philip k dick C/D, S+D

I feel cheated when characters act contrary to their ultimate convictions WHEN ALONE

This has been greenlit by Amazon for a full series.

I liked this. I probably should re-read the book now.

What if the show is the REAL 'Man in the High Castle'??

We'll know if Lady Stoneheart never appears oh wait

only one way to find out - let's ask the i-ching xp

i may come off as a total novice but ... what exactly happens at the end of The Man In The High Castle (the book)? I've always been confused (which may be part of the point).

it's been a while, but don't the main characters get confirmation from the i-ching that they're living in a false/parallel universe and the universe from the book-within-a-book is the real one?

yeahhh, i guess that is my takeaway from it

I think that's implied but it's ambiguous

PKD not great on endings on the whole anyway, ambiguity was a good move for him

his best endings are full of dread and ambiguity - Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, UBIK, Valis. Scanner Darkly not v ambiguous but maybe his best ending.

yeah i like the feeling of the ending of man in the high castle, but i guess i've always been unclear as to whether it's quite as ambiguous as it seems? something like that.

i haven't seen the show yet. is it meant to be an ongoing series, or just a single run, covering the events in the book?

as long as the book is a general premise, and the show develops its own sense of being shortly... this feels like it could be another fringe.

each episode they discover yet another alternate reality

am i misremembering, or did pkd do a kinda/sorta sequel to High Castle?

The whole concept of an alternate universe is expanded upon in the chapters Dick wrote for a proposed sequel to TMITHC. Told from a Nazi perspective, these chapters examine the existence of the Nebenwelt, the alternate reality wherein the Allies won the war. Just in these chapters, it becomes clear that the science fiction element is much stronger in his unfinished sequel. It’s been said that Dick was unable to finish this novel due to his inability to deal and write about the Nazi mentality. For a look at these chapters and a revealing essay by Dick entitled “Nazism and The Man In The High Castle” take a look at The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick – Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings

ah ok, that must be what i'm thinking of.

it's been a while, but don't the main characters get confirmation from the i-ching that they're living in a false/parallel universe and the universe from the book-within-a-book is the real one?

Also, there is the implication that our own universe is also false.

This thing

Will def have to grok that when more time (R. Crumb X PKD!), but yes there was the vision of our universe as a false one too--- at least partially inspired by a dark-haired girl, delivering pizza while wearing a fish Xtian symbol--thing I started seeing in the 70s---our universe is a defective copy, which began to be revealed as such via Watergate, when the continuum of deception cracked or stumbled for a moment: we're really living in the early First Century AD, There's much more, but think this is what I read in The Dark-Haired Girl, which I got from Mark Zeising in the early 90s (think he published it, as well as selling it via mailorder)--mainly letters(?), notes, not really presented as a novel---probably included in The Exegesis.

Looks like that girl or her successor is in Crumb's version.

So cool!

That Crumb comic was linked above 13 years ago. :D It's great!

"Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to"

Dick & lizard conspirary theorists otm re: third panel from the end.

First two eps of Man In The Castle up on Amazon. Remainder coming on 11/20.

best american author of the 20th century or unable to write a decent sentence?

A couple of years ago I decided to see what the fuss was about and I read three of his most admired novels. I am perfectly willing to accept the idea that PK Dick is the greatest writer of sci-fi, if only because so many sci-fi enthusiasts would say the same. Unfortunately, we didn't play well together.

I won't deny that his inventiveness was of a very high order and his themes were far-reaching and challenging, but my pleasure in his inventiveness was greatly impaired by his sloppiness of execution, his disinterest in his characters as people, his stale dialogue and perfunctory plotting. I may read him again, but I'm in no hurry.

a scanner darkly is his best prose imo

the only bad one i've read so far is the game-players of titan. which i thought was really bad. but i think he probably wrote it in 24 hours. i have a lot more of his books at home that i still need to read.

I didn't mind The Game Players of Titan. I thought it was worth it for the trippy scenes of game playing on Titan.

I am perfectly willing to accept the idea that PK Dick is the greatest writer of sci-fi, if only because so many sci-fi enthusiasts would say the same.
--Aimless

Actually very few sci-fi enthusiasts would say this. Some Philip K Dick enthusiasts would I guess.

