Sublime

Trout doesn’t really exist. He has been my alter ego in several of my other novels. But most of what I have chosen to preserve from Timequake One has to do with his adventures and opinions. I have salvaged a few of the thousands of stories he wrote between 1931, when he was fourteen, and 2001, when he died at the age of eighty-four.

gnomish quality about everything. A smaller-than-life quality, with a dash of the droll. What is this five-thousand-year-old book? The Mickey Mouse watch, Mr Tagomi himself, the fragile cup in Mr Tagomi’s hand … and, on the wall facing Mr Baynes, an enormous buffalo head, ugly and menacing.

sybaritic

“My old friend,” Albert said. “The one I wake up every morning thinking about.” “How do you know?” “Same way I know everything. CNN.” “Harvey said he was dead.” “Yes, well, he looked pretty healthy to me. Before he got shot anyway.” “Someone shot him?” “A little gangster, in L.A. somewhere.” “You positive?” “There isn’t a doubt in my mind.”

“Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues?” To which Reuther replied, “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?”

In 1950, Pohl was instrumental in the highest degree in getting my first novel published. In short, Fred, more than anyone else but John W. Campbell, Jr. (about whom I shall have more to say soon), made my career possible.

Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed – all he’s got to do is thump on the drum, and there’s his response.

Boucher is credited with raising the standard of science fiction writing and his publication would later win the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Professional Science Fiction Magazine two years running. As an avid reader of science fiction, PKD was fully aware of Boucher’s influence on the genre and tried to engineer a meeting. The next time Boucher