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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Who's Philip K. Dick?

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18:42 / 01.06.02

BA: "The only thing I didn't enjoy about reading the VALIS trilogy (well, 2 of the 3 so far) was that it's made me reconsider my whole 'indifferent agnosticism' and previous Catholicism.... damn, that was scary and unexpected from picking up a PKD book..."

Yeah, I had the same experience, only I kinda enjoyed it. My metaphysical and spiritual trips had all come to a halt. Now I think maybe I was really a Gnostic all along but never knew enough about it to realize.

Or maybe not. Maybe God is a Russian satellite.

19:23 / 01.06.02

Here's some script review info on Minority Report and Wired's interview with Spielberg about it. He sounds like he wants to be true to Dick's style but Hollywood always ends up glossing the guy up.

16:43 / 03.06.02

I'm sure it won't be Donnie Darko ::shrugs::

12:53 / 04.06.02

I'll be extremely suprised if Minority Report isn't a bunch of crap.

12:13 / 16.06.02

Cosmic Puppets is crap, I'm afraid - barely even a novel. I wouldn't recommend it. However, it was the one which someone was trying to remember the name of earlier in the thread - "the one with the babylonian gods", except that they're Zoroastrian.

16:37 / 07.07.02

So, after obsessively valuing stuff like Atari cartidges and PKD paperbacks before moving, I picked up The Simulacra and forced my way through the fist several pages. Much to my surprise it got very, very good. The cast of characters, while being (of course) almost exclusively male, is huge; and they all have reliable plausible motivations, and they tend to affect one another in a web of activity and association. And it's chock full of sci-fi fun. I can't think of anything he left out. I haven't quite finished yet, and I still suspect the ending will piss me off...

But, has anyone else read this one?

06:08 / 08.07.02

I have. It was one of the first I read after 'Do Androids...' and I quite enjoyed it. I don't know how the ending will piss you off.

15:45 / 08.07.02

Oh, it did. It was just messy and only one character wanted something. The others all end up off panel, waiting for a sequel. This would make a great movie with a little tweeking, but Nazis don't get on screen very often.

Still, this is the best PKD book I've read: telekinesis, psychoanalysis, paranoia, globalism, politics, time travel, image culture, advertising, robots, aliens, mind control, and a jug band.

16:08 / 08.07.02

Belated Humourless Feminist And Mildly Threadrotty Contribution follows.

Why no chicks on the Best SF writers Of All Time lists, when the four best SF writers of all time are, clearly, James Tiptree, Jr (chick), Marge Piercy (chick), Kurt Vonnegut (dude), and PKD (dude)? And even Ursula leGuin is better than William Gibson.

Though I do tend to think of chick-SF as a different genre from dude-SF.

09:09 / 09.07.02

ynh: Sorry. I just realised that I was thinking of "We Can Build You". Like the Simulacra, with simulacras and whanot, but a lot more entertaining. Read that one.

17:12 / 09.07.02

That's the one that starts with the piano con, right?

13:20 / 12.07.02

...I don't remember. The earliest thing I remember is the beginning
dealing with robot construction and reinacting the civil wart with
simulacra. Millions of them.

A

12:04 / 16.07.02

There's an article on Dick up at Bookforum.net at the moment.

23:07 / 29.07.02

*bump*

i'm reading man in the high castle at the moment. good stuff. attitudes of nazi sympathisers as well as descriptions of what the reich did to africa are making me feel horrified/angry for a strange reason. a book hasn't made me react like this in ages

11:43 / 30.07.02

There's a bit on our man in the latest issue of Fortean Times. A basic profile by Andrew Butler, a wee bit where contemporary SF authors - Alan Moore, T Pratchett and B Aldiss etc - choose and talk about their favourite Dick books (three of them are very sniffy about him, in a "hmph, well actually, vastly over-rated, hate him, smells of wee-wee" stylee), a tiny bit about Dick fillums and a bit on Valis. Prolly nothing new to big fans but worth reading in the newsagent.

06:30 / 06.08.02

I just picked up Clans of the Alphane Moon and The World Jones Made. Good stuff?

15:53 / 08.08.02

I just picked up Clans of the Alphane Moon and The World Jones Made. Good stuff?

Clans of the Alphane Moon is hilarious! I think it's an overlooked Dick classic. There are some pretty definite Dick standards (insane folks, simulacrum, etc.), but some killer surprises, too (a wealthy, Bob Hope-style comedian, a talking slime-mold from Ganymede).

Hooray for Clans of the Alphane Moon!

16:39 / 08.08.02

I just finished reading Clans of the Alphane Moon . While there are some pretty nifty things (yay for telepathic slime molds!), the ending was a bit disappointing. Everybody lives happily ever after? It just doesn't seem right.

06:32 / 09.08.02

Actually, after suffering through several let-downs, and with plenty more texts on the shelf, I'm begging anyone to point me in the direction of a Dick book (or story other than the amusing "We Can Remember it for you Wholesale") with a satisfying ending.

08:26 / 09.08.02

I can't think of any, but I haven't read them all and can't remember them in that much detail anyway. I suggest you go to the nearest book shop with a decent Dick section and check the endings out for yourself. You'll only need to read the last 2 or 3 pages of each book (or last sentence if it's a short story).

