/lit/ - Literature

>>5323196
*favorite

VALIS.
Good luck getting any other response.

>>5323211
Actually I liked The Transmigration of Timothy Archer better. Another close contender is A Scanner Darkly.

>>5323211
a scanner darkly is also a valid response

plebs who are wrong will say androids (because of blade runner) or the man in the high castle (because it's the only one penguin has the rights to and therefore the only 'penguin modern classic')

blade runner

>>5323211
>VALIS.
nice one

>Good luck getting any other response.
why? none like pkd on /lit/?

>>5323196
Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

>>5323196
A Scanner Darkly. Yup, it's better tan Valis, suck it,>>5323211

>>5323253
>A Scanner Darkly
it's great but a bit overrated..
Ubik or The Man in the High Castle are way better

>>5323233
>none like pkd on /lit/?
Check how many times he's listed here: >>5311430
He gets more love than Pynchon and Wallace.

>>5323196
Clans of the Alphane Moon.

I love PKD, but CotAM, ASD, and Ubik are the only books of his I have read so far that I didn't think the ending was a complete mess that mars my appreciation for the rest of the book.
The Divine Invasion for example was fucking phenomenal, I was eagerly looking forward to see how the final battle between Space Jesus and Belial and his corrupt world controling super computer... Then we got a baby goat trying to convince a dude to fuck a chick who is on her period.

>>5323270
they're both great, but better? nah, they're showcases of dicks uncanny ability to rush an intriguing plot to a somewhat unsatisfying ending.

>>5323314
he really seems to have a problem with endings from what I've read of him.

for the thread, VALIS is definitely my favorite, what a book man. that's one I'll read many times through my life

>>5323196
The Man in the High Castle is a really good book.

Haven't read the 'good' PKD yet, so that's my favourite by now.

>>5323228

man in the high castle is great, my favorite is UBIK tho

This thread seems like a good place to ask:

I have a book with
The Man In the High Castle
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Ubik

I've only read Do Androids Dream so far, and I liked it, especially the weird social satire about mechanical animals. What should I try next?

>>5324131

three stigmata

Ubik is good.

So is the Man in The High Castle. I thought it was kind of average the first time I read it, but after finding out he actually used the Tao Te Ching in making plot decisions, I thought it was really interesting.

>>5324131
Of the stories in the collection?
If you want a more straight forward kinda story then go with The Man in the High Castle
If you want a bit more whimsical scifi/fantasy elements then I recommend Ubik.

I have a copy of VALIS and have tried numerous times to get into it, but quickly grow tired of it each time. I guess I'll try to push myself through more of the book to see if it clicks at a certain point.

As of now, my two favorites by him are Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,

>>5323196

Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich is probably my favorite book, and its my favorite by PKD

>>5323196
Honestly loved androids and scanner darkly. Enjoyed Ubik, but in more of a fun book to read way. Didn't think it was on par with the rest of his work

Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

I'm crazy about Dick and while a bit lesser known, I think Time out of Joint really encapsulates his whole 'thing'. It is my have PKD book.

>>5324131
I'm pretty sure I have the same book.

I'm actually working my way through it from cover to cover right now.

Man in the high castle is based beyond all words.
Three Stigmata was alright, like, what is reality mayne?

>>5325478
>I'm crazy about Dick

>>5323196
Three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

>>5323251My niggers.
>>5325142
>>5325142
>>5324155

I started Ubik and the prose is shit. Its Harry Potter tier...does this book have any redeeming qualities? Is p dick a good writer????

>>5326170

hard to say...

>>5323196
I just finished and enjoyed Valis

>>5326170
Had the same thought when I started Ubik also, ended up just moving on. I thought this guy was supposed to be one of the best writers sci-fi has to offer? Seems kind of corny

>>5327710
>I thought this guy was supposed to be one of the best writers sci-fi has to offer?
'Sci-fi' is an awfully broad category, bruh. In a sense Shakespeare and Melville are also a kind of sci-fi.

>Seems kind of corny
People like him because of his earnest and naive esotericism, not because of his literary stylistic skills.

>>5327710
Ubik has a bad start but gets really good once it gets going. Especially prose wise, the punctuation and writing are all over the place at the start but it becomes pretty good once they end up in half life.

>>5327770
>but it becomes pretty good once they end up in half life.
you fucking retard.

>>5327768
>Shakespeare and Melville are also a kind of sci-fi.

>>5327768
> In a sense Shakespeare and Melville are also a kind of sci-fi

Really curious to see you try to argue this

>>5327814
Well, they sure as fuck not realism, since they feature wizards, eldritch monsters, ghosts, ancient curses, level 50 wizards and the like.

