"Me and PKD" is a personal fan essay written in an informal, confessional register by an unnamed visual artist and parent who studied at Western Illinois University. The author opens with the declaration: "It's true. I'm a dickhead," using the self-applied label common among devoted Dick fans.
The essay traces the author's discovery of Dick and their aspiration to become an authority on his work, describing their obsession as transcending ordinary fandom. The author reflects on the intersection of their PKD passion with their art practice and personal identity, noting the challenges of pursuing this passion alongside parenthood and earning a living as an artist.
The narrative includes an origin story involving the author's discovery of antique photo albums in someone's trash while out for a jog in 2006, near their graduation from Western Illinois University. This discovery appears to have catalyzed or connected to their engagement with Dick's work.
This five-page piece is representative of grassroots PKD fan culture and documents the profound personal impact Dick's writing has on individual readers. It illustrates how Dick's fiction creates a particularly intense form of reader identification and intellectual engagement that fans describe as qualitatively different from mere literary appreciation.