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Correspondence With Ganymedean Slime Mold

{I like to write letters. Here follows some email between Greg Lee -- publisher of Radio Free PKD -- and me, Lord RC}         Click here to go to the RFPKD website:
                                                                    

Subject: Mr. FDO

To: "Dave Hyde" <lordrc2@holli.com>

Mon, Jun 10, 1996

Hyde:

Long time no talk. Hey, you used to write me? I used to like getting your letters. But now you've moved, and I hear you have not one but two jobs and now you're just a Big Time Guy with no time for your West Coast Clone.

Things are rather busy here, I must say, which is, of course, why RFPKD has been on such an intermittent appearance schedule. Last one was August of last year (sigh), which means #6 will only be about 10 mos. late instead of 18 like the last time. Of course, many of our mutual subbies are just jumping on the Net and getting their Fix that way (and I heard another rumor that you'll be developing a Web Site sometime), so I'm prepared to redefine RFPKD for the luddite crowd and (I hope) still appeal to the Wireheads. So how are you and the family , Dave? How is life? Are you getting your fix of soccer, or are you making do with the Indy 500?

{...}

Okay, this was just a quickie to say hello and no doubt I'll see the next FDO before you see the next RFPKD. Hey, good job doing that special issue on BR2.

Bye, 

Greg Lee

To: greg_lee.ny_server_mac@imago-ny.com

From: Lord RC on Thu, Jun 13, 1996 8:02 AM

Subject: One Mind there is, but under it two principles contend.

    :Greg!

So happy to hear from you. No I'm not no big time guy. I just got a decent job finally. {...} I'm free! We're all fine here. Life is good. I just got me a 1969 Olds Delta 88   convertible which I'm tooling around in since Saturday. It's all rusted out and I got it real cheap, but a pure joy to drive around in with the top down. Only get to watch an occasional soccer game. The USA is playing in the 'US Cup' this month and I've seen one game already. B ut that's about it. What kind of new car did you get? And what sort of job takes you to Asia?! Do you sell books? Hey, and if you're in Chicaga for the ABA convention, maybe we could meet somewhere! Maybe you could hop down to Indiana. We're only about 3 hours from Chicago. Let me know. Lots to talk  about. Yes, we are preparing a web site. But I wanted to talk to you and see if this is something we can do together in some way. Between us I know we have oodles of PKD data that would occupy the Dickheads for a l-o-n-g time. I was thinking of scattering much of our stuff around all over the place; get friendly webmeisters to host an article or two. Mostly we're working on converting the FDOs to Web format (html) right now, but I plan on building a video bibliography with pictures of all the book covers, etc. I've also got to contact Paul Williams about making some excerpts from PKDS but I'm a bit nervous about that. I've got his address but can't seem to send him a message... (It's like approaching the Archbishop or something). But, anyway, lets start working together on something. We should maintain our independence, sure, but lets come up with something fun for the PKD fans. Maybe a contest! Well... think about it.  But stay in touch, ok?

I'm sorry I haven't writen to you lately. My letter writing has dropped way off this last year, mainly because of work and living  hassles. But things are going better now. Don't hold your breath for the next FDO. We'll probably come out at the same time (again). O well, you get that in the publishing biz. Just bought today a new edition of ANDROIDS. A trade paperback from Del Rey. The only thing they had in the store by PKD. A nice looking edition. I wish some publisher would publish more of his books! Gotta go. Send me email! I just get a bunch of boring crap and lots of messages from Dickheads. We've only been online for a month now.

King Felix!

-- Lord RC

Date: 13 Jun 1996 11:52:14 U

From: "Greg Lee" <gregl@imago-ny.com>

Subject: RE: One Mind there is, but under it two principles contend.

To: "Lord RC"

Thu, Jun 13, 1996

Hyde:

    I don't know, anyone who gets joy out of driving a Oldsmobile tank down the Indiana highways may need to have his head  examined, but I forgot, you're a soccer fan, so you're past all hope in the cranial area! My new ride is a Ford Explorer 4WD with all the necessaries excep tI skipped the leather interior (Eddie Bauer edition) and crap because the dog's just gonna shed all over anyway. Even more exciting: car #2 is a company one, a Honda Accord with sunroof and good sound system so I can play music loud as I look for clients. I don't sell books, I sell manufacturing, printing that is, and color seps, and we represent a bunch of Asian printers. It's been a good business (run from the UK and NY) for 16 years, and now I'm the West Coast  Outpost. It's fun, independent, pays well and now it's up to me to bring in the bacon before they give me the boot! Hong  Kong and Singapore were wild, absolutely wild, for someone who's never been anywhere, so I can't wait to go back. And if I'm real good, I can go see the Founders in Oxfordshire, which'll be righteous because I've always wanted to see England (for me, I'm a frustrated Anglophile). I can pay homage to my heroes like Sherlock Holmes and Bertie Wooster.