09:23 / 09.08.02

well it depends what you mean by a 'satisfying ending' personally I think the shrort stories strange memories of death, the exit door leads in and the electric ant have wonderful denuments as does ubik and radio free albemuth.

00:10 / 06.12.02

Too little time to read through all 3 pages in here, but I picked up Mary and the Giant some days ago expecting unsettling thoughts and ideas, and what I got was a girl straight out of a Clowes story. What's up with that?

Is it an anomaly in his body of work?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

21:16 / 06.12.02

Isn't it one of his few non-sci-fi books that wasn't published until after his death?

14:16 / 07.12.02

They've got a complete collection of first editions of those in my tiny hometown library and NOBODY ever takes them out, myself included.. funny that.. maybe I'll read one one of these days.. I imagine PKD writing straight non-sf character-based fiction could be pretty depressing and a little cringeworthy though..

Oh, and if we're talking Dick books with 'satisfying endings', yer not exactly going to get any "And that sorted everything out nicely and I went home for a good night's sleep" type endings with these kind of stories, are you..

..but Radio Free Albumeth, A Scanner Darkly, The Man in the High castle - devastating endings..

22:18 / 08.12.02

Eye In The Sky has a good ending, since it was really a moral fable about McCarthyism. It's hard to find, though. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, my personal favorite, also has a good ending. It's an all-around great story, with Perky Pat (i.e., Barbie) as the focus of the Eucharist, peddled to miserable conscript farmers on Mars by the company that does the terraforming.

23:44 / 10.12.02

I actually liked the ending to A Scanner Darkly. I understand why someone would think it was trite, but the way it was all connected (will not spoil) made for some interesting satisfaction. Do you mean devastating as in "utter crap" or devastating as in "holy shit!"

Confessions of a Crap Artist had a horrible ending, IMHO, but I thought that entire -book- was horrible.

Am currently reading VALIS. Need I say more? Guess I can only answer this after I've finished the trilogy. So far I'm having a great time.

13:36 / 11.12.02

I mean devastating as in, well, really good, as in like a combination of "stunning", "mindblowing" , "shocking" , "beautiful" , "horrifying" etc.

Tho oddly enough I finished reading 'Do Androids Dream..' last night and found the ending a little.. anticlimatic.., although I think it's going to be one of those books where the themes and ideas don't really come together whilst you're reading it, but linger in your head and make themselves known later..

23:07 / 11.12.02

It's odd- I don't even remember the ending of Do Anroids. A Scanner Darkly? I don't think I'll ever forget it.

14:31 / 20.11.03

WIRED has Philip K Dick on its cover this month, "The inside-out story of how a hyper-paranoid, pulp-fiction hack conquered the movie world 20 years after his death."

A new Dick movie is coming out at Christmas, "Paycheck", which is a great short story...

15:14 / 20.11.03

I keep sitting down in the NYC subway and seeing someone across from me reading a Dick book. It's happened about once every month, once every two months to me for the past 5 months or so. Verry interesting.... most of the Dick books I see people reading are from that new trade dress version of a bunch of his books. Saw someone reading UBIK across from me last week. PKD synchronicities are fun!!

The only PKD books I've read thus far are VALIS and that Collected Essays by PKD ("The Many Realities of PKD"?) thing put out by the same publishing company. I'm wondering what I should read next...UBIK maybe? What would you recommend I check out next?

16:46 / 20.11.03

Divine Invasion and Transmigration of Timothy Archer would be good (to finish off the scary old testament trilogy)

UBIK is great, as is The 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch...

03:21 / 21.11.03

Oh, I've got the collected essays thing... it's got a great pitch for a TV show right?

at the scarwash

05:00 / 21.11.03

Martian Time Slip is my personal favorite. I think that the ending there is a pretty good kick in the guts.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:10 / 21.11.03

Um, for someone who supposedly loves PKD so much, this was a pretty dumb mistake to make. Do Androids... is a full length novel. We'll Remember It For You Wholesale, which was turned into Total Recall, was the short story.

Having just re-read the entire thread, I have to be pedantic. "We'll Remember..." etc, was A short story. Not the one "Do Androids..." was expanded from. That was "The Little Black Box" (and, if memory serves me well, another one too, but I forget which).

Anyway.

A Scanner Darkly. My favourite PKD novel. Probably not his best (that honour would have to be split between The Transmigration of Timothy Archer- for his 'literary' fiction- and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch- a skiffy classic) but the one that I've always found touched me the most emotionally.

And an animated version would so not work. GOOD actors. A GOOD director. Precious little in the way of effects. The actual ending.

Damn. Rereading that last paragraph, I've just realised logistics make the filming of ASD totally impossible. Oh bugger.

11:02 / 21.11.03

GOOD actors. A GOOD director. Precious little in the way of effects. The actual ending.

Sounds perfect to me.

With the obvious exception of Bladerunner, all the Hollywood films 'based' on PKD stories have been utter bollocks, and I wish somebody would make one with intelligence and dignity, rather than more hackneyed soulless blockbuster bullshit.

If they make a crappy mangled version of A Scanner Darkly I think I'm just going to cry.

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