The Essential Philip K. Dick
nytimes.com
The Essential Philip K. Dick
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Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick
#2Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick
#3The empire never ended
Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick
#4The writer talks about Ubik but does not mention the pervasiveness of corporate power/role in the daily life described (at least from my interpretation), this is well portrayed in Total Recall, also based on a Philip K. Dick story which varies enough from the movie to be read as separate work.
Short story not mentioned but is worth reading if one has not, Second Variety.
Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick
#5I read all of them, at least the ones published in French...
"A Scanner Darkly" is by far the most polished, and also the most twisted.
Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick
#6PKD is one of my favorite sci-fi writers and I recommend Ubik if you're a new reader, although like the article mentions, you definitely need to be in a certain mindset to "get it." The Man in the High Castle has an interesting concept but I don't think it's particularly well-written.
One thing that I think goes unnoticed about PKD is how some of his earlier short stories are undeniably, unquestionably bad. Fair Game, for instance. He wrote it in 1953, a decade+ before his work started to get really good: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch was written in 1964, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in 1968, and Ubik in 1969.
I personally find this a bit reassuring. It's nice to know that even someone as influential as PKD took a long time to develop.
Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick
#7The writer talks about Ubik but does not mention the pervasiveness of corporate power/role in the daily life described (at least from my interpretation), this is well portrayed in Total Recall, also based on a Philip K. Dick story which varies enough from the movie to be read as separate work. Short story not mentioned but is worth reading if one has not, Second Variety.
Three Stigmata… is also very corporate. Like if Comcast and Space-X merged to form a venture to mars
Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick
#8PKD is one of my favorite sci-fi writers and I recommend Ubik if you're a new reader, although like the article mentions, you definitely need to be in a certain mindset to "get it." The Man in the High Castle has an interesting concept but I don't think it's particularly well-written. One thing that I think goes unnoticed about PKD is how some of his earlier short stories are undeniably, unquestionably bad. Fair Game…
PKD is my favorite writer of all times. I believe that even for his greatest works the writing could have been more polished, way better. The thing is PKD does not get you with the form of the writing but with the ideas that he captures. Truly visionary.
Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick
#9I read all of them, at least the ones published in French... "A Scanner Darkly" is by far the most polished, and also the most twisted.
It was also one of his last novels and most personal, both factors probably influencing its quality. The Linklater adaptation is particularly good and faithful, nearly every scene is close to verbatim from the book. And most of its omissions and changes are reasonable ones for an adaptation into a movie.
Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick
#10The writer talks about Ubik but does not mention the pervasiveness of corporate power/role in the daily life described (at least from my interpretation), this is well portrayed in Total Recall, also based on a Philip K. Dick story which varies enough from the movie to be read as separate work. Short story not mentioned but is worth reading if one has not, Second Variety.
Three Stigmata… is also very corporate. Like if Comcast and Space-X merged to form a venture to mars
The 3 Stigmata is my favourite PKD book. Apart from some of his obscure stuff I've read everything he wrote