Back then I used to read a lot of SF and didn't think much of P.K. Dick's writing. His stories had a tinge of paranoid fantasy about them, and felt implausible, rushed and disjointed, compared with more standard SF fare. I think this wasn't an uncommon perception.
The movie guys, in spite of all the derision they get for bumbling and fumbling, were on the mark spotting a powerful source of mana, and made hay from PKD's chaff.
Lem, being a genius in his own right and honed sharp by life in Soviet-watched Eastern Europe, was able to disregard the "shoddiness of the props" and get to the potency of the spell.
At the bottom of that article: “[Dick wrote that he was] approached in 1972 by a representative of a neo-Nazi organisation who pressured Dick into placing coded messages involving ‘politics, illegal weapons, etc’ into his future novels. He linked this organisation to a series of robberies which happened at his home in California”. Wow.
The movie guys, in spite of all the derision they get for bumbling and fumbling, were on the mark spotting a powerful source of mana, and made hay from PKD's chaff.
Lem, being a genius in his own right and honed sharp by life in Soviet-watched Eastern Europe, was able to disregard the "shoddiness of the props" and get to the potency of the spell.