D. Scott Apel: Favorite books and Philip K. Dick recommendations

By D. Scott Apel
Special  guest blogger

My all-time favorite quote comes from Voltaire: “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.” I mention this partially because I spent many, many hours in discussion and debate with other writers and editors at Apple’s iTunes, where we dissected specific words to determine how people understand them and whether we were being misleading when using these words in various promotions. “Best,” for instance, was a verboten term. Who decides what is “best,” and what qualifies a piece of content to be promoted as “best”? Anyone who disagreed with our choices could potentially be offended. But no one had an objection to labeling a movie “great,” since that word is so nebulous as to be meaningless—but it clearly indicates that “we like it.”

 The point is that “favorite” is one of those vague words that could be interpreted in many ways. Does it mean pleasure reading? Great Literature? One’s list of Desert Island Books? Guilty pleasures? I published over 200 film-related articles, many of a “roundup” nature (“The Ten Best Film Noir Classics”) and I always began these pieces with “the ground rules” if only to avoid being accused of leaving out someone else’s choice of “best.” So, before I list my choices, here are my parameters: These are all works of fiction, in English (or translated into English). They are not necessarily Great Literature (although some absolutely qualify), but are the titles that had the most profound and longest-lasting influence on my approach to writing. Each in its way revealed how the boundaries of literature can be expanded and illustrated what language and literature are capable of.

 In no particular order, the most influential works of fiction in my life include:

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Labyrinths by Jorges Luis Borges
The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles Finney
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Oedipus in Disneyland by Hercules Malloy
Any of Donald E. Westlake’s comic caper novels (The Hot Rock; Drowned Hopes; etc.)

 I could also add any novel by Jules Verne and Philip K. Dick’s VALIS (since I’m in it).

 And although they might seem out of place, I would be remiss if I did not include MAD magazine (from 1952-1970) and The National Lampoon (1970-’75) – although not novels, these humor magazines were print publications and were primarily responsible for my subversive attitude and approach to writing humor. Add to that the recordings of The Firesign Theater and Spike Jones, and you’ve got some insight into my sense of humor.

 Non-fiction has informed my psychological development as much as those works of fiction have influenced my writing. The Top Ten Non-Fiction books in my personal pantheon include:

Collected Works by Carl Jung
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
Roget’s Thesaurus
The Path to Enlightenment by the Dalai Lama
Science of Survival by L. Ron Hubbard
Mirror of Venus by Wingate Paine
The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley

Sadly, these lists cover only print literature. There are so many more deep influences among movies (Forbidden Planet; Last Year at Marienbad; the Marx Brothers; Fellini), television (The Prisoner), and music (Bach, Beethoven’s symphonies, Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, and the Moody Blues are just the tip of that iceberg).

Favorite works by Philip K. Dick

My friend Will Jacobs (also a writer) is also a big PKD fan, and he said something that has stuck with me for like five decades now: "The first Phil Dick book a person reads is always their favorite." My interpretation is that the first PKD novel one reads is so impactful, unique, and different than anything else one has read before that it makes a huge and long-lasting first impression.

My Top 5 Favorite PKD novels would be:

Eye in the Sky (the first Phil Dick book I ever read -- perhaps proving Will's point!)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
VALIS (and not just because I'm in it, but that don't hurt)
UBIK
We Can Build You

...but this is not to say that many others don't have many redeeming qualities. I still quote a paragraph from Clans of the Alphane Moon regularly, for instance.

You will notice that many of Phil's best-known works are not on my list, including The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Nothing against either of them, just not among my personal favorites.

Note: Scott was Philip K. Dick's friend and did a well-regarded book about Dick. This has been added to the "D. Scott Apel Resources" section on the right side of this page. 

An 'Illuminatus!' reference in the New York Times

Brian Doherty (Cato Institute  photo)

To my pleasant surprise, the New York Times  runs a long obituary for Brian Doherty, libertarian chroniclers and RAW expert. And it mentions Illuminatus!

