AP Does Right by the Blogosphere

By Neal 

Remember our item yesterday about Philip K. Dick and the Library of America? Well, Associated Press book reporter Hillel Italie spread the word far and wide in a story filed this afternoon, and we’re totally grooving on the fact that he acknowledged up front, “News of the project first surfaced earlier this week when Lethem was interviewed by the literary blog, The Elegant Variation.” Sure, in most cases that’s just a simple journalistic courtesy, not worth mentioning at all, but some folks are of a mind that websites don’t deserve props and will lift stories without attribution. So it’s awesome to see the AP recognize The Elegant Variation (one of our favorite literary blogs, though we’re biased because we’re friends with the guy), and fun to see some buzz for this PKD collection while we’re at it—especially since Italie got LOA publisher Max Rudin to acknowledge the possibility of a second Dick collection or volumes focusing on other sci-fi writers like Ray Bradbury or Ursula K. LeGuin.