In 1979 I was on a teaching exchange to the USA. I wonderfully ended up in Los Angeles for the year. My family swapped jobs and houses with an American family. Teaching in Los Angeles was a challenge at first but I soon was in the swing of it and the students were wonderful.
By 1979 I had been writing Sci-fi for a while and had a few novels to my name.
The family we exchanged with had an older daughter and she noticed that not only did I have hundreds of Sci-fi books on the shelves but one complete row was Philip K Dick, one of my favourite authors.
So it was that in October I received a phone call from the daughter. She told me that she’d seen the Philip K Dick books and that Phil, as she called him, was a personal friend, would I like to go and meet him?
Would I?? Would I indeed?? YES I WOULD!
She explained that she would be returning to Los Angeles in November and she would sort something out.
I was ecstatic. I had the chance to actually meet one of my heroes. What could be better. I only hoped that she would be able to arrange it and that ‘Phil’ would be happy to meet me.
My mind was racing. There were so many questions I could ask, advice I could glean, but above all – just the chance to meet the famous Sci-fi writer.
It all worked. Cheryl came round and collected me and a highly nervous young writer (myself) found himself in a car heading for Philip K Dick’s apartment.
It was, I’m afraid, all a bit of a blur. We sat in his living room. I perched on the sofa and ‘Phil’ talked and tried, unsuccessfully to put me at ease. I did manage to ask some stilted questions and received warm replies.
He told me that he’d just been on the film set for an adaptation of one of his novels that was tentatively going to be called ‘The Claw’. He showed me a poster for it with this huge metal claw reaching for a planet. He had been at a screening of the early rushes and explained to me that it was like looking into his own head.
I have subsequently looked for that film but never found it. Perhaps they renamed it? Perhaps it was never completed or released.
I asked ‘Phil’ what he considered to be his best piece of writing. He told me that he was very proud of a scene he had imagined; a duel between a gunslinger and a teleporter. The gunslinger had drawn his pistol to find that he was holding his own pancreas. Philip considered that the best piece of imagination he had ever come up with.
By the end of the evening I had been totally mesmerised and completely failed at asking any advice. He probably would have told me not to bother and I would have ignored him.
I left full of a warm glow, afloat on the honour of meeting the great man but annoyed that I had been so overcome with nerves that I hadn’t managed to relax. I hadn’t even taken a book for him to sign. I cursed myself!
But I had spent a few hours with Philip K Dick!!
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