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/lit/ - Literature

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4758204 No.4758204[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

What does /lit/ think of Phillip K. Dick?

>> No.4758220

i cant get enough of dick

>> No.4758228

I love Dick

>> No.4758243

I'm addicted to Dick.

>> No.4758249

I really wanted to like Dick. I tried but it wasnt me.

>> No.4758266
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4758266

>>4758220
>>4758228
>>4758243
>>4758249

>> No.4758282

Heard about a few stories, but never wanted to go further.

>> No.4758303

My friend recommended Dick. I was hesitant but once I got through it I was euphoric.

>> No.4758312

>>4758303
Yeah I bummed my first Dick from a friend as well

>> No.4758326

I didn't know so many people loved Dick on here.

>tfw no gf to enjoy Dick with me

>> No.4758335

>Discuss Great Writer
>Dick Jokes
>/lit/

>> No.4758337

I'm not a big fan, but I sure do love the penis.

>> No.4758342

Unsurprisingly /lit/ loves dick. I haven't touched Dick in a while but I'd like to.

>> No.4758346

>>4758335
W37C0M3 2DA 1N73RN37

>> No.4758355

>>4758335
It kind of makes me glad I never had any Dick in high school. Fucking kids.

But on topic, I had to do a report on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in high school, and I've been a huge fan ever since.

>> No.4758376

Best Sci Fi writer of the last part of the twentieth century.

>> No.4758377

>>4758355
>good novels
>high school
surely you ruse

>> No.4758424

>>4758377
we read faulkner, homer, shakespeare, and mccarthy in my high school book club

>> No.4758466

Did Dick go crazy with the pink laser beam stuff, or was he trying to drum up publicity?

>> No.4758493

I liked Dick's message but it was hard to swallow .

>> No.4758494

>>4758466
He was sincere.

>> No.4758513

>>4758466
Yes, he really had schizophrenia. A lot of books are based off of his real life experiences. When his wife left him in the 70's, and left him all alone in a 4 bedroom house, he let drug addicted teenagers live there with him, where they'd burn themselves out while he was getting fucked up on amphetamines.

>> No.4758743

Dick writes the deepest lore.

>"Yes." Buckman nodded. "Now consider this." He paused a moment to quietly fart, then continued.

>> No.4759146

>>4758743
Is this really Phillip K Dick quote?

>> No.4759160

>>4758493

LOL

>> No.4759163

his life is more interesting than his writing, which is genuinely not great.

>> No.4759181

>>4759163

sure, if you say so.

>> No.4759190

>>4759181
don't take it personally m8

>> No.4759192

>reading Ubik
>character mentions out loud "I sure am glad we don't bury people anymore. How barbaric that was."
>close book
i may have been hesitant in judgement, but eh.

>> No.4759194

More like fill up my dick amirite?

>> No.4759196

over rated
Michael Moorcocks review sums it up nicely
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/mar/15/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.philipkdick

>> No.4759204

>>4758466
crazy
he had a fragile mind to begin with
then the poverty of churning large quantity of work for little money leaving him no time to revise and improve it and thus get some more money and therefore needing to make a lot to sell for very little and so on in a downward spiral
Combine with using barbituates to keep this high rate of production going
Sent him over the edge
The same thing that sent L. Ron Hubbard off the deep end too btw

>> No.4759214

>>4759196
I actually prefer PKD over Moorcock any day of the week, and much like his pal Alan Moore, Moorcock should be busier writing stuff that matters instead of spouting opinions on fucking everything ever

>> No.4759225

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cK2MPgAHRk
Mostly good BBC Arena documentary, interviews some writers who knew him: Tim Powers, Thomas Disch, Brian Aldiss, Kim Stanley Robinson
Theres also lame shit with celebrities and dramatizing

>> No.4759231

>Philip K. Dick
>Michael Moorcock
And people say sci-fi isn't a joke.

