[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 20 KB, 233x307, 070820_r16504_p233.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2665244 No.2665244 [Reply] [Original]

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?

>> No.2665280

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and A Scanner Darkly are both well known due to the movie adaptations. I haven't extensively read PKD, but I thought that The Man In the High Castle and Ubik were both pretty good.

>> No.2665305

I'm a huge PKD fan, you should also check out VALIS, Flow my tears the policeman said, three stigmata of palmer eldritch, possibly even martian time slip

>> No.2665309

I'm a huge Dick.

>> No.2665312

Thank you I'll look those up. Looking at his wikipedia page VALIS sounding best to be the next one I will read. Has anyone read VALIS? He must be great for someone to have edited his picture with the Built to Spill Keep It Like A Secret cover colors. Anything worth associating with Built To Spill must be a wonderful thing.

>> No.2665317

What are his most spacey works?... He seems like he has his own feel for what sci-fi is. Does he do any traditional spaceship/exploration geared shit?

>> No.2665325

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXeVgEs4sOo

>> No.2665327
File: 217 KB, 844x548, 56y.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2665327

>>2665309

>> No.2665336

>>2665325
>>2665325
You've secured my interest in the man. Wow haha.

>> No.2665401

My personal favorite was A Maze of Death, it's not as intense as some of his other books though.

>> No.2665409
File: 77 KB, 318x428, 1281148121869.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2665409

>>2665327

>> No.2665422
File: 462 KB, 200x164, 132331183568.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2665422

PKD is a weird author, his stories always start out well formed, coherent, slick like Hollywood film (i.e., Memento, Fight Club) but then degrade into this weird sort of near-hysterical break from reality where everything--the character's relationships, the main character's mental resolve, the plot itself--come under great strain and become a sort of twisted dream-meets-reality sort of thing. Ones specifically following this pattern: Minority Report, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, to some extent A Scanner Darkly as well. Sometimes I'm not sure if it's underlying brilliance or just laziness that's to blame for this (I read someone PKD only wrote SF to try and break into the literary fiction scene).

Anyway. Good shit, read it OP. It'll, at worst, be entertaining.

>> No.2665426

>>2665422
PKD was just writing what he knew. The man was not always coherent in real life, and he suffered from multiple visions and mental breakdowns.

>> No.2665458

picking up Man in the High Castle for my next read, just due to the hilariously weird/intriguing premise.

>> No.2666007
File: 39 KB, 307x230, chiyopenguin.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2666007

he sucks and can't write dialog

>> No.2666026

>>2665317

More in his short stories than anything, but yes, he does.

Check out his short story "The Wub."

Also check out "The Crack in Space" for an lolwtf view of the future and space exploration

>> No.2666027

>>2665312
VALIS is amazing, but I'd recommend leaving off reading it until you've read a couple more of his other books and know a bit about him personally. You'll understand why when you get around to reading it. A Scanner Darkly is a great start (probably his best or second best novel, the other being VALIS), and other ones I have particularly enjoyed were UBIK, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Man in the High Castle.

>> No.2666036

>>2665426
Furthermore, he was a hack. He wrote craptonnes of novels at a breakneck pace, normally while high. He rarely redrafted, he plotted everything as he went along, and he once said something like "I write with my hands, not my head". In other words, he just made shit up as he went along. That's why, thematically speaking, most of his books are just a complete mess of whatever happened to be on his mind at the time. The only real exception to this is A Scanner Darkly, which he redrafted over several years with his wife at the time and his editor, which is why it is much more coherent as a novel than some of his other stuff.

Also as someone else mentioned the other reason he wrote sci-fi was because he could only get his sci-fi published. A Scanner Darkly was originally meant to be set in the early 70s, but because no one would publish it unless it was sci-fi he moved it to the futuristic 1990s and added a bit of sci-fi stuff to it.

>> No.2666068

>>2666036

High on speed.

Speed sharpens the mind.

Learn your drugs.

>> No.2666076

>>2666068
Yes, I know. If it wasn't for the speed he wouldn't have been able to write that fast, but it doesn't change the fact he didn't painstakingly plan and edit and rewrite his shit, he just crapped it out (and it was good).

>> No.2666079

>>2666068
>Speed sharpens the mind
Former amphetamines user here, felt it was necessary to mention that before my comment:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

Oh... god... wow...

No.

>> No.2666087

>>2666079
Most of the mathematicians in the middle of the last century were speed users.

You probably smoked meth, too, which is just fucking stupid. Enjoy your rotten teeth and irreversible brain damage.

>> No.2666367

You should start out with his pre-Valis books. Electric sheep, Flow my tears, Palmer Eldrich, and ubik would be good choices. Also i would recommend getting a short story compilation.

>> No.2666375

>>2665244
>I've noticed some Dick love

Heehee.

>> No.2666384

I really liked Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the Man in the High Castle. I bought VALIS but have never finished it. Started twice, but quit about a third of the way through both times. Don't know why. Just doesn't get me excited.

>> No.2666386 [DELETED] 

>>2666384
I struggled a bit with VALIS aswell, really like flow my tears, electric sheep and man in the high castle.

Just got "our friends from frolix 8" by him the the other day, need to read that and Ubik

>> No.2666406

>>2665325
Christ he was whacked-out, as he would put it. I always knew he was crazy, but seeing him actually sit in front of a room of people and go on about how we're all living in a computer generated reality and he knows this because of his spiritual visions and subconscious predictions that have manifested in his work... he's fucking crazy.