Philip K. Dick Recorded Telephone Interviews
Conducted by John Boonstra
2 CDs – Approx. 111 Minutes [UNABRIDGED EXCERPTS]
Published: 1991
Themes: / Non-Fiction / Science Fiction / Interview /

These discs combine telephone interviews conducted 3/11/81 and 6/28/81. Portions appeared in The Hartford Advocate and The Twilight Zone Magazine. I’ve interviewed dozens of interesting people in the years since, but no conversation has been quite so exhilarating. It was a privilege to have even this brief contact with PKD…”
— John Boonstra

This is a set of 2 CD-Rs with printer paper labels and a photocopy of a handwritten insert written by the interviewer John Boonstra. The packaging and media is straight out of the Staples catalogue. But the content… oh the content… It’s the ultimate! Disc 1 is one long uninterrupted audio track. It starts with a ringing telephone, answered by a “Hello?” And if you’ve heard his voice anywhere else you instantly know it is Philip K. Dick.

Boonstra conducted by telephone these two interviews. Boonstra was better prepared than we have any right to expect – he was familiar with the vast majority of his subject’s writing and anxious to engage someone who he clearly admired greatly. Dick himself is full of life, overflowing with funny anecdotes, eager to talk and expound and is a true delight to hear in such an unfiltered setting.

Admittedly the sound quality isn’t great. A constant tape hiss mars both interviews, but the voices are both loud and clear, and in stereo. Dick’s voice comes out of the left speaker and Boonstra’s out of the right. They talk for nearly two hours over the course of the two interviews and I was riveted the entire time. Unfortunately the last portion of the first interview is completely cut off and the first portion of the second interview is entirely missing. Boonstra prompts Dick now and again with well researched questions and Dick never shies away, giving us the inside dope on many aspects of his professional and private lives as well as explaining the research that went into many of his later books including, The Cosmic Puppets, The Man In the High Castle, Martian Time-Slip, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Galactic Pot-Healer, Confessions Of A Crap Artist, VALIS, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer and others.

If you like Philip K. Dick’s novels you’ll love these interviews! I just wish there were more of them. Unfortunately Dick died less than a year after the second interview was recorded. I got two CD set from Zack Wood: click here to check out his site and tell him SFFAUDIO sent you!

Posted by Jesse Willis