A couple of sentences from Trip Gabriel's piece:

"Mr. Doherty became a libertarian at the University of Florida in the late 1980s, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in journalism. But he traced his political tendencies even earlier, to his reading, as a 12-year-old, of a science fiction trilogy, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus!

“ 'One of the specific purposes of that work, according to Wilson,' Mr. Doherty later wrote, 'was to do to the state what Voltaire did to the church — that is, reduce it to an object of contempt for all thoughtful people'.”

Hilaritas Press podcast with James Fadiman

Microdosing expert James Fadiman is the guest on the new Hilaritas podcast. Here is the blurb for the show: 

"Hilaritas host Mike Gathers talks with researcher, author, teacher, and consultant, Dr. James Fadiman. 

"Richard Alpert first turned Jim onto psilocybin in 1961.  Jim soon moved to Perry Lane, the Stanford Bohemian Quadrant which was ground zero for Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.  There in Menlo Park, Jim guided Stuart Brand on his first LSD experience.  He went on to help found the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and continues to teach to this day. Jim wrote the Psychedelic Explorers Guide Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys in 2011, and has co-written with his friend Jordan Gruber, Microdosing for Health, Healing and Advanced Performance, and Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of who we are.."

James Fadiman’s website: https://www.jamesfadiman.com/

Institute of Transpersonal Psychology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_University_(California)

Host Mike Gathers:https://linktr.ee/mgathers23

Producer/Engineer Richard Rasa: http://www.pelorian.com/rasa.html

New 'D. Scott Apel Resources' area on this website

D. Scott Apel's most popular book 

D. Scott Apel collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson on RAW's newsletter Trajectories, resulting in two books, Chaos and Beyond and Beyond Chaos and Beyond, but Scott is an interesting writer in his own right. 

So, on the right side of this page, just below the "Robert Anton Wilson Resources" and "Robert Shea Resources" sections, I've created a new "D. Scott Apel Resources" section. So far, those links include three interviews of Scott I conducted her, observations on some of his book titles, and the only complete and accurate bibliography of his books (that I know of) available on the internet. I just added the Hilaritas Press podcast interview with Scott.

I have other items in the works that I'll be adding in the coming weeks. 

Scott is less organized in self promotion than many other creators -- there's no official author page -- so I decided to set this up. 

John Higgs news roundup

John Higgs has released a new edition of his Octannual Update newsletter. 

Lots of interesting events in Britain to go to, so if you live there you should read the whole thing, but I will highlight a couple of items of global interest.

The paperback of John's Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who is about to be released. It's only published in Britain, but John explains how you can order an autographed copy from a business that ships worldwide.

Also, the Mycelium Parish News has just been published, a bit late this time. As John explains, "This is a catalogue of that year’s books, podcasts, fanzines, mailing lists, events etc, that come from alternative or Discordian- adjacent creators. There’s a micro-essay from me in there also." I have just ordered my copy.  

Martin Wagner relaunches 'Robert Anton Wilson Archives'

Martin Wagner's online collection of Robert Anton Wilson materials was offline for a bit, but he has now launched the revamped Robert Anton Wilson Archives website.

It looks great and it has a lot of interesting material to read. Martin's site and RAWilsonfans.org both deserve your attention as collections of RAW material (and I like to  think there's  a few things to read here, too). 

The new link for "Robert Anton Wilson Archives" is now up under "Robert Anton Wilson Resources" at the right side of this page. 

Sehr gut, Martin! 

New RAW images at RAW Semantics

 

Over at RAW Semantics, Brian has posted new images of Robert Anton Wilson, both art images and enhanced photos. He's getting really good at this. 

Brian says:

"A mix of some 'new' photos, repurposed (and quality-improved) old video stills and some of my attempts at artwork. The subject, of course, is Robert Anton Wilson, who I would argue – and despite the efforts of RAW fans – generally doesn’t seem well-served by images of his likeness (good quality source images being few – the web is populated instead with blurred low-res video grabs). I’ve added a boring technical note below the images, for people who like that kind of thing."