>> No.4759233

>>4759214
I have to agree that I dont much care for Moorcocks fiction
BUT his criticism and essays are gold, editorship too

>> No.4759242

>>4759214
>shall I address the content of the review?
>No... I'll attack its writer

>> No.4759245

>>4759225
>Thomas Disch is credited as a SF Writer
oh boy they must have coped an earful from him when he saw that

>> No.4759322

"This brings to my mind my strange and eerie feeling that my novels are gradually coming true. At first I laughed about this, as if it was only a sort of small matter; but over the years—my God, I've been selling stories for 23 years—it seems to me that by subtle but real degrees the world has come to resemble a PKD novel; or, put another way, subjectively I sense my actual world as resembling the kind of typical universe which I used to merely create as fiction, and which I left, often happily, when I was done writing.

Other people have mentioned this, too, the feeling that more and more they are living in a PKD novel. And several freaks have even accused me of bringing on the modern world by my novels."
-PKD, Exegesis

Because I can relate to this quote, I'm a PKD fan. You read it, and you either relate or you don't.

>> No.4760642

>>4759146
Yes. From Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.

>> No.4760745

I read a collection of some of his novels recently and enjoyed it, gonna check out some more of his stuff in the future (mainly interested in The Man In The High Castle and Flow my Tears, The Policeman Said)

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch was cool, but when followed by Martian Time-Slip the two felt a bit formulaic.
I enjoyed Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? but, like with Blade Runner, I don't really see what the fuss is about.
Ubik was much more interesting, probably the best of the bunch to be honest, I really really liked it, although it started out similarly to Eldritch and Time-Slip but it kinda twisted things a bit and went and did its own thing and that was nice.
A Scanner Darkly was different and more like a conventional novel which was nice, and I enjoyed it more and more as it went on but idk, felt kind of disappointed with it after Ubik.

>> No.4760775

He was a Kindred Dick.

>> No.4761065

>>4758326
If there's one thing better than enjoying Dick, it's getting somebody else to enjoy your very own Dick.

>> No.4761090

He writes some really excellent sci-fi movies.

>> No.4761102

>>4758376
I agree. He never quite filled the shoes of Asimov or Bradbury, but he was miles better than a lot of others, especially that faggot Moorcock.

>> No.4761233

I really enjoy reading his books.

He's good stuff.

>> No.4761236
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4761236

>>4758743

I'm sure it looks far superior in context, you snobbish idiot.

>he wrote "fart"
>it must be bad

Choke on some Dick.

>> No.4761241

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was okay, but I thought The Man in High Castle was pretty terrible. Haven't read anyhting else by him

>> No.4761251

The name Philip means lover of horses.

Lover of horses dick.

>> No.4761260

>>4761241

Do yourself a favor and read any of the following:

>Eye in the Sky
>The World Jones Made
>Ubik
>The Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

>> No.4761309

He can't write well at all, but sometimes he thinks up a solid premise. If you read a lot of him though, you notice that he reuses the same themes and ideas ad nauseam (time travel, drugs, dystopian/shitty future, mutants). For some reason he's fond of throwing in a "twist" at the end that changes everything but which he doesn't explore or support in any way so it usually adds absolutely nothing to the text. The Man in the High Castle is genuinely quite good, several books he wrote are enjoyable pulp, and Ubik gets worse and worse as you reread it.

>> No.4761597

>>4761309
I've only read Time Out of Joint, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, A Scanner Darkly, and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, but every single one seems to deal with the perception of reality in one way or another.

I mean, I still think it's very interesting, and I prefer it to a lot of scifi that spends more time on technological and scientific details over developing interesting characters and conflicts, but he does seem to tread the same ground a lot.

More than anything, though,I like his dialogue and how it flows from point to point.

>> No.4761618

>>4758326

>tfw you aren't a girl enjoying dick

>> No.4761650

Seventeen comments and counting that make a joke on his name.

>> No.4761950

>>4759192
>closing Ubik
You poor, poor fool.

>> No.4762048

>>4758204
Strangely enough, A Scanner Darkly had a huge impact on me. Granted, his writing can be pretty bad at times, but the effect of some of his stories were pretty substantial (at least to me).

For example (which was why I brought up A Scanner Darkly), my brother is an addict. When all of that shit hit the fan, I hated him. In all honesty, I wanted my brother dead for the way he treated all of us in his family. I love Keanu Reeves movies, and I eventually saw A Scanner Darkly, but I felt there was a lot missing (which made sense when I found out it was adapted from a book).

