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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

P.K.Dick (Radio Free Albemuth) & others...

20:13 / 11.10.01

Well... I just plowed through this Book. His last book & only the second I've read. The 1st being The Transmigration of Timothy Archer only after I finished it did I notice it was part of the Valis trilogy.

Should I bother to read the other books?

VALIS was prominant in this book as well... Hmmm funny to read so many repherances to a different Berkeley that I live in...

11:16 / 12.10.01

quote:Originally posted by PATricky:

Should I bother to read the other books?

Yes, in short.

Even at his worst, PKD's writing is still more thought-provoking and worthwhile than 95% of other stuff you're likely to pick up at Waterstones.

11:24 / 12.10.01

I think the idea of a valis "trilogy" is quite unhelpful since A) including RFA there are more than three books and B) They are only really linked thematically by Dick's VALIS experience with the pink light.

Valis and RFA have the strongest similarities of the valis books but are both well worth reading. the divine invasion is a very different and not as successful variation

14:20 / 15.10.01

"Should I bother to read the other books?"

I'd say definitely yes, though it depends what you're after, of course.

As a very general guide:

FAST PKD = 'Proper' sci-fi weirded up with mad ideas, paranoia and dollops of 'what is real?' CRACKING PLOTS, real page turners, things happen in a wham bam no mucking about stylee, hero continuously running from one crisis to another (bad thing happens, is dealt with quickly, there is an immediate response which makes it bad again, oh shit that character wasn't who you thought etc etc). A good film equivalent would be Hitchcock, especially North by Northwest. A music equivalent would be some 60s garage band just getting into psychadelia. See: most of his early stuff, eg 'Solar Lottery' and 'The World Jones Made'

SLOW PKD: similar themes and just as strange but the style is less hysterical. Possibly more 'literary', like, erm, what you'd find in a mainstream novel - more attention paid to character development, that sort of thing. See: generally the later stuff, though 'Man in the High Castle' (1964) fits here.

See here for bibliography with dates: http://www.sfsite.com/isfdb-bin/exact_author.cgi?Philip_K._Dick

See here for extensive collection of fab book covers: http://www.geocities.com/pkdbooks/Bibliohome.html

14:32 / 15.10.01

Just finished RFA myself, and loved it. One funny thing though, I noticed that there were a few bits where he seemed to repeat himself, where he'd spend a few paragraphs saying something and then say more or less exactly the same thing again in slightly simpler form immediately afterwards. It's as if the second passage was meant to replace the first. Given that it was published posthumously, I'd be interested to know how far he'd gotten with the manuscript, if it was a hand-written thing with crossings out etc.

Oh, loved the autobiographical stuff, in particular the little digs at Harlan Ellison, heh heh.

14:34 / 15.10.01

VALIS is good reading, and closely kin to RFA.

The other PKD novels I recommend most highly are Through a Scanner Darkly, The Man in the High Castle and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.

15:41 / 15.10.01

I also really dug Valis and Flow my Tears.

Rex City-zen

17:26 / 15.10.01

You must...MUST...read VALIS.

22:44 / 15.10.01

Radio Free Albemuth isn't really considered part of the VALIS trilogy. It's more like a post-humously published alternative to VALIS. In VALIS, the main characters have a gnostic experience based on a movie called 'VALIS' that takes place in the world of 'Radio Free Albemuth.'

In my opinion, 'The Transmigration of Timothy Archer' is the book that the Phil character from VALIS would have written. 'The Divine Invasion' is the book that the Horselover Fat character would have written. The clincher is that Phil and Horselover Fat are two different personalities of the same main character.

All four books, however, have the same plot underneath it all.

You can't go wrong with PKD. . . 'A Scanner Darkly' and 'UBIK' are also winners.

11:45 / 16.10.01

And 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch' is pretty damn essential too.

And 'Now Wait for Last Year'.

and .. oh, hell, I could go on all day..

20:31 / 17.10.01

well then...

the day's not over YET Riz...

20:56 / 17.10.01

When I was on my big PKD kick I wrestled with the idea of making a hypersurreal, psudeomockery of a PKD roleplaying game for a laugh. In it, each player character was PKD throughout different important times in his life. This group of PKDs would go off on some sort of adventure, I suppose, while all along one of them wasn't actually PKD, but some sort of traitorous clone. I was actually going to make it so it was virtually unplayable.

Having never had anyone around here who even knew who he was I dropped the idea out of disinterest. That, and it was also kind of stupid.

20:31 / 18.10.01

<Wayyyyy of Topic>

heh... a while back a buddy & I invented a drinking game called The Adventures of Arneld Schartzenberger or some such thing. The Premis was that each player would play a different charactor from a Schwarzenegger flick. One would gains points by using an appropiate one-liner (in the proper accent) & get bonus points by using a one-liner from that charactor's specific Movie.

Sufice it to say after several drinks the accents and one-liners became horrificly funny...

</Wayyyyy of Topic>

Pin

18:39 / 04.11.01

Its your thrad! And you killed it! You strange, strange man...

16:52 / 08.11.01

<Sobbing> THRAD!!! Thrad!!! I hardly knew ye!!!</Sobbing>

17:59 / 08.11.01

quote:Originally posted by moriarty:
This group of PKDs would go off on some sort of adventure, I suppose, while all along one of them wasn't actually PKD, but some sort of traitorous clone.

Kind of like the Five Doctors, only utterly bugfuck. I like it.

In a film biography of PKD I saw, they had R. A. Wilson talking about his memories of PKD. RAW reminisced about how there was this rumor going around that he had been killed and replaced with a CIA duplicate. Well, RAW just loved that rumor, thought it was hilarious. He told PKD about it, expecting PKD to laugh. PKD rather gravely pointed out that if RAW was a CIA duplicate, of course he would think he was the real thing. RAW credited PKD with making the rumor even funnier to him, and much more frightening.

13:13 / 09.11.01

and of course, that rumour makes it's way into Radio Free Albemuth..

I never knew RAW and PKD were mates .. one shudders to think of the shit those two cronies could have come up with together..

13:49 / 09.11.01

IIRC, RAW was the comissioning editor for short stories for playboy and it RAW's comissions of Dick's stories saw the author through some real lean stretches

16:34 / 09.11.01

Speaking of 'Radio Free Albemuth'. Hey look: it's Bush's version of the Friends of the American People.
'Bush Seeks New Volunteer Force for Civil Defense' http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/09/national/09BUSH.html
'The White House said it envisioned using 20,000 or more volunteers next year, to
perform routine tasks so that emergency workers can pursue more urgent duties.'

I know this should be in another section, but it's just too weird. Anyone else concerned w/ this?

09:12 / 16.11.01

Alot of those thoughts Came to me while reading that Book...

US Military in former Soviet bases anyone???