Cool trivial tidbits from the Wikipedia article on Philip K. Dick:
On Robert Heinlein
From the introduction to a PKD short story collection:
“Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in the world. I don’t agree with any of the ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time, when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn’t raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to him in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine looking man, very impressive and military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I’m a flipped out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love.”
On Ursula K. Le Guin
Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin—perhaps his only peer in terms of academic and literary reputation among late 20th-century science fiction authors—were members of the same high school graduating class (Berkeley (Ca.) High School, 1947), yet did not know one another. Le Guin (then Ursula Kroeber) had been accelerated a grade, while Dick missed much of his senior year with the agoraphobia that would plague him as an adult. Le Guin later became one of Dick’s great champions (calling him “our own home-grown Borges”) and wrote The Lathe of Heaven as a conscious Dick homage; the two maintained a friendship and correspondence until Dick’s death.
