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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Who's Philip K. Dick?

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12:08 / 21.11.03

I read 'Paycheck" last night, I wonder how much they've bollocked up the movie...it's got Ben Afleck starring, is anyone going to see it? I guess I probably will.

Forced into this conversation

18:30 / 21.11.03

charlie kaufman did a script for "a scanner darkly" a few years ago. you can find it here.

15:37 / 22.11.03

um, I don't think that link is working.

Forced into this conversation

20:45 / 22.11.03

Dust yourself off and try it again

18:14 / 23.11.03

this is so great!

21:19 / 23.11.03

oh man, it sure is!

Thanks for that.

A

12:19 / 25.11.03

I put it to you that Total Recall is actually a good movie.

02:24 / 27.11.03

I'd also sign up to the Scanner Darkly appreciation society. 'Read it once years ago, and still dont own a copy, but I remember by some cosmic stroke of luck I picked it up a day or two after I watched Drugstore Cowboy. So in my head that's what it looked like: Matt Dillon, Max Perlich, suburban west-coast 70's drug-addled meandering. Bob Hughes trying to explain why you should never look at the back of a mirror always makes me think of the scene in ASD when they're trying to decide why their car won't go.

And THATS what any film of it film should look like. Rainy. Seventies style. Not like science fiction at all.

01:34 / 03.12.03

Barely on-topic, but there's a small Philip K. Dick joke in this week's Onion...

Davies said CBS also seriously considered another alternate-reality series called The Man In The High Castle In The Outback, in which 12 women would compete for the love of a Jewish man hiding in Australia under an assumed name because the Allies lost WWII to Nazi Germany. Ultimately, executives deemed the scenario less likely to engage the average American viewer than the post-Civil-War alternate reality.

22:33 / 03.12.03

But seriously folks, when I'm all alone, Mr Phillip K. Dick, makes me feel that I am not. In the 6 billion others, even though i will never meet, feel or love them, they do exist. And for that, I thank him.

semioticrobotic

13:45 / 21.05.06

Having only read Do Androids ... for a class in science fiction literature, and having seen (and loved) Bladerunner, Minority Report, and Paycheck, I picked up A Maze of Death in an attempt to expose myself to as much Dick from as many different eras as possible.

I must say, this novel seems somewhat different from the other works I've read/viewed. I've read (here and elsewhere) that later Dick is somewhat dark(er) and deals more so with psychological issues -- but wow. That said, however, I enjoyed it immensely (lapping it up in about three sittings).

One question that's bothering me, however: How do the chapter titles relate at all to the content in their respective sections?

16:33 / 21.05.06

Philip K. Dick, pre cog and very much a man who saw how the future was. Arthur C. Clarke's world is all boy scout shiny clean future, Phil Dick's has grime in all the right places.

19:05 / 21.05.06

So I'm 4 years too late but that "insects at war" story everyone was kicking about was undoubtedly "the cosmic puppets", an almighty tome and one which I read early one morn while horribly hung over..

21:28 / 21.05.06

I picked up A Maze of Death in an attempt to expose myself to as much Dick from as many different eras as possible.

Well it's less hassle than getting a flight to Mykonos, I suppose.

03:03 / 25.05.06

Great find in a used bookstore! Today I bought a black and white trade called "The VALIS Trilogy". The art is of a pseudo-constellations, all of them of things breaking open: a globe broken to reveal a baby, a statue's head broken. Really neat. Afterword by Kim Stanley Robinson. Contains VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and finally, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. I'm excited!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:49 / 25.05.06

Ah, result! That sounds great.

15:54 / 25.05.06

Of course, Radio Free Albemuth is also part of the Valis trilogy - in fact it is more properly the first draft of Valis - apparently Dick wrote it and sent it to a publisher who suggested a few changes and based on these suggestions, Dick wrote a new book from scratch, that bookwas Valis...

17:01 / 25.05.06

Nah, neither '... Albemuth' nor 'The Transmigration of Timothy Archer' properly belong to the trilogy. It ends with 'The Owl in Daylight', except it doesn't, because he never wrote 'The Owl in Daylight', but instead died.

Actually, I don't give the Trilogy business much emphasis, since people don't really agree which books go and what doesn't, things like 'Radio Free Albemuth' complicate when it's taken in that it's (a) an earlier draft of another book and (b) not published until after Dick's dead, and in the long run, all of his works operate nicely in parallel and opposition to each other. 'Ubik' could be the first part of the VALIS trilogy with 'VALIS' actually ending it.

That's a lovely collection to have though, those three books under one cover. And the KSRobinson essay is nice, too. It does its bit to pave over Horselover sometimes being a paranoid asshole who ratted out those ostensibly his friends and contemporaries to our big ugly government... but it might not be the place for that, anyway.

12:19 / 31.05.06

UK Lithers: My local branch of Waterstones has a 3 for 2 offer on all PKD (and a pretty nice selection), you might want to try yours.
Peace

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:13 / 26.06.06

We Can Build You (Again)? (Lack of) Total Recall (about where I left the android)? Do Androids Dream (of going home)? PKD android still missing.

14:13 / 12.11.07

I was just reading a short story by Dick called "The Crawlers" and it struck me - is there any Dick story that isn't in some way about monstrous offspring? It seems like everything he writes has this invisible undercurrent of rebirth, evolution, remaking... either with androids & sterility (Do Androids Dream...) or teratoma twins (Dr. Bloodgood) or bizarre new personalities/children (Sophia and Horselover in Valis).

I don't think I remember seeing this talked about, though - most people are drawn to his take on consciousness.

16:28 / 12.11.07

His twin sister died just five weeks after they were born, and he said that had a big influence on his life and his writing. After he started having his visions and was fantasizing about a wise goddess that he was in contact with, that could also have been a sublimation of his grief.

wiki: P. K. Dick and his twin sister, Jane Charlotte Dick, were born six weeks premature (...). Dick's father (...) had recently taken out life insurance policies on the family. An insurance nurse was dispatched to the Dick household. Upon seeing the malnourished Philip and injured Jane, the nurse rushed the babies to hospital. Baby Jane died enroute, just five weeks after her birth (...). The death of Philip's twin sister profoundly affected his writing, relationships, and every aspect of his life, leading to the recurrent motif of the "phantom twin" in many of his books.

18:09 / 12.11.07

Wow - like Elvis.

Astonishing Sod Ape

00:42 / 14.11.07

quote:Originally posted by sleazenation:
His work can be split into two distince phases. In the first he was the author of metaphysical science fiction with the underlying questions what makes anauthentic human and what is real.

I think three phases. His very early novels were more or less straightforward sci fi novels (albeit with a slight and strangely unidentifiable distinct sort of PKD twist, which also unfortunately denied him any success or acknowledgement). They were shite.

Personally, my fave novel of his is Galactic Pot-Healer.

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