So I picked up the book, and man, it went straight to the feels. Every character: Bob, Donna, James, Freck... all of them showed shades of what my brother had become. It was the closest possible way I could actually understand my brother and his addiction, and I legitimately cried after finishing it.

So because of that, even though PKD may be an objectively "okay" writer, he will always have a special place in my heart. That fucker made me understand my meth-head brother more than any other support group or counselor ever could, and I never met him and never will.

Say what you will, that says something about a writer who can do that.

>> No.4762081

>>4758204
PKD is amazing.

>> No.4762240

>>4762048
That's something that I've found with his books. Although he's not the world's greatest writer, the ideas he came up with and the themes presented outweigh this.

The fact that Scanner Darkly was partially autobiographical, and that last section after the book really hit hard for me.

He had an amazing and inspiring mind, possibly one of my favourite writers.

>> No.4763445

>>4758204
I love Blade Runner.

>> No.4763453
File: 413 KB, 987x696, Roberto-Bolano-Philip-K-Dick.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4763453

http://www.electriccereal.com/roberto-bolano-on-philip-k-dick/

>> No.4763474

what'd you think of the biographical portrayal of PKD in Prophets of Science Fiction (on netflix)?

>> No.4763510

>>4761241
Ignore everyone. Read A Scanner Darkly.
"Barris had his other way to smuggle dope across the border. You know how the customs guys, they ask you to declare what you have? And you can't say dope because--"

"Okay, how?"

"Well, see, you take a huge block of hash and carve it in the shape of a man. Then you hollow out a section and put a wind-up motor like a clockworks in it, and a little cassette tape, and you stand in line with it, and then just before it goes through customs you wind up the key and it walks up to the customs man, who says to it, 'Do you have anything to declare?' and the block of hash says, 'No, I don't,' and keeps on walking. Until it runs down on the other side of the border."

"You could put a solar-type battery in it instead of a spring and it could keep walking for years. Forever."

"What's the use of that? It'd finally reach either the Pacific or the Atlantic. In fact, it'd walk off the edge of the Earth, like--"

"Imagine an Eskimo village, and a six-foot-high block of hash worth about--how much would that be worth?"

"About a billion dollars."

"More. Two billion."

"These Eskimos are chewing hides and carving bone spears, and this block of hash worth two billion dollars comes walking through the snow saying over and over, 'No, I don't.'"

"They'd wonder what it meant by that."

"They'd be puzzled forever. There'd be legends."

"Can you imagine telling your grandkids, 'I saw with my own eyes the six-foot-high block of hash appear out of the blinding fog and walk past, that way, worth two billion do!lars, saying, "No, I don't." 'His grandchildren would have him committed."

"No, see, legends build. After a few centuries they'd be saying, 'In my forefathers' time one day a ninety-foot-high block of extremely good quality Afghanistan hash worth eight trillion dollars came at us dripping fire and screaming, "Die, Eskimo dogs!" and we fought and fought with it, using our spears, and finally killed it.'

"The kids wouldn't believe that either."

"Kids never believe anything any more."

>> No.4763522

i've hear good things about this guy. decided to check him out. don't normally read this sort of stuff. currently in the middle of valis. didn't expect all the hippie shit about lsd, god, universe... a huge turn off. can't say i like his writing style either. and where's the promised sci-fi btw?

>> No.4763524

>>4763522
valis is not as sci fi as his rest

>> No.4763540

>>4763453

Bolaño writes good criticism. Short and straight to the point.

>> No.4763544
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4763544

>>4758204

Three of his books are in my top ten, so that should tell you something...

1. Ubik
2. Three Stigmata
3. Man in the High Castle

Some of his books suck dick (like Lies, Inc.) but considering his output, that's to be expected. Just read the good ones first and only venture into the lesser-knowns once you are familiar with his body of work.

One of the best novelists of the 20th century whether or not you enjoy sci-fi.

>> No.4764026

>>4763510
hahaha. That's something stoners would come up with too..

>> No.4764897

>>4763522
>If someone were to make the “You seem to like Philip K. Dick, and I want to maybe give him a shot, but I don't know where to start because he's written dozens of novels” statement my instantaneous response would be, “NOT Valis!” Then I would add I've only read five or six of PKD's novels and I'm giddy with the prospect of reading further into his catalog. But no, no, don't start with Valis, or else you may never pick up another PKD book and you'd miss out on his masterpieces.
>http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/358066143?book_show_action=true&page=1
great...