    A joint web site? I'm intrigued. There could be a lot of good cross-marketing as they say by having a paired site on the Web. I'm not savvy to html and Java and all that shit at all, but I'm trying to learn. I've been scanning the pkd. list once in awhile and see it's mostly chat-about stuff from either Deep Dickheads or Total Novices who ask over and over where to find copies of this or that, or was Dick really a druggie, etc. I can't wait to get the next RFPKD out because there's going tob e a long article about Dick on the Net so that readers who are completely oblivious can know how to satsify their Net curiosity while the Luddites can feel good aobut still getting something hard to read via the mail, which I think is still a pleasure. But yes, I am intrigued about sharing something unqiue, a Third Realm, for our two publications. L et's gestate on it, and e-mail, until we figure it out. (Right now I'm at work, or I'd puzzle on it all day).

Life News: I have a granddaughter, courtesy of my stepdaughter, and that's been really cool. What else? Family's healthy, the sun is shining a lot {...}. Can't complain really. I'm taking the wife to see a G.B. Shaw play  tonight, "Arms and the Man." S'posed to be funny. That Shaw, that Wilde,  that Coward, I say again, I'm a frustrated Anglo dude. I read P.G. Wodehouse a lot these days ("mind candy", I call it), and actually joined the Wodehouse Society (which has a spiffy newsletter that puts ours to shame).  Re: Paul Williams. Don't be shy, Paul is cool. Drop him a letter and he'll get back to you. He's very friendly, soft spoken, if he doesn't like your idea, he'll decline politely. He may ask a return favor, like plugging his musical newsletter Crawdaddy! or something. I couldn't say. Okay, back to work

From: "Lord RC"

To: "greg_lee"

Subject: RE: One Mind there is, but under it two principles contend.

Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 13:15:18 -0400

:Greg,

    You fucking yuppie! A Ford *Explorer*!! You should get a *real* American car. Like this old Olds I got. Detroit steel. American iron. An engineering marvel. The fact that its still running 27 years later says something, surely? You made fun of my sore spot. Everyone makes fun of me for driving around in these old clunkers. You wouldn't believe the crap I have to put up with. All the guys at work made fun of my old van. And my Buick... They didn't make fun of my Charger, though, I ran 'em off the road.

But, kidding aside, you're driving a *Japanese* car!? You can't even park them things in this town. :) :) :)

You're job sounds like a good one. I wish I could travel like you. Hope you sell lots of color seperations. And you like those old English authors. I can't recall... P.G. Wodehouse... Agatha Christie! I read all her stuff when I was a kid. Hercule Poirot, my hero. Rev. Dr. X was a big Sherlock Homes fan. He had one of those deerstalker hats and a pipe and cocked his eyebrow in just that way. But I seem to remember you mentioning someone else as a fave writer of yours? Who was that. Ring Lardner? Did you read Bukowski's novel "Pulp"? I thought it was great.  Must be nice to hop over to Singapore and Hong Kong. I'm lucky to make it to Ohio once in a while. Is it a lot like BLADERUNNER over there? You  should write an article on the similarities! Its early days for any cooperative web work. I'm just noising around the idea so we can come up with something that will be fun for the Dickheads to do. What I'm thinking initially, Greg, is some sort of chase game where we place some item in such and such a website and then send   everyone on a treasure hunt. Maybe give a free subscription away or a book as a prize. I don't know much about html (but like you I'm learning) but there is help out there for whatever we want to do. Lots of PKD fans are into computers...

I haven't been able to sign up for the List yet (this mysterious List that I hear about all the time but cannot access) but will try again.

Did I tell you I'm in the middle of reading Anne Dick's IN SEARCH OF PKD?

They sent me a review copy and I have to write a review. Would you be interested in it for RFPKD? Not this one, of course, but for the next one.? It'll be two years before I get it into an FDO as we already have planned after the forthcoming EYE issue, a fiction issue. Do you have a short fiction story you'd like to see included?  Yeah, I'm looking forward to RFPKD too. Our pubs will probably come out within weeks of each other (sigh). 

Congrats on your new granddaughter! My stepdaughter, Sarah, has also just delivered a baby! A boy about a month ago. Keeps getting bigger and louder all the time. Babies are fun, aren;t they?

90 degrees here and hot. But my new job is mostly in air-conditioning and we just bought a new air conditioner for our house.  What sort of neighborhood do you live in? Is it those Mexican-style houses with palm trees that you see on TV. I'm always curious about what it's like where people live at. Here we have a little old house in the country, sunken into the woods and pretty overgrown. Barb keeps wanting to move but I like this house. I can wander off into the woods and the river is only a half mile away.

Do you get to see Dave Keller at all? We write lots of letters back and forth.

Gotta go

King Felix!

-- Lord RC2

Date: 20 Jun 1996 12:00:53 U

From: "Greg Lee"

Subject: RE: One Mind there is, but under it two principles contend.

