolutionary, so it seems kind of grandiose to me. It’s like everybody was Joan of Arc or something in their last life, so I’m always dubious about that stuff, but that being said, I’ve had enough psychic experiences in my own life that I’m not gonna dismiss his experiences. Maybe it was true, who the heck knows?
BR: What interests me most about his work is the way it undermines our standard views about reality. Like his story Adjustment Team, which was the basis for the movie The Adjustment Bureau -- the world we see is portrayed as all an illusion, with shadowy characters behind the scenes making changes to events, for certain outcomes. So that includes both ancient Indian philosophy in which the illusory physical word is called maya, and current science that suggests we could be living in an extremely detailed computer simulation. So what are your thoughts about that?
SC: Yeah, this is the part of Dick that just fascinates me. Almost all of his work can be summed up as: Reality is unreliable, it’s malleable and protean, and largely illusory… and alongside that theme is the idea that if something is a good enough simulation, is there really a distinction without a difference. Which is something that people in AI are pondering a lot these days. Simulation theory is sort of interesting except it’s utterly unprovable, either as true or false, sort of by design, which means it’s not that interesting to me -- because I want to know things, but I think that Dick would’ve loved it because he wanted to believe in things... And I’ve never read him propounding any Eastern religion or philosophy, so I’m not sure if maya or samsara or any of these concepts are things he was familiar with, but he was obsessed with Western thought, from pre-Christian tribes like the Essenes, all the way to the Greeks, and many of his writings on the Essene concepts of the godhead being a unitary force of dark and light, sound really Daoist, more Daoist than Hindu or Buddhist. But then again, Christ himself as quoted in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, sounds like a Daoist.
BR: Well, you’ve obviously given a lot of thought, besides just reading his work, you’ve given a lot of thought to what’s in there and what’s behind it.
SC: He’s really inspiring, and a lot of his writings on the ancient Greeks and ancient cosmology and theology, that just permeate some of his novels, are just fantastic.
BR: Well, you know, even though I’m not fond of his sometimes clunky writing style, I think he’s been extremely valuable in opening minds -- you know, blowing a much-needed hole in our narrow-minded culture.
SC: His writing is technically terrible. I mean, in this respect, he’s really a hack. He wrote day and night, at breakneck speed, often juiced to the gills on amphetamines. The majesty of his work is this just unceasing stream, avalanche, tsunami, of ideas -- big ideas, small ideas. Things that are funny, cynical, concepts that challenge religion, capitalism. What it means to be human, the reliability of reality… in a Philip K Dick novel, a fly may buzz up to you and it’s really an automaton whispering advertisements into your ear. Or your coffeepot may try to extort money from you before it makes your coffee.
TN: Smart technology…
SC: Or a man who hunts androids that are so perfect as to be indistinguishable from humans may himself be an android and not know it. There’s this scene in Blade Runner, which of course is based on a Philip K Dick book -- Harrison Ford has been testing this woman and he discovers that this very human woman is actually this android, and he asks her inventor -- how can it not know what it is? And the inventor gives this chilling answer that real memories from his niece have been quote “gifted” unquote -- inserted into this android and she believes herself to be human because she has all these memories. And that is a distillation of Dick’s entire body of work…. Dark forces manipulating us for profit, reality is more of a hazy concept than a stable foundation, and possibly completely simulated.
TN: Well, you know, this story The Eyes Have It, that we’re featuring on this episode, is really more a clever little joke than a deep essay about reality. I like its meta-fictional aspect: a humorous bit of writing about writing. A mirror of itself -- with that closing line, “I have absolutely no stomach for it.” Did he do a lot of this sort of thing?
SC: He did. There’s a lot of, you know, Russian doll, nested things and self-referential things. And he was also just incredibly funny. There’s this scene in Deus Irae, where this automated, brain-damaged Russian factory insists on spewing out useless consumer goods on a war-ravaged, devastated America. And someone comes to try to reason with it, and the “autofac” as it’s called, snatches up their bike, promising to fix it -- which, they had no desire to get their bike fixed, there was nothing wrong with it -- and soon hundreds of metal pogo sticks are raining down out of the sky, produced by this seemingly omnipotent but also utterly deranged mechanical god. His stuff is… there’s so much great humor, even sometimes the way he describes the way people are dressed, the fashions of the future, which are completely like, totally slapstick and crazy. He has a lot of fun. But he also does slip in self-referential humor that makes fun of himself or makes fun of some of his concepts, or ironically twists them.
BR: So, Samuel, I know you’ve written a science fiction novel, unpublished as yet. Was Dick an influence for you?