New podcasts: Grant Morrison and Mike Gathers

 Grant Morrison has appeared on a recent episode of Douglas Rushkoff's "Team Human" podcast. Bobby Campbell recommends it as an especially great conversation. See Bobby's art above. 

The Non Serviam podcast, episode 74, features Mike Gathers. He's interviewed by Lucy Steigerwald.

"For NSP 74, we spoke with Mike Gathers about the politics of Robert Anton Wilson!

In addition, we talked about libertarianism, techno-optimism, the limits of the left-right spectrum, and Mike's recently published book with Hilaritas Press titled, A Non Euclidian Perspective: Robert Anton Wilson’s Political Commentaries 1960-2005 containing many previously published political articles and interviews of RAW."

I've provided YouTube links, but both should be on most podcasting apps. 

Bonus news: Afroman won. 

Al Zuckerman, star literary agent who represented Wilson and Shea, has died [UPDATED]

 

Dan Brown said this book "changed my life." 

Prominent literary agent Albert Zuckerman has died. He played a big role in the careers of both Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, although they were  hardly his most famous clients.

As Clay Risen explains in his typically excellent New York Times obituary for Zuckerman, Zuckerman had many big successes, including boosting the career of Ken Follett:

"He had a knack for finding promising writers who, with a few pointers, could become rock stars. His first big score was with Mr. Follett, a Welsh novelist who wrote about the English working class until he hired Mr. Zuckerman, who encouraged him to write a thriller instead.

"The result, Eye of the Needle (1978), won an Edgar Award for best novel, sold briskly in Britain and the United States, and cemented Mr. Follett’s reputation as a bankable writer. His books have since sold nearly 200 million copies, and helped make Mr. Zuckerman, as The Irish Independent described it in a 1994 profile, 'the hero of the blockbuster'.”

Zuckerman also had a hand in A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (25 million copies sold of a book about physics). Zuckerman wrote Writing the Blockbuster Novel, cited as a big influence by Dan Brown. 

But of course my main interest in Zuckerman was the role in played as Wilson and Shea's agent. He was not involved in selling Illuminatus! to Dell, but after that work's success, he became their agent.

I spoke to Zuckerman briefly in 2012, here is part of that blog post: "Zuckerman told me that he sold all of Wilson and Shea's subsequent novels, but that the two had sold Illuminatus! on their own, without using an agent."

Dell editor Fred Feldman, one of the editors who worked on Illuminatus!, introduced Wilson and Shea to Zuckerman. It was early in Zuckerman's career, as Feldman told me in my 2013 interview with the editor:

"Now, of course today, Al is one of the premiere agents in the business. He had a new client at that time, a young untested British guy by the name of Ken Follett. That seems to have worked out for them. Of course, Al has many other very important clients, a thriving agency, Writer’s House, and I think is a patriarch of the business at this point.

"But at the time, he didn’t have any clients. At the time, believe it or not, I’d sometimes vacate my office for a little time so he could use my phone. It was just a different time. He was just starting out. He got his first office, Writer’s House, and I remember going over to see it, I was so pleased. He’s older than me. He came from an academic background.

"But anyway, I introduced them both. I remember Bob Shea remembered doing a couple of historic Japanese sagas with Al that did very well, and then I kind of lost track of him."

I shared the news about Zuckerman yesterday with Mike Shea, Robert Shea's son. 

"My dad loved him a lot. I worked with Al regularly as well as my dad’s heir," Mike told me. 

"My dad really was in awe of him and changed a *lot* of what he did based on Al’s guidance. Shike was supposed to be a science fiction novel!"

Shike was Shea's first novel. It was written during a tough time in Shea's life. He had been laid off by Playboy magazine, a circumstance which got Shea to finally get serious about a career as a novelist. As Feldman relates, Shike was a big success and allowed Shea to pursue a career as a novelist until his death. 

