Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is investing in sci-fi icon Philip K. Dick. The publisher, which just bought North American rights to an unpublished two-volume collection of letters, journal entries, and other work by Dick, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, has also acquired 39 of the author's backlist titles. The backlist books will be published by HMH's Mariner imprint, after the house releases The Exegesis in fall 2011.
The Exegisis, which was being shopped by the Wiley Agency at the London Book Fair, is edited by Jonathan Lethem and Pamela Jackson and, as Bruce Nichols at HMH explained, provides a "foundation for ideas and themes" that appear throughout the author's extensive body of work.
Dick's novels and short stories have long provided a steady stream of material to Hollywood, notably spawning landmark sci-fi films like Blade Runner and Minority Report. That his books continue to be adapted with such frequency—this year alone will see the Matt Damon starrer The Adjustment Bureau as well as a remake of Total Recall—points to how much of a hold the author continues to have on readers' imaginations. As Nichols said, Dick's books "remain as provocative and cutting-edge today as ever."
