Or “What a long strange trip” as an alternate title. PKD fans should flock to this little gem, as it’s a chance to hear him in his own paranoid musings. There is little doubt after finishing this collection of interviews from over thirty years that PKD was among the most unique and brilliant writers ever minted. And strangest, too.

Was he paranoid – truly paranoid? Or was he putting on for those who sought to get inside his brain? Maybe a little of both. But the result is a trip in reading this book that Hunter S. Thompson would envy. At one point, he declares himself to be both John the Baptist and Elijah – that the spirits of both these men inhabited his body so that he could announce the appearance of the true messiah, Maitreya. At another moment, he’s declaring that he tore his own skin with an aluminum can at the death of Anwar Sadat and that he was simultaneously enamored of Khadafi, the man likely responsible for Sadat’s assassination. You’ll hear him describe his voluntary commitment to a drug abuse clinic and how he faked his addiction to be able to stay there and recuperate from what was likely a break-down.

Along the way, you get behind the scenes for many of his great books and stories, see how he crafted them and what inspired them – even that he used [I, Ching] to plot some of them. It’s wildly fascinating and disturbing, in equal parts. There will be moments that he outthinks you along with the person who is interviewing him, only for you to wonder if he is completely mad.

Ultimately, if you read this book, you’ll be compelled to immediately read everything he ever wrote – and that’s a perfect result. Like so many others we’ve lost recently, he is one you’ll wish was still tripping for us, in the literary sense.

Bottom Line: What a long strange trip it was – and I wish it was still going. A must read for any PKD fans, or any fans of classic Sci-Fi.

4 ½ bones!!!!! ( )

A fantastic collection of interviews with PKD from 1974 up to the night before he died in 1982.

I found the earlier interviews facinating, even though the interviewers seemed to have an unnatural obsession with Dick's alleged paranoia, despite his refusal to accept that label other than if it covered the rest of humanity with him.

Dick provides some great insights into his works and world view, and clears up once and for all what he thinks about the Rick Deckard is he/isn't he an android (sorry, Replicant) in Ridley Scott's film, Blade Runner. I don't care what revelations might be made in the up-coming Blade Runner 2 movie, if they don't go with Dick's view they will get it wrong!

The 'Last Interview' of the title was, for me, poignant and sad. Dick seems consumed by his religious (I have no other word for it) mania and seems incoherent at times and it is no wonder that the interviewer, Gregg Rickman, begged leave to end the interview as it's likely he would otherwise have been there until the early hours of the next morning. Although, as I write that, I realise that if Rickman had stayed around, maybe he would have been there when Dick had his stroke and could have got him medical assistance more quickly and... well, that would be a different reality than the one we have, I guess.

Whether or not you're a Dick-Head, this is an intriguing insight into the strange world of an unconventional and complex human person. ( )