Inside Cal State Fullerton’s Pollak Library on Saturday, August 22, 2026, a group of science fiction enthusiasts gathered in Room 130 of the library’s north building to listen to a panel discussing renowned author Philip K. Dick’s time in Orange County, as part of a larger celebration of the science fiction author taking place at the university.

The Philip K. Dick Festival 2026 took place over four days and included panels, lectures, readings, and film screenings split between CSUF’s library and the Fullerton Marriott. Moderated by David Sander, this panel’s conversation featured science fiction literary legends Tim Powers and Jim Blaylock, as well as Philip K. Dick’s friend Linda Castellani, who originally invited him to Orange County.

​“The Philip K. Dick materials are from the last ten years of his life associated with the university. He actually left his papers here, and we’re going to hear more about those stories,” said panel moderator David Sander at the beginning. “The story about the works you can see in the exhibit Tomorrowlands and New Frontiers, and you can see the letters, books, and things that he had.”

​Starting right at the beginning of Dick’s time in Orange County, Sander asked everyone on the panel to talk about the first time they met the oftentimes paranoid science fiction author. 

​Tim Powers said, “At that time, Phil Dick was living in Canada, having been a guest of honor at a convention. When the convention ended, he simply did not go home, which baffled the convention. He wound up very down on his luck, and attempted suicide while at a drug rehab place where there was no future. He wrote to a professor here at Cal State Fullerton, Willis McNelly, saying I got nowhere to go. McNelly kinda indiscreetly read that letter to his class, and some of the young ladies in that class said that they had just lost a roommate at their apartment building; he can come be a roommate. And you, Linda, took the opportunity to write a letter to Phil Dick, and Phil was so at the end of his rope that he just said, ‘okay’ and got on an airplane.”

Panel Discussion at CSUF Philip K. Dick Festival – Tim Powers and Phil’s Orange County Friends

Linda Castellani continued the conversation by saying, “When I wrote him this letter, I was twenty-one, and you can see a copy of that letter, because I donated it to this library…and I guess it was Willis McNelly who encouraged me to write, and said Phil wants you to pick him up at the airport, and I thought, ‘Who responds to a letter by flying in?’ It was very scary. I didn’t know what I was in for…He looked rather stout. He was wearing a trench coat, tightly belted, and he had a cardboard box tied with an electrical cord.”

​Powers said, “Then Phil found himself with no real period of adjustment in a whole different world, because he was used to his previous life in Marin County, where, after his wife left him, he discovered he couldn’t be alone. So he made his house open to anyone who needed a place to stay, which turned out to be runaway girls and drug addicts. It was a really chaotic life, and he had developed a lot of appropriate reflexes for that life, which completely did not apply in bucolic, quiet Fullerton.”

​​Jim Blaylock remembers when he was a college student, Philip K. Dick obsessing over the KGB, and not being able to tell whether or not his theories were true. Blaylock said, “With his imagination, it sounded like he was constantly making things up.”

​​This was the fourth time the Philip K. Dick festival has been held at Cal State Fullerton. 

Short film screening at PKD Festival at CSUF