Some reviewers have found “bitterness” in my writing. I am surprised, because my mood is one of trust. Perhaps they are bothered by the fact that what I trust is so very small. They want something vaster. I have news for them: there is nothing vaster. Nothing more, I should say. But really, how much do we have to have? Isn’t Mr. Tagomi enough? I know it counts. I am satisfied.
I suppose I’ve recalled it twice now because I like to think of that small element of trust, of idealism, in Phil’s writings. Perhaps I’m imposing a construction, though, in doing this. He was a complex person, and I’ve a feeling he left a lot of different people with a lot of different impressions. This in mind, the best I can render of the man I knew and liked—mostly at long distance—is obviously only a crude sketch, but it’s the best I have to show. And since much of this piece is self-plagiarism, I feel no guilt in closing with something else I’ve said before:
The subjective response… when a Philip Dick book has been finished and put aside is that, upon reflection, it does not seem so much that one holds the memory of a story; rather, it is the after effects of a poem rich in metaphor that seem to remain.
This I value, partly because it does defy a full mapping, but mainly because that which is left of a Phil Dick story when the details have been forgotten is a thing which comes to me at odd times and offers me a feeling or a thought; therefore, a thing which leaves me richer for having known it.
It is gratifying to know that he is being acclaimed and remembered with fetidness in many places. I believe it will last. I wish it had come a lot sooner.
Roger Zelazny
October, 1986
Stability