More creeping respectability

I haven't had a chance to post over the last couple of weeks--my last weekend was consumed by NYRSF, and I've been working late during the week again--so I missed the initial discussion of the fact that the Library of America is going to publish at least one volume of Philip K. Dick's works: Four Novels.

The novels are The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Roger Elwood Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Harrison Ford, and Ubik (or, as I think of it, Stanislaw Lem Says I'm a Genius).

I think it was nellorat from whom I first heard the observation that everyone agrees that Phil Dick wrote about ten absolutely brilliant novels, out of around 40 total, but no two people can agree on which ones. Of those four, I've never really been impressed by Three Stigmata (though I love "In the Days of Perky Pat", the short story from which it sprang) and am quite aware that Androids is only canonized because of the movie loosely based on it. I think his high-water mark was Martian Time-Slip, which tends not to get noticed. A Scanner Darkly makes not much sense as sf, but as a study of addiction and addict culture, it's terrific; my late brother couldn't stand it, viewing it as War on Some Drugs propaganda. (Notice that we are never given any sense of why anyone would ever actually start taking Substance D--it's described entirely in terms of need and damage.)

Anyway, congrats on storming the walls of literature, PKD.

Meme propagation

The blogger Acephalous is spreading a meme to study the propagation speed of memes. The blogger would appreciate it if you would read the linked page and then link to it in your own blog/journal/whatnot.

"Propaganda" is an example of the gerundive, a verb form which has a peculiar and useful sense in Latin. It's a variation of the future tense marked by the -ndum, -nda ending, and it indicates a sense of necessity. Thus, "memorandum" is "something that must be remembered"; "agenda" (from agere) is "things that have to be done". Lawyers and others who argue professionally use the word "arguendo", meaning "thing that has to be argued", or, more usefully, "let us grant this for the purposes of this argument".

And thus, "propaganda" can be seen as "things that have to be propagated".

See, now you've learned something, unless you didn't.