Here is an anecdote from Dan Brown:

"Not long ago, I had an amusing experience meeting the author of a book I received as a gift nearly two decades ago — a book that in many ways changed my life. Almost 20 years ago, I was halfway through writing my first novel, Digital Fortress, when I was given a copy of Writing the Blockbuster Novel, by the legendary agent Albert Zuckerman. His book helped me complete my manuscript and get it published. Two months ago, by chance, I met Mr. Zuckerman for the first time. I gratefully told him that he had helped me write Digital Fortress. He jokingly replied that he planned to tell everyone that he had helped me write The Da Vinci Code.”

F. Paul Wilson (Repairman Jack novels, The Keep) has a nice piece up about Zuckerman:

"After my third novel, he said I needed to expand my horizons: Send him three ideas I’d like to work on, and we’ll choose. We settled on one set in WWII with a Romanian castle and a strange, malignant occupant.  I wrote it in about six months. Al was impressed, but said it needed work. So he got to work. His notes and edits shed new light on the book and I wrote the second draft with them in mind. The book was transformed. But Al wasn’t through yet. He decided to approach Hollywood before the publishers. It worked: We had a movie deal before he put the book up for auction.  It landed on the NY Times bestseller list.  And that is why The Keep is dedicated to Al Zuckerman."

UPDATE: If you want to get going on your bestselling novel, Amazon is selling a Kindle of Zuckerman's book for $3. 

Followups!

Brian Doherty. (Facebook photo. Source). 

1. Two interesting new pieces have been posted about Brian Doherty since I ran the obituary Sunday. Nick Gillespie has written a remembrance: "On the way out of the talk, as valets pulled up our old, beat-up cars (mine a Toyota Tercel with 200,000 miles on it and a padlock on the trunk, his a decrepit Ford LTD station wagon he'd bought from Jacob Sullum), Brian mentioned to me that what he really liked about capitalism wasn't the way it punished anyone but just how many free riders it enabled."

Also, a new piece by Bryan Caplan, longer and better than what I linked to Sunday.

2. I got a comment some days ago that the links to Robert Anton Wilson's "Serpent Power" piece on this site were all dead links. I think I've fixed it and the link  under "Feature Articles and Interviews" on the right side of this page now works.

3. I also recently blogged about RAW meeting Ted Sturgeon, the famous science fiction writer. Sturgeon's More Than Human currently is a $2 Kindle ebook. Still $9 as a Nook ebook at Barnes and Nobel, unfortunately.

4. When Dan Simmons died, I ran a notice and complained that the New York Times did not run an obit.  An obituary has now in fact finally run.  I still think the paper should have run one for Greg Bear. 

'One Battle After Another' wins six Oscars

 Paul Thomas Anderson (Creative Commons photo, source.)

I didn't watch the Oscars last night; I was busy watching the U.S. national team defeat the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic. However, I can still report that One Battle After Another, based on Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, won six awards, including best picture and best director.  Of course, we had an online discussion group about the novel at this blog, and you can still access it on the right side of this page. 

Brian Doherty has died

Brian Doherty. Facebook photo posted by Sherry Wong). 

Brian Doherty, 57, has died. He was the top modern historian of libertarianism, but also a genuine expert on Robert Anton Wilson, as I will remind everyone shortly.

Here is the obituary at Reason magazine, where he was a senior editor, working with other libertarian RAW fans such as Jesse Walker. The review gives full credit to his scholarship --- he wrote a long book called Radicals for Capitalism that is the definitive history of modern capitalism and also has material putting Robert Anton Wilson's politics in context with the libertarian movement -- but check out how he got interested in libertarianism: "Born in Brooklyn and raised mostly in Florida, Doherty first caught the libertarian bug at age 12 by gobbling up the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson." 

The Reason obituary by Matt Welch delves into Doherty's libertarian scholarship and journalism but also has lots of details about how Doherty founded a record label and played in various rock bands, and his interest in avant-garde art happenings, Burning Man,  underground comix and other pursuits. 

