32-session class including video streaming links (minus guest speaker Linda Levy) and all readings
Please note: Orders fulfilled weekly on Wednesdays

Welcome to punk rock literary criticism! This ain’t your parents’ Milton seminar. In tribute to its subject, this homespun class will be an irreverent, funny, authentic, flawed, heartfelt, and hopefully deeply affecting 16-week deep dive into the life and work of Philip K. Dick.

Wanna know what made science fiction’s most enigmatic genius tick? Wanna find the hidden autobiography and obscure literary references in his writing? Take a deep dive into the luminous brilliance of Dick’s fiction and the uncanny weirdness of his life with David Gill, a scholar who has studied PKD for more than two decades, and is currently at work on a full-length biography. The class features an all-star roster of Dick-Head guests including novelist Jonathan Lethem, counter culture thinker Erik Davis, PKD biographer Gregg Rickman, PKD friends (novelist) Tim Powers and ("dark-haired girl") Linda Levy, PKD scholars, Sam Umland, Umberto Rossi, DH Wilson, DE Wittkower (editor of Philip K. Dick and Philosophy), and Gabriel Mckee. 

The sixteen-week zoom, 32 session course will look at the author’s biography, including his traumatic infancy, drug use, and mystical experiences. It will also offer close readings of over a dozen novels, multiple biographies, academic articles, and secondary sources. We will take a deep dive into early short stories like “Roog” and “Progeny,” and novels including Eye in the Sky, The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Martian Time-Slip, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, A Scanner Darkly and Valis.

What students have said about this class:

"Gill is a delightfully casual and embracing expert in his field(s), whose assurance and expertise is matched by his renewable capacity for surprise and in-the-moment insight. It makes for the most delightful form of classroom." — Jonathan Lethem, presenter and student

"What’s a class with David like? Illuminating. Provocative. Collaborative. Exhilarating. If you”re offered a chance to take a class with him, you should grab it with both hands. And hang on…" — Nick Mccracken, student

David Gill has studied the life and work of Philip K. Dick for more than twenty years. He started his Dick-centric blog, The Total Dick-Head (totaldickhead.blogspot.com) in 2007 and the site has garnered more than a million views since. He teaches writing and literature at San Francisco State University. Gill write footnotes for Dick’s Exegesis (the notes the science fiction author made regarding his ‘mystical experiences’ in the 1970s) published in 2011. In 2012 Gill organized a "Dick-Fest" at San Francisco State University which was attended by more than 130 fans and scholars from all over the world.