>> No.4765000

>>4763522
>>4764897
>currently in the middle of valis
should i just drop it and start ubik? i'm getting nothing out of it. plz advise.

>> No.4765050

>>4765000
Yes.

>> No.4765065

>>4765000
You don't get Philip K Dick if you don't get Valis.

Ubik is really overrated also. Read Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch instead.

>> No.4765069

>>4763510
My favorite scene is when they're trying to figure out how many gears their bike has.

>> No.4765140

>>4765065
> if you don't get Valis.
am i supposed to relate to his babble about the universe? those fucking exegesis entries? am i expected to understand them? be interested in them?

>> No.4765168

>>4759204

But Hubbard was a God amongst nitwits.

>> No.4765165

>>4765140
Yes. The ideas laid out in that book inform every single other idea and story Dick put out. Once you understand Valis, you'll understand his other works much clearer.

>> No.4765177

>>4765165
fucking hell man

>> No.4765185

>>4765177
Ubik especially is just a microcosm of the ideas explained in Valis.

>> No.4765187

>>4765165
Or you could treat the books as self-contained, like non-fans do, and evaluate them on their individual merits and not as an extension of an unified oeuvre-long project.

>> No.4765207

>>4765187
The vast majority of Dicks work is exploring different facets of the same central ideas, which are laid out in Valis. It's pretty much what he was trying to say in every other book, but unfiltered. Once you understand Dick's beliefs and thought processes, his stories take on a different shape. The shape that he intended when creating them.

>> No.4765216

>>4765207
So wouldn't it be advantageous to read VALIS last?

>> No.4765224

>>4761102
obviously since Moorcock was a fantasy writer you dumb fucking cunt

>> No.4765226

>>4765216
Depends on the kind of experience you want. I personally enjoyed reading and absorbing Valis, then seeing those ideas used throughout his other stories. I feel like I would have been missing something otherwise.

>> No.4765228

>>4765226
Technically you're missing the "blind experience". You can always go back a re-read them after VALIS to get another perspective.

>> No.4765245

>>4765228
I hate the blind experience.

>> No.4765269

>>4765226
valis was your first pkd novel?

>> No.4765294

>>4765269
Yeah. I have no idea why I picked that one to start with though.

>> No.4765303

>>4759214
>PKD
I thought you were referring to the CoC writer and not the actual author
i should stop playing text porn games

>> No.4765359

His SF books are full of great ideas but mostly first-draft writing. His mainstream/non-SF novels much better writing, though. Books like Confessions of a Crap Artist, In Milton Lumky Territory and Mary and the Giant all have some of the flavour of Richard Yates and John Cheever's fiction. Weird to think that if those books had actually been picked up by publishers back in the 1950s, his career could have gone in a very different direction.

>> No.4765373

>>4765359
I've thought about that a lot too. I think he was somewhat wasted on science fiction. He probably could have produced a lot more substantial stuff if he found a different niche.

But I guess his legacy was meant to be a bunch of shitty movie adaptions.

>> No.4765390

A talentless, boring hack that somehow manages to sound pompose and impress gullible hipsters that cannot see it's all gibberish and non-sense.

1/10 would not read again

>> No.4765394

>>4765390
>talentless hack
stopped reading here

>> No.4765395

>>4765390
>gibberish and non-sense
Dick's writing is incredibly plain, are you retarded?

>> No.4765404

>>4765390
wtf his style is basic af dude how could u say it's pompus or hiberish

>> No.4765405

>>4765394
Technically he was a hack, though not talentless

>> No.4765408

>>4765395
fucking valis, dude

>> No.4765413

>>4765373
Since reading some of his mainstream books, I've been focusing on them more than his SF novels.

PKD going down the SF route has been good for his long-term reputation, though - none of those early mainstream books are in the Library of America volumes. I also suspect that if he'd ended up primarily as a mainstream fiction author, he could have been an also-ran who'd need a Stoner-like revival to get noticed now.

>> No.4765752

>>4763453

glad to see that Dick has international influence

>> No.4765775

>>4765752
Dick is loved all throughout the world.