SC: It’s so funny because he wasn’t consciously on my mind at all, and I’m now in the process of re-reading it. I haven’t read it for a few years. And it’s obvious that his influence is all over the place. My book is all about memories being stolen and implanted for profit and for ideology. And about the structure of a kind of collective unconscious. So these are all things that he worked before I ever wrote a word of this book.
TN: I’m looking at Brent right now and I see his eyes are jumping here and there around the studio. Right out of his head. What’s going on?
BR: And I see your fingers dancing on the tabletop. How can that be? Great Scott!
SC: Well, I’ve been talking so much my jaw is going to drop off at any second.
BR: Oh, no, don’t let that happen!
TN: I guess it all means that’s the end of the interview. Thank you, Samuel.
SC: You’re welcome. (He makes guttural noises, unformed words)
BR: Well, I never thought I’d be embodying Philip K. Dick. That was fun.
TN: We’re lucky this story was in the public domain. It was originally published in 1953 and its copyright was never renewed. I haven’t read a lot of his work, but I know this is a little out of the ordinary for him, since most of the work he’s known for is generally in the science fiction category.
BR: I’ve read a collection of his short stories, but I haven’t read any of his novels. I have seen some of the movies made from his work -- Blade Runner, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, the series The Man in the High Castle -- but they typically don’t match up with his stories very well.
TN: I understand he had an interesting life, full of various kinds of trauma -- a suicide attempt, paranormal experiences, mental health problems, drug addiction, five marriages. I’m sure all that had a deep influence on his writing and his philosophy. But since neither of us has much direct knowledge of his work, we decided to interview someone who does.
BR: So we have my friend, and a past contributor to this podcast, Samuel Claiborne, on the phone with us right now. And let me apologize in advance, just in case the phone connection isn’t great as we go through the interview. Samuel, thanks for joining us.
SC: Thanks for having me.
TN: Okay, let’s start with this: how much of Dick’s work have you read?
SC: I’ve read all of his novels at least once, and several of them three, four, even five times. I own all of his short stories and have read most of them, but… even though I generally like science fiction stories more than novels, the opposite is true with Dick. His novels are, to me, far superior to his short stories.
BR: Ah, okay. I know a lot of experts say that the novel VALIS may be his most important work. Do you agree with that? And why?
SC: I don’t. I’m probably a philistine or an apostate… I think that PKD, which is what we Dick snobs call him, was past his peak when he wrote VALIS. Maybe too many drugs. I think some of his best books are almost unknown, including Dr Bloodmoney, which is this very humane and sweet early book that has some Dr Strangelove notes in it, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. A book called Ubik, which is really hysterical and amazing, and is sort of like this, you know, Russian doll. A book he wrote with Roger Zelazny, called Deus Irae, which included a lot of recycled short story material, but was a great novel an incredibly inventive and funny. The Divine Invasion, the novel I believe he wrote before VALIS, is a favorite of mine, and, these days of Trump-world kind of rings true, that evil is possibly in charge of the planet. His most famous novel, The Man in the High Castle, which won him, I think, a Hugo and a Nebula award, is a great novel. It’s been bastardized by Amazon, but… into a decent series, but the novel is fantastic.
BR: Yeah, well, I loved the series. Watched it twice as a matter of fact.
SC: Yeah, it’s totally enjoyable. You know, for a purist, they’ve gone off in other directions, but it was thoroughly enjoyable.
TN: So, going back to VALIS again -- is it an acronym?
SC: Yes, VALIS stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, and according to him, VALIS was a real entity, an alien super-intelligence that started communicating with him telepathically in real life. Was that his drug use or mental illness? Maybe, but he actually did see a potentially lethal medical problem with his young son that the doctors had missed, that would have killed his son, and he credited VALIS with giving him that information.
BR: Wow, that’s trippy.
TN: I’m interested in the fact that he claimed he was simultaneously living parallel lives in different time periods, one as Philip K. Dick, and the other as Thomas, a Christian persecuted by Romans in the first century. What do you make of that?
SC: Well, Thomas was apparently some big revolutionary, so it seems kind of grandiose to me. It’s like everybody was Joan of Arc or something in their last life, so I’m always dubious about that stuff, but that being said, I’ve had enough psychic experiences in my own life that I’m not gonna dismiss his experiences. Maybe it was true, who the heck knows?
BR: What interests me most about his work is the way it undermines our standard views about reality. Like his story Adjustment Team, which was the basis for the movie The Adjustment Bureau -- the world we see is portrayed as all an illusion, with shadowy characters behind the scenes making changes to events, for certain outcomes. So that includes both ancient Indian philosophy in which the illusory physical word is called maya, and current science that suggests we could be living in an extremely detailed computer simulation. So what are your thoughts about that?
