/lit/ - Literature

yes

It's good

It's ok but not his best. The ending is great though.

>>2729974

which one would you consider his best?

alternate history is shit

>>2729979
not the same guy but I read a couple of his books, so far my favorite is A Scanner Darkly.

>>2729979
Scanner and Androids are really good, but Ubik get thrown around a fair bit on /lit/ as the most "high brow" or literary of the bunch.

>>2730017
I think Ubik is usually offered as his best book because it so absolutely epitomized his writing. whether or not it was the best thing he ever wrote, it's probably the best barometer for whether or not someone will like the rest of his work

It's a bit all over the place and hard to follow, but it's very good.

>>2730036
actually while I'm here I'd like to share an observation: I think after dick wrote man in the high castle and it was such a critical as well as personal success, he spent like 3 years putting out books with a similar structure: quickly alternating between a collection of characters with seemingly little in common whose lives all intersect during the climax of the book.

and those are actually some of his best books. he wrote like six great books in 3 years, and about as many "pretty good" ones, too.

prolific motherfucker. must've been the drugs.

>>2730047
>: quickly alternating between a collection of characters with seemingly little in common whose lives all intersect during the climax of the book.

I probably should have said:

characters with seemingly little in common who subtly affect each other without actually meeting each other in person until the climax of the book where their lives collide.

>>2730047
>>2730051
This is a really great analysis. Is this structure something that Dick pioneered or borrowed from another author? We certainly see this in works like Pulp Fiction and Crash.

Is Time Out of Joint any good? I've had it on my kindle for a while but never read it. I've heard that Ender's Game ripped it off.

>>2730077
That is a gorgeous cover.

After you all are done reading Ubik and a few other Dick classics, I highly recommend you give Chronic City by Lethem a shot. It's a love letter to PKD.

>>2730047
>prolific motherfucker. must've been the drugs.
Yeah he took a lot of speed.
Appears to have worjed,

>>2730080
if we're talking about gorgeous PKD covers, I nominate both early covers to palmer eldritch

>>2730100
Here's another good one.

>>2729979
A Scanner Darkly or VALIS (though I'd leave off reading VALIS until you're a bit more familiar with him as an author and as a person).

>>2730047
I got the impression that the only reason High Castle won the award it did was because the awards committee felt Dick deserved an award for /something/ and that happened to be his most recent book.

>>2730100
my computer crashed before I could post the other one

>>2730100
>>2730113

*cough cough*
http://www.philipkdick.com/works_covers.html

>>2730127
dude, I've read every book he wrote before man in the high castle (well, the ones that are still in print anyway) and high castle was most definitely a leap forward for him in terms of storytelling. he addressed a lot of the themes that would become his trademark before high castle, but never in such detail.

I mean, I get if you're saying you didn't think it was particularly good (I disagree, but you're entitled to your own tastes), but I have a hard time believing that it was actually his previous work that won him the hugo when most of his 1950s work was pulp, elevated only occasionally by brief glimpses at the philisophical mysticism that would eventually make him famous.

OP here, just got back from the store. Going to start reading in a bit, thanks for all the opinions.

Feel free to keep the discussion going as it seems I have a lot more to explore about PKD.

>>2730159
Actually, I feel like maybe I should substantiate my point by pointing out that all the books that people actually talk about when discussing PKD were published AFTER Man in the High Castle.

Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney, Now Wait for Last Year, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, Flow My Tears the policeman said, A Scanner Darkly, the VALIS trilogy. He wrote a lot of short stories before Man in the High Castle, some of them very good, some even quite famous (minority report, for example) but pretty much none of his books before 1961 get read except by weirdos like me who are obsessed with the guy, and for good reason. they're mostly pulp. not bad pulp, really, but none of it was particularly notable at the time.