pkd/trp ("the force of entropy")

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

/He saw two stars collapse against one another and a nova form; it 
flared up and then, as he watched, it began to die out. He saw it turn 
from a furiously blazing ring into a dim core of dead iron and then he 
saw it cool into darkness. More stars cooled with it; he saw the force 
of entropy, the method of the Destroyer of Forms, retract the stars into 
dull reddish coals and then into dust-like silence. A shroud of thermal 
energy hung uniformly over the world, over this strange and little world 
for which he had no love or use.
It's dying, he realized. The universe. The thermal haze spread on and on 
until it became only a disturbance, nothing more; the sky glowed weakly 
with it and then flickered. Even the uniform thermal disbursement was 
expiring. How strange and goddam awful, he thought. He got to his feet, 
moved a step toward the door.
And there, on his feet, he died.
/
PKD: A Maze of Death [1970], chapter five

>
> Found a very good essay on that --
>
> Umberto Rossi:
>
> "The Harmless Yank Hobby:
> Maps, Games, Missiles and Sundry Paranoias
> in /Time Out of Joint/ and /Gravity's Rainbow/"
>
> Pynchon Notes 52-53 (spring-fall 2003), pp. 106-123
>
> Sample:
>
> "Pynchon's German obsession may owe a lot to Dick's, but more 
> important is the fact that Pynchon has phagocytized several Dickian 
> works. He has used the diegetic framework of /TOJ/ to build the first 
> section of /GR/. He has evidently inserted allusions to /The Man in 
> the High Castle/. He also gestures towards another Dickian 
> masterpiece, /The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch/: 'the great 
> bright hand' Slothrop is afraid to see 'reaching out of the cloud' 
> (29) not only is the hand of God (in the form of a rocket) but also 
> recalls the shining steel hand of Dick's disquieting entrepreneur/drug 
> dealer. And given that /Gravity's Rainbow/ centers on the towering and 
> menacing Rocket, a notorious phallic symbol (an identification Pynchon 
> insists on), can we ignore the fact that a common slang term for the 
> male sexual organ in the States is /dick/? Would anybody suggest that 
> this pun escaped Pynchon's notice? C'mon!
>
> The relation between these two writers may not be one-way only. (...) 
> After 1977 Dick's narrative changed remarkably. There is surely a 
> Pynchonian atmosphere in his last narrative achievements, /VALIS/, 
> /The Divine Invasion /and /The Transmigration of Timothy Archer/ --- 
> three novels Dick saw as panels of a unitary triptych, the so-called 
> /VALIS Trilogy/ (something that can be read as a trilogy only at the 
> purely hypertextual/intertextual level). /VALIS/ is especially 
> Pynchonian: hypernarrative. encyclopedic, quotation-ridden, 
> proliferating; and it is perhaps no mere coincidence that its title's 
> initial is the arch-Pynchonian V." (pp. 117f.)
>
> Since Dick met with Robert Anton Wilson several times around 1977, I 
> could imagine that it was Wilson who directed him towards Pynchon.
>
>

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