What PKD and a lot of SF (and a lot of noir writing too) tell you in regards to writing as writing and the craft of the novel is that this isn't everything.

Which could be read as 'fuck a Henry James' but hey ho.

Probably helps to encounter this stuff in your late teens when your grasp of people (and different types of people) isn't as nuanced, so not having this reflected in fiction in a sophisticated way doesn't matter as much.

i read SF for the ideas and also because it - at its best - makes me think about and imagine things that i never would have thought about or imagined! which, to me, is a great gift to give to a reader. i can't say that i look to SF for "great" writing, but there have certainly always been very good writers writing SF and Dick was sometimes one of these people. when he was strong it's like reading some of the best bad dreams you've ever read. and that aren't boring like most dreams.

it's gotten to the point where i really can't read most new/modern straight lit fic. it very seldom makes me stretch or makes me think about things in a way that i've never thought them before. lots of known quantities even when the writing is great. but maybe i just don't see the best new exciting stuff out there. or hear about it.

i liken it to being a metal fan. which i am. i have taken SOOOOOOOOOO much out of metal. just...inspiration and ideas and art and craft where even the most traditional genre worship can give me a lot to learn from and a lot to think about! same with SF. and other people just see goofy covers and titles and wouldn't think twice about it. comic book people probably feel that way too. and genre movie fanatics. they can dig all of life out of the unruly pulpy mass of seemingly endless material and have it inspire them beyond what even the creators of the work probably envisioned.

I really like the way that PKD goes far far beyond the '50s space ships' sci-fi, or the Edgar Rice Burroughs type of John Carter/Conan-in-space sort of stuff. Aldiss said that Dick was writing about the California drug culture 'with a slight twist of lemon' and that sums it up for me. Something that attracts me to sci-fi is that it's a way of exploring present day real world concerns, and PKD's novels are full of that.

. Something that attracts me to sci-fi is that it's a way of exploring present day real world concerns, and PKD's novels are full of that.
--"Tell them I'm in a meeting purlease" (snoball)

A lot of PKD's novels are full of his personal concerns and anxieties and I guess if you are going to look for a reason to isolate him from other sci-fi that would be it. There are very sci-fi writers which feel quite so personal and almost none of them sustained a streak of novels that Dick was able to and achieve that level of success (admittedly Dick is way more famous now, but even within his lifetime he had achieved a level of comfort which had been achieved by very few other writers and even fewer who were still operating near their peak as he still was by A Scanner if not arguably past).

there's gotta be an old college paper about the 60's and the rise of PKD and Dylan and the age of the anxious hermit or whatever. they both changed things to suit their own purposes.

PKD never really changed though. Everything is there in his earliest books pretty much. People just came around to it and he took longer writing the books eventually.

his 60's stuff is what he is mainly remembered for by most people though. starting with the man in the high castle. the "classic" dick era.

it's also when more non-SF fans started reading his books.

To be fair starting with MITHC is pretty much when everyone started reading his books.

And I think you have to get to late 60s/early 70s at least before there is much non-sci-fi attention.

thought the second ep of the amazon man in the high castle was v good

disinterest in his characters as people, his stale dialogue

some of the dialogue and characters in a scanner darkly are brilliantly observed, humane and lolsome at the same time. thinking principally of the bike gears discussion but iirc he sustains that general tone pretty well.

been a while since i read it but i remember thinking the characters in the transmigration of timothy archer were noticeably more nuanced than most of his other stuff too

I feel like you can tell when Dick really cares about his characters or feels close to them as opposed to just being plot vehicles - so many of his sad-sack divorced guys or precocious children or confused young women are really poignant and memorable imo. Of course this varies from book to book, but I think from 1972 on or so he gets pretty consistent with writing sympathetic, believable people.

IIRC Transmigration is the one he wrote after being in communication with Ursula K LeGuin about the deficiencies in his female characters. I wish it was a little more, I don't know, lively? It was clearly well done, but didn't have quite the excitement of so many of his others, which maybe is related to him being finally sober and sane and in declining physical health.

A Scanner Darkly stands apart for me - there's a sense that he's just desperate to keep the memory of these people alive, without sentimentalizing who they were.

What is the general consensus on Radio Free Albemuth?

(sorry to interrupt; I thought Transmigration was outstanding)