/lit/ - Literature

>>4885650
Check good sci-fi. Like pic related.

What's your fav Philip Kindred Dick novel? /lit Name just one.

The Man in the High Castle would be mine, not too original opinion I guess.

>>4081658
And what exactly is wrong with genre lit, nerd?

Philip K. Dick to the FBI, September 2, 1974

I am enclosing the letterhead of Professor Darko Suvin, to go with information and enclosures which I have sent you previously. This is the first contact I have had with Professor Suvin. Listed with him are three Marxists whom I sent you information about before, based on personal dealings with them: Peter Fitting, Fredric Jameson, and Franz Rottensteiner who is Stanislaw Lem's official Western agent. The text of the letter indicates the extensive influence of this publication, SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES.

What is involved here is not that these persons are Marxists per se or even that Fitting, Rottensteiner and Suvin are foreign-based but that all of them without exception represent dedicated outlets in a chain of command from Stanislaw Lem in Krakow, Poland, himself a total Party functionary (I know this from his published writing and personal letters to me and to other people). For an Iron Curtain Party group - Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not - to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas. Peter Fitting has in addition begun to review books for the magazines Locus and Galaxy. The Party operates (a U..S.] publishing house which does a great deal of Party-controlled science fiction. And in earlier material which I sent to you I indicated their evident penetration of the crucial publications of our professional organization SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA.

Their main successes would appear to be in the fields of academic articles, book reviews and possibly through our organization the control in the future of the awarding of honors and titles. I think, though, at this time, that their campaign to establish Lem himself as a major novelist and critic is losing ground; it has begun to encounter serious opposition: Lem's creative abilities now appear to have been overrated and Lem's crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks on American science fiction and American science fiction writers went too far too fast and alienated everyone but the Party faithful (I am one of those highly alienated).

It is a grim development for our field and its hopes to find much of our criticism and academic theses and publications completely controlled by a faceless group in Krakow, Poland. What can be done, though, I do not know.

Just finished A Scanner Darkly and loved every bit of it. What work from Dick would you suggest I read next?

I've been told by a lot of people that I would really enjoy the work of Philip K. Dick. So...simple question...where should I start?

Every time I tell someone I'm into science fiction they suggest Philip K Dick. These someones are all respectable people the suggestion was noted. However memory lapses saw that it took several instances before it stuck in my mind. I've noticed some Dick love here on lit as consistent as tastes can be here. Alas I have bought A Scanner Darkly figuring with the film adaptation it was a good start. My question to lit is where do I go from here? What are his more notable works?

TLDR: What are Philip K Dicks best books?

Question /lit/,

I attend an Ivy league school and I need to declare my major this week. I can either do a double major and one minor, or one major with a double minor. I know that at least one of my majors is to be English, but Political Science and History are the other two in the equation.

What combination should I do?
English-History double major/PoliSci minor? English-PoliSci major/History minor?
English major/History-PoliSci double minor?

Thanks a lot.

http://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#P.K.Dick

PK Dick snitchin on Lem

problem lem?

It's true, Dick could never write, not even in Scanner Darkly. He'd probably admit he couldn't. It's quite a mechanical prose, you'll find yourself reading a few paragraphs over to try and come to terms with it. I'd read a lot of Kazuo Ishiguro who is a very 'flowery' writer; whose command over the language is totally poetic. Reading Dick was very different, and you've got to see past the writing and appreciate the ideas. If you can't do that, don't read science fiction.

A lot of this is because he wasn't a writer. He was a guy who had these crazy ideas, and that's what he was conveying. A lot of his books he wrote on speed, which wouldn't of helped either. You get a lot of that in SF or 'speculative fiction' as they prefer to call it.

When it comes to his later stuff like VALIS and other books, he went absolutely crazy. Started having visions and stuff. Like in "Flow My Tears The Policeman Said".. those events happened to him later in the book after he had written it. I'm straying from your claim.. But yes, I'll say it again for emphases: Dick can't write, people never claim that he can.

something is wrong, we accidentaly found what

DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?

What novel by Philip K. Dick would you recommend I start out with ?

I've read a couple of his short stories and I currently have my friend's copies of The Man in the High Castle, VALIS and Flow, My Tears, The Policeman Said.

I'm also going to the library in a bit, so I'm pretty sure I can get ahold of A Scanner Darkly (I've been told this is a good starting place) and such.

>>564960
Philip is pleased by this thread

Philip K Dick has a huge fucking back catalog that I want to make my way through. I don't necessarily want to read all of his books. Can you guys just rec his best ten or fifteen to start?

I've got "The Man in the High Castle" and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" to start.