It's perhaps not the most important thing about him, but Doherty wrote one of the best guest posts ever published on this blog. "Robert Anton Wilson: A Conspiracy of Silence?" is a piece which Doherty originally hoped to publish in the New York Times Book Review. He gave me permission for me to run it in July 2015.  It's very good, please take a look. 

See also that when Hilaritas Press published A Non-Euclidian Perspective, a new collection of RAW's political writings, Jesse Walker assigned Doherty to review the book. 

I hope some of you will go ahead and read Doherty's RAW piece published on this blog. I could not remember how I got my hands on it, so I checked my email. 

One of my best blog posts here is my "Illuminatus! vs. Cryptonomicon" post, listing various parallels between the two works. I got a few nice comments, but in general I was a little disappointed it did not make more of a splash.

But I did get a nice email from Mr. Doherty, who wrote, "Very smart and thorough comparison of the two; I noted a much more casual resemblance between the two when desperately, and in the end fruitlessly, trying to convince an imagined NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW audience that they should give RAW a second thought.

"On his death I queried NYTBR about writing an appreciation essay on RAW; they said yes to the idea but rejected the actual essay, which was written in a rush and without much time to re-read RAW, and I think I was too scrupulously trying to connect him to "important" lit stuff. Or I just did a shitty job. At any rate, I append the still unpublished essay in case you are interested. (Nothing for a serious fan or scholar to learn from it, of course.)"

Of course I was pleased to get his feedback, but I also liked the attachment. Naturally, I immediately asked if I could run it, noting that he might still be trying to sell it and might have a better place for it, and he replied, "Oh, that piece is completely dead as anything sellable; if you think it has anything to offer the specialist audience at your site, please run it, I'd be delighted."

So I ran it. Mr. Doherty asked only, "If you choose to run it, do note the purpose for which it was written: to explain RAW to the generalist audience at NYTBR on the occasion of his death."

Here is a post on Facebook by Sherry Wong.  Bryan Caplan has posted an appreciation of Doherty's magnum opus.  I learned about the bad news when I saw Jesse Walker's posting on Facebook.  There's also an appreciation by Nick Gillespie,  and one from Sheldon Richman. 

When Bob met Ted, and notes on 'Famedroppings'

 

During his lifetime, science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) was known as a "writer's writer," revered by other writers and also very respected by the more literate science fiction fans. He is probably best known for his book More Than Human. Older science fiction fans still read. He was a renowned short story writer, and I read Sturgeon's Selected Stories in 2019.  Mark Brown read Sturgeon's Venux Plus X a few months ago. 

D. Scott Apel's Famedroppings, a memoir of his encounters with famous people, he describes how he arranged for RAW to meet with Sturgeon. The two writers were fans of each other -- RAW once said, "My favorite science fiction writers have long been Stapledon, Heinlein, Clarke and Sturgeon" -- and the pair had a nice meetup. 

As for Famedroppings, it don't see it as a major Apel work, but the Kindle is only about $2, and you can get your money's worth skimming  it and reading the entries about the people you are interested in. Apel's reflections at the back of the book also are worth a read. There is a really good section on Philip K. Dick, more substantial than many of the entries. There's also a biographical essay on RAW, although it's a shorter version of what Scott wrote in Beyond Chaos and Beyond. The more than 100 entries are divided into actors, directors, Star Trek figures, businessmen, politicians, public intellectuals, musicians, disk jockeys, astronauts, scientists, "specialty acts," vehicles, women "best known for displaying the proof they are women", writers and "I Am Known by Them." "L'Envoi: Why? Three Cautionary Tales" is the piece at the back of the book I recommend reading, even if you only skim the rest of the book for the good parts. 

Incidentally, the book may make you think about the nature of fame. Apel writes that he almost left out Sturgeon for not being famous enough, although for me, a science fiction fan, Sturgeon is much more "famous" that the actors he mentions I never heard of.