They do a weekly feature called “Fan Fiction Friday,” wherein they pluck the most horrific fan fiction from the internet and post it with amusing commentary.  Last week, the author was none too pleased and made his outrage known.  Go read the extremely hilarious post at Topless Robot before you do anything else.  I’ll wait.

One of my favorite “WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS?” pics is Grimlock opining about Bay’s Transformers.

I made some of my own:

And here’s one from a pic I took of Bill Stiteler:

And finally, my friend, Twin Cities actress Amber Bjork:

You’re welcome.

Dick suspected that Lem was an agent of the Communist Party (and perhaps not a person at all, but a committee) and wrote a letter to the FBI warning them about Lem, which the FBI ignored.

I just found the text of that letter online.  Read Phil’s paranoia after the jump.

From the official site of Stanislaw Lem:

Philip K. Dick to the FBI, September 2, 1974

I am enclosing the letterhead of Professor Darko Suvin, to go with information and enclosures which I have sent you previously. This is the first contact I have had with Professor Suvin. Listed with him are three Marxists whom I sent you information about before, based on personal dealings with them: Peter Fitting, Fredric Jameson, and Franz Rottensteiner who is Stanislaw Lem’s official Western agent. The text of the letter indicates the extensive influence of this publication, SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES.

What is involved here is not that these persons are Marxists per se or even that Fitting, Rottensteiner and Suvin are foreign-based but that all of them without exception represent dedicated outlets in a chain of command from Stanislaw Lem in Krakow, Poland, himself a total Party functionary (I know this from his published writing and personal letters to me and to other people). For an Iron Curtain Party group – Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not – to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas. Peter Fitting has in addition begun to review books for the magazines Locus and Galaxy. The Party operates (a U..S.] publishing house which does a great deal of Party-controlled science fiction. And in earlier material which I sent to you I indicated their evident penetration of the crucial publications of our professional organization SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA.

Their main successes would appear to be in the fields of academic articles, book reviews and possibly through our organization the control in the future of the awarding of honors and titles. I think, though, at this time, that their campaign to establish Lem himself as a major novelist and critic is losing ground; it has begun to encounter serious opposition: Lem’s creative abilities now appear to have been overrated and Lem’s crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks on American science fiction and American science fiction writers went too far too fast and alienated everyone but the Party faithful (I am one of those highly alienated).

It is a grim development for our field and its hopes to find much of our criticism and academic theses and publications completely controlled by a faceless group in Krakow, Poland. What can be done, though, I do not know.

I don’t know if I’m ready to part with (or otherwise violate) my Star Wars Micro Machines just yet…

In 1936, “Action” Jackson Pollack discovered his trademark style when he shot a fellow spy, spraying blood on a canvas.

Davy Crockett & his faithful partner Ricardo Tubbs successfully defended the Alamo from a force of Indians in Miami, FL. (To which @OnanRulz replied, “Don’t forget David Bowie, who bravely defended the Alamo from Carlos Santana’s troops with his trusty knife.”)

One from @OnanRulz: “In 1912, passenger liner RMS Caribbean Queen, under the command of Capt. William Ocean, hits an iceberg and sinks,” to which I replied, “Capt. Ocean’s last words were, ‘Get out of my dreams and into the lifeboats.’”

In 1977, Elvis Costello suffered a heart attack in his bathroom and died, joining his first husband Lou in death.

In 1990, Muppet creator Jim Henson dies from strep; Sesame Street character Streppy Phlegmstein is immediately retired.

5/7/1718, Bienville founds the city of New Orleans, named in honor of Better Than Ezra’s “King of New Orleans.”

1871, Fire decimates Chicago, as per Nostradamus’ prediction: “Chicago, you’re gonna have a big fuckin’ fire.”

1888: Jack Tripper cuts a swathe through London’s Whitechapel district, brutally murdering area women.

The Stranger Hug
The Breathalyzed Senator
The Ol’ 9-11
The Bathroom Rape Inn
The Sailor and Semen
The Hard Stool
The Marinating Fetus
Bangers ‘n’ Sashimi
The Keg and Flukeworm
Rolling Rock Tavern
Daddy Daycare
Schindler’s Beer List
The Chunky Puddle
Mr. McFeely’s
The Great White Memorial Music Club
Tom Cruise’s Cocktail
The Hemingway and Rifle Inn
Henrik Ibsen’s Drinksplosion
Triumph of the Swill
The Red Roofie Inn
The Sweetbread and Pucker
The Love Taps
The Tap That Ass Room
The Lecherous Bartender
Barstool Night & Gutter Dawn

 

When I pulled The Penultimate Truth for further inspection, a voice behind me said, “That one’s really good.”  I looked up to see a guy in his late thirties or so with a handful of books, also wandering the science-fiction section.  We chatted briefly about Philip K. Dick books, I told him about our show, et cetera, and after a minute or two, he said, “Good luck with your play!” and we each continued our respective browsing.

About ten minutes later, the voice on the PA heralded the arrival of author Michael Perry, who was doing a talk and book-signing, and the stranger who’d struck up that Phil Dick conversation with me took the microphone.  Apparently, I was talking to this guy, who was there promoting his new book Coop.  On my drive to work this morning, he was announced as the guest on MPR’s Midmorning program.

I still ended up buying Ubik instead of The Penultimate Truth, but his opinion suddenly had that much more weight.

P.S.  Anybody wanna buy some Star Wars hardcovers?  B&N wouldn’t buy those.

Philip K. Dick’s novels and short stories have been adapted into films, sometimes with relative success (Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report), and some…not so much (Next, Paycheck, Screamers).  There are a few Dick-inspired films currently in the works:

The Owl in Daylight, currently in production, starring Paul Giamatti as Philip K. Dick.
Radio Free Albemuth, in post-production for a 2009 release. The cast includes Alanis Morissette.
The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon, set for 2010.

*shrug* That’s all I got.  How do you feel about these?

Mr. Belvedere Biv Devoe
Magnum, P. Diddy
Doogie Howser, OMD
Earth, Wind, and Crossfire
Bauhaus, MD
Simply Red Shoe Diaries
My U2 Dads
Ice-T Road Truckers
Yo Yo Ma MTV Raps!
King of Queen
Roseannie Lennox
The Jeffersons Airplane
Allman Bros. in the Family
Wings
The Diff’rent Strokes
Joni Mitchell Loves Chachi
Mister Mister Ed
The XTC Files
Jeopardy of Five
New-Heart
The Grateful Dead Zone
Arrested Development

The poster has been unveiled for Workhaus Collective’s 800 Words: The Transmigration of Philip K. Dick.  And thanks to the arrangement of images, it looks a lot like I’m eyeing Phil’s crotch.*  Click the image above to enlarge.  The image, not the…oh, never mind.

Visit www.workhauscollective.org for info about the play.

*”Dick” pun successfully avoided.