SC: Yeah, this is the part of Dick that just fascinates me. Almost all of his work can be summed up as: Reality is unreliable, it’s malleable and protean, and largely illusory… and alongside that theme is the idea that if something is a good enough simulation, is there really a distinction without a difference. Which is something that people in AI are pondering a lot these days. Simulation theory is sort of interesting except it’s utterly unprovable, either as true or false, sort of by design, which means it’s not that interesting to me -- because I want to know things, but I think that Dick would’ve loved it because he wanted to believe in things... And I’ve never read him propounding any Eastern religion or philosophy, so I’m not sure if maya or samsara or any of these concepts are things he was familiar with, but he was obsessed with Western thought, from pre-Christian tribes like the Essenes, all the way to the Greeks, and many of his writings on the Essene concepts of the godhead being a unitary force of dark and light, sound really Daoist, more Daoist than Hindu or Buddhist. But then again, Christ himself as quoted in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, sounds like a Daoist.
BR: Well, you’ve obviously given a lot of thought, besides just reading his work, you’ve given a lot of thought to what’s in there and what’s behind it.
SC: He’s really inspiring, and a lot of his writings on the ancient Greeks and ancient cosmology and theology, that just permeate some of his novels, are just fantastic.
BR: Well, you know, even though I’m not fond of his sometimes clunky writing style, I think he’s been extremely valuable in opening minds -- you know, blowing a much-needed hole in our narrow-minded culture.
SC: His writing is technically terrible. I mean, in this respect, he’s really a hack. He wrote day and night, at breakneck speed, often juiced to the gills on amphetamines. The majesty of his work is this just unceasing stream, avalanche, tsunami, of ideas -- big ideas, small ideas. Things that are funny, cynical, concepts that challenge religion, capitalism. What it means to be human, the reliability of reality… in a Philip K. Dick novel, a fly may buzz up to you and it’s really an automaton whispering advertisements into your ear. Or your coffeepot may try to extort money from you before it makes your coffee.
TN: Smart technology…
SC: Or a man who hunts androids that are so perfect as to be indistinguishable from humans may himself be an android and not know it. There’s this scene in Blade Runner, which of course is based on a Philip K. Dick book -- Harrison Ford has been testing this woman and he discovers that this very human woman is actually this android, and he asks her inventor -- how can it not know what it is? And the inventor gives this chilling answer that real memories from his niece have been quote “gifted” unquote -- inserted into this android and she believes herself to be human because she has all these memories. And that is a distillation of Dick’s entire body of work…. Dark forces manipulating us for profit, reality is more of a hazy concept than a stable foundation, and possibly completely simulated.
TN: Well, you know, this story The Eyes Have It, that we’re featuring on this episode, is really more a clever little joke than a deep essay about reality. I like its meta-fictional aspect: a humorous bit of writing about writing. A mirror of itself -- with that closing line, “I have absolutely no stomach for it.” Did he do a lot of this sort of thing?
SC: He did. There’s a lot of, you know, Russian doll, nested things and self-referential things. And he was also just incredibly funny. There’s this scene in Deus Irae, where this automated, brain-damaged Russian factory insists on spewing out useless consumer goods on a war-ravaged, devastated America. And someone comes to try to reason with it, and the “autofac” as it’s called, snatches up their bike, promising to fix it -- which, they had no desire to get their bike fixed, there was nothing wrong with it -- and soon hundreds of metal pogo sticks are raining down out of the sky, produced by this seemingly omnipotent but also utterly deranged mechanical god. His stuff is… there’s so much great humor, even sometimes the way he describes the way people are dressed, the fashions of the future, which are completely like, totally slapstick and crazy. He has a lot of fun. But he also does slip in self-referential humor that makes fun of himself or makes fun of some of his concepts, or ironically twists them.
BR: So, Samuel, I know you’ve written a science fiction novel, unpublished as yet. Was Dick an influence for you?
SC: It’s so funny because he wasn’t consciously on my mind at all, and I’m now in the process of re-reading it. I haven’t read it for a few years. And it’s obvious that his influence is all over the place. My book is all about memories being stolen and implanted for profit and for ideology. And about the structure of a kind of collective unconscious. So these are all things that he worked before I ever wrote a word of this book.
TN: I’m looking at Brent right now and I see his eyes are jumping here and there around the studio. Right out of his head. What’s going on?
BR: And I see your fingers dancing on the tabletop. How can that be? Great Scott!
SC: Well, I’ve been talking so much my jaw is going to drop off at any second.
BR: Oh, no, don’t let that happen!
TN: I guess it all means that’s the end of the interview. Thank you, Samuel.
SC: You’re welcome. (He makes guttural noises, unformed words)
