Пол С. Уильямс: Основатель журнала Crawdaddy! и исследователь творчества Боба Дилана и Филипа К. Дика.

American magazine founder and editor

Paul S. Williams (May 19, 1948 – March 27, 2013) was an American music journalist, writer, and publisher who created Crawdaddy!, the first national US magazine of rock music criticism, in January 1966. He was a leading authority on the works of musicians Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, and Neil Young, and science fiction writers Philip K. Dick (serving as the executor of his literary estate) and Theodore Sturgeon.

While briefly enrolled at Swarthmore College, Williams created :Crawdaddy!, the first national US magazine of rock music criticism, in January 1966 with the help of some of his fellow science fiction fans (he had previously produced science fiction fanzines). His aim was to reflect the sophistication brought to pop music by two albums released in 1965: Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home and the Beatles' Rubber Soul. The first issue was ten mimeographed pages written entirely by Williams. In that issue, he declared that Crawdaddy! would include "neither pin ups nor news briefs" and that "the specialty of this magazine is intelligent writing about pop " with Chester Anderson, David G. Hartwell, and Joel Hack, which published poetry and nonfiction by Williams, and novels by Tom Carson, Philip K. Dick, and others. Entwhistle continued until about the year 2000. Williams was the author of more than 25 books, of which the best known are Outlaw Blues, Das Energi, and Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, the acclaimed three part series. In 1981 he edited and published, with David G. Hartwell, the first book edition of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with the book entitled The International Bill of Human Rights), with a foreword by Jimmy Carter. Williams also made significant contributions to Hartwell's book length analysis of science fiction, Age of Wonders: Exploring the World of Science Fiction (Walker & Co., 1985; ), and Hartwell mentions Paul Williams prominently in the book's acknowledgments. His final published books were The 20th Century's Greatest Hits (a "Top 40" list that includes movies, books & other documents) (2000) and the last volume of his critical look at the music of Bob Dylan — Bob Dylan: Mind Out of Time (Performing Artist Vol. 3, 1987 2000) (2004).

In the spring of 1967 Williams was introduced to the fiction of Philip K. Dick by underground cartoonists Trina Robbins, Bhob Stewart and Art Spiegelman. He introduced himself to Dick in August 1968 at the 26th World Science Fiction Convention in Berkeley, California, beginning a friendship that lasted through the rest of Dick's life. Williams was Dick's literary executor for several years after Dick's death and used that position to get several of the author's previously unpublished neorealist novels into print. From 1983 to 1992, Williams ran the Philip K. Dick Society along with Andy Watson and Keith Bowden in the UK. PKDS had some thousands of members internationally and was a significant influence in publicising Dick's work internationally. It published 30 quarterly newsletters, some of which included previously unpublished Dick material. In 1986, Williams published Only Apparently Real: The World of Philip K. Dick, one of the first biographies of Dick. Williams is a featured interviewee in three documentaries about Dick: a biographical documentary BBC2 released in 1994 as part of its Arena arts series called Philip K Dick: A Day in the Afterlife, The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick, which was produced in 2001, and The Penultimate Truth About Philip K. Dick, another biographical documentary film produced in 2007.