/lit/ - Literature

What writers have the best short stories?

> Tries to commit suicide by driving a car with his #1 fan off a cliff.
> Nothing personal kid...

What other authors have tried to kill their fans?

Who is the Philip K Dick of the 21st century?

>>18612357
That's bullshit, the best science fiction is only marginally related to actual science.

what did he mean by this? Is he based? Is there an alternate dimension where the Germans won the war?

Anyone else here like Dick?

>>18092423
>Accessible drugs, virtual reality to cope with red nothingness, scarce resources.

>transcend the genre, writing insightful sociology-religious texts with great soul
>die a broke hobo 30 years younger, remembered primarily by your creditors

>>17318535
>“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll bring a copy down to you. Give me until this evening.” He found a pen and paper. “Let’s have your address.” The hell with the Mageboom simulacrum, in view of this; he had never witnessed such an attractive girl in his life. All at once everything else had become mediocre, hurled back into proper perspective.
>[...]
>An hour later, slightly after five o’clock, the cab began to descend to the roof field of Patty Weaver’s remarkably handsome, large and stylish new conapt building. This is the big time, Chuck said to himself. Hobnobbing with a breast-heavy TV starlet… what more could he ask?
THAT part of the book where THE MC meets The Attractive Popular Girl.

>glancing at the excessively modern furniture; it was neo-pre-Columbian in style
I lol'd at neo-pre-. While simple, he does have a way with casual futuristic scenery descriptions.

>Her part. Good grief, he realized; he hadn’t written any dialogue that included her, the slinky, breast-heavy, nipple-dilated female intelligence agent—he had only done scenes between Ziggy Trots and his shrewish wife.

I want to get to the part where the Heebs telepathically dunk on Mary & Friends already.

>“I have an answer. Leadership in this society here would naturally fall to the paranoids, they’d be superior individuals in terms of initiative, intelligence and just plain innate ability. Of course they’d have trouble keeping the manics from staging a coup… there’d always be tension between the two classes. But you see, with paranoids establishing the ideology, the dominant emotional theme would be hate. Actually hate going in two directions; the leadership would hate everyone outside its enclave and also would take for granted that everyone hated it in return. Therefore their entire so-called foreign policy would be to establish mechanisms by which this supposed hatred directed at them could be fought. And this would involve the entire society in an illusory struggle, a battle against foes that didn’t exist for a victory over nothing.”

There's more but I now want to read The Stormlight Archive by PKD.
Imagine if Sanderson actually gets around to writing The Silence Divine, where your powers are stronger the sicker you are.

>"Frankly, we feel there’s nothing more potentially explosive than a society in which psychotics dominate, define the values, control the means of communication. Almost anything you want to name can come out of it—a new, fanatical religious cult, a paranoiac nationalistic state-concept, barbaric destructiveness of a manic sort--[...]"

>"It’s entirely possible that in twenty-five years a society of mentally ill people may have come up with technological ideas we can use, especially the manics—that most active class.” He pressed the elevator button. “I understand they’re inventive. As are the paranoids.”

>Poor Chuck, she said to herself, you don’t stand a chance, once I get you into court. You’ll never know what hit you; you’ll be paying out for the rest of your life. As long as you live, darling, you’ll never really be free of me; it’ll always cost you something.

>Joan roamed about the conapt. “Are you going to move a lot of personal things in? Or are you going to live just like this? I’ll help decorate it for you, and Lord Running Clam will, too, to the extent he can. And down the hall there’s a molten metal life form from Jupiter called Edgar; he’s hibernating these days, but when he comes back to life he’ll want to pitch in. And in the apt to your left there’s a wiz-bird from Mars; you know, with the multicolored headdress… it has no hands but it can move objects by psychokinesis; it’ll want to help, except that for today it’s hatching; it’s on an egg.”
>“God,” Chuck said. “What a polygenetic building.” He was a little stunned to hear all this.

>And to Mary creativity was the open sesame to life; working for the CIA, programming propaganda simulacra who gabbled a message for uneducated Africans and Latin Americans and Asians, was not creative;

>Let off on the roof field Mary descended by in-ramp to floor ninety, came to the glass door, hesitated, then allowed it to open and entered the outer office in which Mr. Feld’s receptionist—very pretty, with much make-up and a rather tight spider-silk sweater—sat. Mary felt annoyed at the girl; just because bras had become passé, did a girl with so pronounced a bosom have to cater to fashion? In this case practicality dictated a bra, and Mary stood at the desk feeling herself flushing with disapproval. And artificial nipple-dilation; it was just too much.
>“Yes?” the receptionist said, glancing up through an ornate, stylish monocle. As she met Mary’s coldness her nipples deburgeoned slightly, as if scared into submission, frightened away.

>author starts going mad
>his work starts to suffer
Can't believe that shit like Divine Invasion came from the same guy as Ubik

What’s your favourite Philip k dick short story?

What the fuck was his problem? Schizoid rambling becomes "science fiction" if you preface it with enough robots, dude SPACE, or imaginary drugs?

Love me some Dick

is he just incapable of writing an ending that's good?

>>16513448
Unironically, Philip K. Dick

Sorry to say this, but the newest self-aware generation (Gen Z) is total trash, even worse than the earlier one. Zero consciousness, zero knowledge, zero inquisitiveness, just pure mindless ADHD-driven bite-sized-media consumption. They wouldn’t know who pic related was - they don’t even know what Sabaton is. Seriously.

Things that are considered “reddit” are far removed from Gen Z. They don’t know anything, any memes, nothing. They don’t know any movies. None of them watched Jaws or Indiana Jones. They are literally quite the most NPC people to ever have existed.

There’s no hope. Have no expectations. Literally none. Nil. They’re the most ignorant generation in modern history. They quite literally do not know NOTHING.

Was he actually a good author or did he just write pulp trash?

I just realized that cover pic is the pink laser sattelite and not an iron man jesus thing... was this intentional?

genius? schizo? prophet?

What does /lit/ think of Dick?

How did he put out such an enormous amount of literature with it all remaining so consistently high quality?