Abstract.–Within the last year or so, letters of Dick’s have become known indicating that his „relationship” with the FBI was not solely passive on his part, nor chiefly that of victim. Over a span of six months (or more), he sent the FBI at least 21 denunciatory communications detailing a paranoid fantasy of Dick’s: that he was a target of a worldwide Marxist conspiracy involving a multitude of agents and agencies, SFS among them. The facts in the case admit of any number of interpretative hypotheses, psychoanalytic and otherwise. Indeed, that the materials, especially in relation to the many interpretations they lend themselves to, make for a Dickian novel to rival Ubik, say, is one of only two things which can be said for certain about this FBI affair. The other is that, to all appearances at least, Dick’s behavior (whatever his motives) was utterly reprehensible, and not merely because it was two-faced but also by mason of its (possible) consequences.

[A response by Gregg Rickman appears in SFS 54 (July 1991).]