I felt at the time I received it that that tension, that moral bafflement, was a capsule version of a feeling which informed much of his writing. It is not a thing that was ever actually resolved for him; he seemed too sophisticated to trust any pat answer. He’d said a lot of things in a lot of places over the years, but the statement I most remember, which most fits the man I used to talk with, is one I quoted in my foreword to Greg Rickman’s first interview volume, PHILIP K. DICK: IN HIS OWN WORDS (Fragments West/Valentine Press, 1984). It was from a 1970 letter Phil had written to SF Commentary:
I know only one thing about my novels. In them, again and again, this minor man asserts himself in all his hasty, sweaty strength. In the ruins of Earth’s cities he is busily constructing a little factory that turns out cigars or imitation artifacts that say, “Welcome to Miami, the pleasure center of the world.” In A. Lincoln, Simulacrum he operates a little business that produces corny electronic organs—and, later on, human-like robots which ultimately become more of an irritation than a threat. Everything is on a small scale. Collapse is enormous; the positive little figure outlined against the universal rubble is, like Tagomi, Runciter, Molinari, gnat-sized in scope, finite in what he can do… and yet in some sense great. I really do not know why. I simply believe in him and I love him. He will prevail. There is nothing else. At least nothing else that matters. That we should be concerned about. Because if he is there, like a tiny father-figure, everything is all right.