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The Essential Philip K. Dick

nytimes.com

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Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#51

Post by pmoriarty »

leephillips wrote: post #15
keiferski wrote: post #6

PKD 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…

I found Ubik somewhat intriguing. I’m about 60 pages unto Valis , and so far it’s mostly bad philosophy and theology, thankfully saved by occasional flashes of humor, and the almost-interesting fracturing of the main character into at least two people. Does it get any better?

I consider Ubik to be Dick's best work... so if you found it only "somewhat intriguing", I doubt you'll be any more pleased with anything else he wrote.

That said, if you are interested in reading more by him, of his books I can recommend:

- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

- Martian Time-Slip

- Galactic Pot Healer

- Eye in the Sky

- the middle part of Lies, Inc

Some of his short stories:

- Beyond Lies the Wub

- Faith of Our Fathers

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#52

Post by pmoriarty »

theptip wrote: post #43

For anyone that liked “Blade Runner”, it’s fascinating to go back and read PKD’s “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep”, which Blade Runner was based on. You can see the threads of similarity but it’s a way more surreal paranoid bad-acid-trip vibe. Can’t remember another adaptation with such a striking difference from the original.

Blade Runner is way better than DADOES, which is a minor Dick work. He's written much better books.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#53

Post by pmoriarty »

stevenwoo wrote: post #4

The 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.

"Short story not mentioned but is worth reading if one has not, Second Variety."

The movie The Terminator has some similarities to Second Variety, and I wouldn't be surprised if the movie was somewhat influenced by the story.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#54

Post by pmoriarty »

x86x87 wrote: post #39
Barrin92 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's funny because for me the prose of a lot of science fiction writers was always what turned me away from the genre. I could barely make it through Dune and gave the Foundation up. A lot of science fiction authors which I came to love a lot like Gibson or Le Guin I think I mostly got into because of their sense of style. Stephenson for me is probably the worst offender for this. I've met so many people both online…

Stephenson is a bit more polished than PKD but your point still stands.

I had high expectations from a bunch of friends recommending Snowcrash, but when I read it I found it to be so awful I couldn't even finish it. It was just so childish and stupid. I don't get why people like it.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#56

Post by w1nst0nsm1th »

Jtsummers wrote: post #9
w1nst0nsm1th wrote: post #5

I 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.

It's on Apple TV on location. I will watch it some day. Thank for the recommandation.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#57

Post by Jtsummers »

pmoriarty wrote: post #54
x86x87 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stephenson is a bit more polished than PKD but your point still stands.

I had high expectations from a bunch of friends recommending Snowcrash , but when I read it I found it to be so awful I couldn't even finish it. It was just so childish and stupid. I don't get why people like it.

Snow Crash is either an accidental or deliberate parody of cyberpunk. The main character is Hiro Protagonist. When he goes into a VR world and is "fighting" with a sword he's swinging a sword around wildly in the real world too, while around other people. And then in Diamond Age Stephenson [rot13]xvyyf gur zbfg plorechax punenpgre va gur svefg be frpbaq puncgre[/rot13].

When I read Snow Crash the first time it was back when cyberpunk was still a pretty hot style, and I was also reading a lot of Gibson and others. It fit well within that context. Then later I reread it and realized what I wrote above, it was parodying elements of the genre while creating almost a quintessentially action-adventure cyberpunk story with a programmer/pizza delivery driver hero. And then it had the typical Stephenson ending, which is to say

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#58

Post by bryanrasmussen »

keiferski wrote: post #6

PKD 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…

>The Man in the High Castle has an interesting concept but I don't think it's particularly well-written.

It should be noted that Ursula K. Le Guin disagreed with your assessment in her famous essay Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown, in which she felt that The Man in the High Castle was one of the only science fiction novels that had a human character - a Mrs Brown.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#59

Post by Wistar »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #31
nonrandomstring wrote: post #27

There's a bit in Ubik that stays in my mind. Joe Chip gets into an argument with his apartment door that refuses to open for him because he owes it money. I kinda got that the door was an autonomous money-making agent that held him hostage - a conversation reminiscent of that between Doolittle and the Bomb in Dark Star. It made me see the ridiculous side and ultimate absurdity of micropayments leading to world where…

Years ago I read about cloud computing as getting a free vacation but being charged for each sand particle you touch, small on its own but it gets too ridiculous after some time

That expresses things quite evocatively.

Re: The Essential Philip K. Dick

#60

Post by jimmygrapes »

Schiphol wrote: post #33

Has any of you read/skimmed the Exegesis? Is it any good?

It took me several years and as many attempts to get into it and commit, but once I committed and got past the (awful) forward, I went front to back over the course of a month or two. As sibling comment says, it's very repetitive, but it's also iterative; PKD is trying to make sense of a lot of things at once, over and over again with slight tweaks. Each time he gets closer and closer to essentially rewriting Christian Gnosticism (imo) from the ground up.

It honestly changed my life. There were times when I would have dreams and thoughts along similar lines and then end up reading them in the pages that night. It is worth a read if you're in a dark place, because it might give you the same sense of "I'm not alone" that it did to me.

Certainly ain't for everyone, but the reward is great.

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