The Selected Letters, 1938-1971 Quotes

“A tyrant, in the future, is about to retire and turn over the 3 or so planets he controls to a younger aspirant. The young wife of the tyrant, however, wishes control to go to her, and to prove to her husband what a dreadful leader the aspirant would make. All time-travel experiments have failed, but there is a theoretical possibility that alternate presents could be reached. Instigated by the tyrant's wife, a research crew begins the job. MEANWHILE, the aspirant has let no grass grow beneath his feet; he responds to Project Alternate by hiring one of Earth's larges industrial corporations to build a fake alternate world, in which he rules, and all is wonderful. Now comes the tour de force. The tyrant's young wife learns about the construction of a fake alternate world. Her response: she engages a team of clever experts—along the lines of that in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE—to worm their way into the fake alternate world and plant fake fakes there, which will give it all away when the tyrant is brought to visit it. All seems clear at this point. The aspirant is having a fake alternate world being made; the tyrant's wife is busily subverting it. But—aha! Everyone's scheme is brought down in a great crash when a real alternate present is reached. The tyrant sets out to visit it—naturally. But it bears no relation at all to their own world. It is a 'board-game' world, with squares and the possibility of moving from one square to the next. Each square is a sort of alternate world on its own; the squares differ that much from one another in tone, structure, mood, color, with the characters themselves altering to fit into the Geist of each square. On one square, for example, all food tastes marvelous. On the next square, milk is a deadly poison. And so on. Ultimately, the characters discover the nature of this world: each square represents a particular mushroom, and that of a poisonous mushroom is a poisonous micro-world . . . the morel square, of course, being nearly on a level with heaven.”
― Dennis (introduction) Dick, Philip K.; Etchison, The Selected Letters, 1938-1971

“It's a psychological fantasy of the dream type, more like Kafka I suppose, or like 'The Man Who Was Thursday.' There is no fantasy premise: that is, a fantastic postulate from which things proceed logically; the beginning is natural, factual, normal, as in Hubbard's 'Fear;' the ordinary world, in fact. From there, the book 'degenerates into sheer fantasy,' as my agent puts it. It progresses, I would say, into greater and deeper levels of fantasy; a trip into the dream-regions of symbolism, the unconscious, etc. as one finds in 'Alice in Wonderland,' where the work ends with a final cataclysm of dream-fantasy. I'm saying all this because my point is this: I'm not sure a reader of fantasy would consider this a fantasy. He might consider this merely 'morbid neurotic psychological investigations for sick minds' as del Rey tends to put it. Actually, I think all human minds, sick or well, have regions of dream-symbolism; I see nothing morbid in these symbolistic worlds . . . they have their own logic and structure, their own typical relationships, as Lewis Carroll showed. Not a chaotic or formless world, at all . . . a world that fascinates me. But perhaps not of interest to fantasy readers. Yet, I don't know what else to call this. I call Kafka's work 'fantasies,' for want of a better name. Or Conrad Aiken's ' Silent Snow, Secret Snow.' Or even THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, and certainly Molnar's 'Liliom,' or the plays of the Capek brothers, or that ghastly Maeterlinck 'Bluebird' thing, and certainly Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt.' To me, the myth and the dream are related; I see myths as symbolistic proto-type experiences, archaic and timeless, occurring in the individual subconscious. The fairy tale, the myth, the dream, are all related. And I see nothing morbid in it . . . the button molder, in 'Peer Gynt' absolutely terrifies me. I sense meaning, there. I can't exactly define it rationally . . . perhaps that's why Ibsen chose to present it that way; perhaps these symbols can't be reduced to exact literal descriptions. Like poetic images, they can't be translated.”
― Dennis (introduction) Dick, Philip K.; Etchison, The Selected Letters, 1938-1971