Dickian
The Arts section of today’s Sunday Times was very Sci-Fi themed. First with a piece on Philip K. Dick’s new Library of America volume (edited by Jonathan Lethem).
The books aren’t just trippy, though. The best of them are visionary or surreal in a way that American literature, so rooted in reality and observation, seldom is. Critics have often compared Mr. Dick to Borges, Kafka, Calvino. To come up with an American analogue you have to think of someone like Emerson, but nobody would ever dream of looking to him for movie ideas. Emerson was all brain, no pulp.
From the descriptions of him he seemed to channel Charles Bukowski.
For the nerdier Sci-Fi fans they have a piece on the revival of sorts of MST3K. Canceled in 1999, the creators have a new gig, called rifftrax, creating alternate alternate sound tracks for recent movies, instead of old B-grade sci-fi movies. Thanks to broadband you can now download their sound tracks as MP3 and play them along on your computer while watching the DVD. You have to get your girlfriend (if you have one by now) to do the robot puppets on the bottom of the screen. Sounds like a party to me!