Anything that isn't strict materialist realism gets lumped into the 'sci-fi' bin.

>>5327840
Fantastic events =/= science-fiction; you are really reaching here. None of that has anything to do with fictional technology or science

>>5327840

you mean Fantasy.

Those are all D&D type shit, not sci-fi.

>>5327862
Are you really going to argue 'fantasy vs sci-fi' with me here??

Look, 'sci-fi' is a broad and meaningless category. For some it's strictly 'golden age YA pulps about space exploration', for some it's 'fantasy with robots and/or aliens', for some it's a broad category that encompasses all speculative fiction.

PKD never wrote about science or technology. He wrote trippy esoteric pieces about the nature of reality, hallucination of solipsism.

You'd have a very hard time slotting him into the 'sci-fi' bin, almost as hard a time as doing so for Melville.

>>5327899
>You'd have a very hard time slotting him into the 'sci-fi' bin

what's so hard about putting Ubik, Minority Report, Total Recall, Blade Runner in sci-fi? It's pulp with high technology science-shit every where. Get used to it.

The fact that he injects some naive philosophy into his sci-fi doesn't mean anything, literally all sci-fi does this.

>>5323196
>name your have Philip K. Dick book

Dick is off-topic; this is a literature board

>>5327940

>>5327935
>what's so hard about putting Ubik, Minority Report, Total Recall, Blade Runner in sci-fi?
Is this a fucking troll? 'Minority Report', 'Total Recall' and 'Blade Runner' are fucking movies, not PKD novels. Have you actually read anything by Dick?

P.S. His books don't discuss technology or science. They're set in the future, but being set in the future doesn't automatically make your book sci-fi.

>>5327987
>His books don't discuss technology or science
pre-cogs, half-life, replicants, scramble suits, holoscanners, space colonies, memory implantation...what the fuck is wrong with you?

>>5328046
>what the fuck is wrong with you?

he's trying to justify his preference for shitty sci-fi pulp.

>>5328053
>pkd
>shitty pulp
fuck you. fuck that other guy too. 4chan.

>>5328046
I haven't seen that shit discussed, only namedropped.

Anyways, that's not the point. PKD is only borderline 'sci-fi', picking him as a quintessential sci-fi author is wrong. He's his own thing, blurring genre boundaries.

>>5328059

have u taken a second to notice his prose? it's somewhere above JK Rowling and below Stephen King....

>>5328066
I have no problems with the prose of either tbh. and dick is far above those when it comes to ideas.

UBIK would make a great anime.

>>5328066
If you resort to judge literature by craftmanship and handywork, you effectively reduce it to carpenting.

Shit, no Maze of Death?
I also really like Flow My Tears

>>5328219

don't write a novel if you are interested in only ideas, just write a philosophical treatise or science essay.

Like, if you can't draw, don't make an animated cartoon...and let's not kid ourselves his ideas were as pedestrian as they come in sci-fi.

>>5328293
> don't write a novel if you are interested in only ideas
By far not all ideas can be expressed rationally.

> his ideas were as pedestrian as they come in sci-fi
He wasn't writing about 'sci-fi ideas'. He wrote about drugs and the nature of reality. You know, Castaneda shit, except set in the future instead of Fake Mexico. For fuck's sake, I don't even like the guy, why am I explaining his work to your illiterate self??

>>5328368
>For fuck's sake, I don't even like the guy, why am I explaining his work to your illiterate self??

I don't know what you are doing or why, but you didn't address any of his points.

Nothing you said excuses being a poor writer, no matter how interesting your ideas are.

>>5328397
He doesn't have any points. Also, you don't understand what the word 'idea' means here in the literary context.

>>5328431

point is if you can't draw worth shit, don't become an animator. Doesn't matter how interesting your "story" or "idea" is...use a different format or medium.

His stories are unreadable.

>>5328473
>His stories are unreadable.
Considering the central idea of his oeuvre is being stoned out of your mind ('ego death' in new-age parlance) I think the style fits quite well.

>>5328473
But the thing is, they are readable and many people enjoy them. His writing isn't overly complex, so by claiming it is "unreadable" you are either a literal illiterate, or a pretentious elitist.

>>5328590

it's a metaphor for being shit. Not literal...

they are readable like how McDonalds food is edible....edible garbage.

>>5328493
If the style merely reproduces the subject then the style has done nothing of any interest except for technical interest. You need to reproduce and then master, or just master, using the style. Language is about communication. He should have used film .

>>5323196
That .gif is a spook.