To: "Lord RC"

Thu, Jun 20, 1996

Lord Running Clam:

Oy, we are touchy about our American tanks, aren't we? I think I'm keeping a balance with one Ford and one Honda (built in America, anyway), and I'm safe inCalifornia where we all drive these clone sedans. You'd be amazed at the really foreign cars you see here, like Jags and Rolls and hot rod kits and classics roadsters and those beautiful winged '50s sedans and multi-=colored coupes perfect for alfresco drive-in burger dining. The Explorer handles itself quite nicely in 4WD thank you, and I'd like to see your Olds transcend the Mojave desert (hey, just because you can start it up in 40 below Indiana frozen tundra doesnt' make it gold! But enough of cars. Yes I live amidst typical So Cal vegetation, palm trees are everywhere, and my house believe it or not eschews the typical red adobe roof look, although many of the squeeky clean tract homes around this part of Orange County do affect that look quite seriously. I live in a condo, connected to other units as it were, but we have the end of the building to ourselves, and a big lot that gives the illusion of a house. It's terribly white bread and in these times that's okay. It doesn't appear to be the breeding place of a Dickhead, but you can't judge a book yada yada yada.

I havent' spoken with David Keller, my editor-critique for many moons. He probably thinks I've given up on him and RFPKD, and he has his own direction to pursue. I'm sure he gets more writing bang from you, the prolific and prolix letter writer that you are, so I'm not giving him enough ffeedback.{...}

I have written my own capsule take on Anne Dick's book, so save yours for FDO. I';m sure people will want to compare our takes. Mine isn't really a review, just a brief impression.

I've got to get back to work, dude, but I'm glad we've re-established contact via a medium that will let us communicate more offten.
It suits our natures.

Peace, bro!

Greg

P.S. Ring Lardner? Must be someone else. My favorite author after PKD is Lawrence Durrell, a Henry Miller-era Brit who lived on Greek isles, in Egypt, and in Provence, and wrote terribly literary stuff that no one reads now because it ain't fashionable.

From: "Lord RC"

To: "greg_lee."

Subject: The Empire Never Ended

Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 16:01:05 -0400

Greg!

I had a strange experience the other day that I have to tell you about: On my lunch break I osmosed to the Mall on some vague tropism and as I walked in I saw a big stand of movie posters and comic books. This is not usually there. Aha! I thought as I beelined in that direction, I wonder if they've got a BLADERUNNER  poster. I asked the guy and, yes!, they had one. Look in the 'Harrison Ford' section. And shure enough there it was, big as life. I had to buy it but I didn't have enough cash on me. So I dug out one of my tattered emergency checks I keep in my wallet for such occasions, and signed away $40 (I thought it was a bit expensive but this is an actual movie poster from the movies). Then I looked around and asked him what else he had from BLADE RUNNER and he had the 2-issue comic book from 1982 and another comic book I hadn't seen before. So I had enough cash for these and got them too. Then I wandered on down the Mall to get some food and there, in front of me, was another comic book stand. This one specialised in movie scripts... So I wondered to myself, do they have BLADERUNNER? I turned the first one over and there underneath it in bright orange was BLADERUNNER, the script! $20 but what the hell. There went my last check. So I chatted with the guy -- he wasn't associated with the other stand, who were from Cleveland, but was from Oklahoma. His name was Jack Burris and he mentioned that he had had PKD sign some paperbacks for him just before he died. In my excitement to purchase these sight unseen I forgot to ask Jack whether he actually met PKD or went through the mail or whatever. But we talked a bit about the Master and he tried to palm another David Peoples script off on me, which I politely refused. I wrote my phone number on the check and told him to give me a call. He said come back Sunday and he'd see if he could dig out the PKD pbs. So I'm gonna go back Saturday and remind him. It was quite a red letter day as far as PKD goes! Here I was surrounded, seemingly, by possible Dickheads, at least partially knowledgeable of His existence. Yeah, quite a day. Later it reminded me so much of one Paul Rydeen's dreams that I went to the bedroom to see if the stuff was still there, was real. It wasn't there!!! What the fuck? Had *I* been dreaming? I pulled out my wallet, and it was bare. $2 all that's in it (and no tattered checks). I don't know what's going on... I think I must've went into a parallel world, bought a bunch of neat shit with money from my wallet in *this* world. So somewhere in some goddam universe I'm the proud owner of a BR poster, script and several comic books. And meanwhile in this one I'm flat broke! Life is strange, eh?

No, actually, I'm just kidding, I still have all the stuff and am looking for a cheap frame to house the poster tomorrow. For me that was a red-letter day. Days like that don't come along but once every few years. FDO 6 mails in 2 weeks!

King Felix!

-- Lord RC2

From: "Greg Lee"

Subject: RE: The Empire Never Ended

To: "Lord RC"

Mon, Jul 29, 1996

Hyde, you maniac! There's a cool new book out on the making of BR which I'm sure you've already heard about, if you haven't got it already. I swear you must feel terribly isolated in Indiana. You need to get out more, my friend. You're having hallucinations in a shopping mall.

I can't wait to see the next FDO. Are you back to the book-an-issue, or is this another hybrid? I'm afraid you're going to beat RFPKD#6 by a few. Damn! If I can't beat the output of an assembly line soccer freak, what good am I? Be sure to zap me a copy post-haste, dude. Did you get the same help from, who was it, Scott Pohlenz? Maybe he'd freelance for me too! Why don't you post him my e-mail.

Dave, I'm at work so I gotta jam, but keep up the good work. And thanks for sharing. As they say in my favorite village--

Be seeing you,

Greg