Lovely libraries.

Just ordered Ubik : The Screenplay through interlibrary loan. Found out from worldcat that 15 libraries in the states had it. Yay to libraries.

Review of Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch from Analog

THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH
By Philip K. Dick - Doubleday & Co., Garden City, N.Y. - 1965 -278 pp. - $4.95
An author can't come up with a "Man In the High Castle" every time, but in this case Philip K. Dick certainly didn't try. This time he's standing in for A.E. van Vogt, or maybe for a Pohl-Van Vogt collaboration. The result is wild, zany, and lively, but not very memorable.
Today's "Barbie" dolls are obviously the inspiration for Perky Pat Layouts, around which the story wheels and whirls. With a little aid from a nicely habit-forming drug, peddled sub rosa by P.P.E. along with the minutely detailed Perky Pat layouts, the bored people of the overcrowded future live it up by imagining themselves into the surrogate worlds they have built up. As with model railroaders and their hobby, there is no limit to the detail with which the miniature sets can be constructed; a goodly chunk of the economy hangs on it, and on the planets, to which segments of the overpopulated Earth are shipped to molder after being "drafted," these installations are all the life worth living.
Then a wheeler-dealer comes back from Alpha Centauri with a more potent drug and layouts of a more perplexingly entrapping type, and the plot starts to get tangled. Is the mysterious Palmer Eldritch the villain of the piece or the hero. In fact, just what is going on from moment to moment? The only way you'll ever find out is by reading the book, and you may be confused then.

Review by Peter Schulyer Miller form the August 1965 Analog, p. 152-153.

I posted this in response to the list of citations here.

The Brave and the Bold

Just found out that Batman was in a series called the Brave and the Bold! Which was not a soap opera but perhaps a space opera as it features the caped crusader teaming up with the Guardians of the Universe and/or Green Lantern. The things ya don't know! Also at the post at Comictreadmill is a page showing that the Guardians of the Universe are big Ramones or Freaks fans! Gabba Gabba Hey!

PKD

I've been tracking down references for this post at Total Dick-head.

Advice for Librarians

What to Do When the Russians Come: A Survivor's Guide recently was returned at the library I work at. Flipping through it I found out it lists various survival tactics for after the inevitable Soviet invasion occurs when Reagan doesn't get his way. Part of the book lists tactics by profession, here is the librarian advice on pages 118 and 119:

Librarian

Your job will be comparatively safe. Your first duty will be to carry out the removal from your shelves of a large part of their contents. Politically unsuitable books, together with those considered pornographic or decadent, will be proscribed; you will be surprised at the manner in which the labels of pornography and decadence have been extended to cover a very wide range of literature. Your old reference books, such as encyclopedias, will be withdrawn and pulped.

You should keep handy a pair of sharp scissors and a supply of paste as you will have to cut out or replace those entries in the new style encyclopedias and reference books that become politically inconvenient--a normal Soviet practice. As the years go by, even the more harmless books on your shelves will by gradually replaced as works commissioned and printed by the state begin to appear in adequate numbers. Experience from the Soviet Union and particularly from Eastern European countries suggests that you will not be kept very busy checking these out. If you can safely save and secrete some of the books that are being discarded, well and good; although your superiors will be on the lookout for this, and it may be hazardous for you or your friends to be caught reading them.

Duplicating machines will be usable by designated staff only, and will be available, even to degree, only in major libraries.