philip k dick C/D, S+D

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)

I like it. Better than Valis imo (could just be contrarianism though). If you are lukewarm on late period Dick ymmv.

Transmigration has a great backstory.

Scanner always tears me up at the end. The epilogue is just... so true.

Yeah, always thought Scanner was the most moving of the ones I've read. Been two or three decades though.

It holds up. His most emotionally affecting work for sure.

Radio Free Albemuth is worth reading if you enjoyed VALIS. I don't think it's nearly as good though. It's a bit more out there but the characters aren't as good and therefore doesn't have the same emotional impact as VALIS. It's probably been about 15 years since I read it though.

I have finally read "The man in the high castle" lately.
I had been considering reading it for a long time.
The pitch is great and exciting but I found the book very boring. I couldn't care less about the characters and what happens to them, the History/Uchronia/plot twists don't really go anywhere interesting past the initial idea and eventually, I don't really see why all the fuss...
very disappointed... one of the rare times in my life where I was almost angry at the author by the end of the book !
or maybe I simply didn't get it !

i thought albemuth was interesting as a companion piece to valis but not great in its own right.

a scanner darkly is a total masterpiece, yeah. i need to watch the linklater film again sometime, i thought it did a great job of capturing the frazzled tragicomedy of the book.

i like high castle less than almost any of the others

It's sort of the least typical isn't it. Much less of his standard fractured paranoia and much more verging on tedious alternate history.

not a fan of High Castle

I like Radio Free Albemuth so much more than either Valis or Transmigration, it seems to me to most clearly articulate the later PKD wordlview

the ending of flow my tears is the most moving piece of PKD i've read

followed closely by a scanner darkly...

Scott's two longer posts from the 24th OTM in all kindsa ways.

Reminds me: Scott led off this discussion on ILB's Rolling Science Fiction:

did you know that UKL and PKD went to high school together and were in the same class and they didn't even know each other at all? you can't make that stuff up.

JP: Were you thinking about Philip K. Dick while writing Lathe of Heaven?

UL: Oh yeah. It’s sort of an homage to him.

JP: Was it something you shared with him and discussed with him?

UL: We wrote letters back and forth some. We never met. I was rather scared of Phil. He was very heavily into drugs, and drugs do scare me. I had three kids at home, and was not enthusiastic about having a real—not a pothead but a heavy drug user around. Phil went off the rails periodically, and so I was not really looking to meet him. But we did correspond, very friendly, for some while. We seemed to respect each other’s writing, were interested in what each other was trying to do.

JP: I read you had gone to high school together. That’s not true?

UL: That is so weird. Yes, we were complete contemporaries at Berkeley High School, but he’s not in the yearbook. His name is in the yearbook, but there is no photograph. I think Phil dropped out before graduation.
I don’t know many people anymore that were at Berkeley High with me. When there were more of us alive we tried to find out anything about him. Nobody remembers him. Not one person in this group remembered him physically. He worked at a store where I bought records when I had the money, so I might have met him there. But what he looked like then, as a teenager? [Shrugs.] He is absolutely the invisible man at Berkeley High.

― scott seward, Friday, August 7, 2015 10:06 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is so wild

― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, August 7, 2015 10:22 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow!

― ledge, Friday, August 7, 2015 10:49 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, terrific.

― the pinefox, Friday, August 7, 2015 11:01 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Speaking of weird Berkeley connections, PKD at 19 also lived in a warehouse loft with Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan for a while: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090323/cheney-c.shtml

― one way street, Friday, August 7, 2015 11:05 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read somewhere that moving from the rainy world of his native Berkeley to the artificial paradise of Southern Cali was a revelation, maybe even before Disneyland opened, and there he became fascinated with, for instance, families' familial concern when the Abraham Lincoln simulacrum started seeing a little off, like it wasn't feeling well. (Also wrote some stories as by as A. Lincoln-Simulacrum.)
The Bay Area seems not to have turned him on so much, although the acerbic non-SF Mary And The Giant is v. readable, and unmistakably young PKD.

― dow, Friday, August 7, 2015 2:01 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"turned him on in so many ways" might be a better way of putting it; he copped some inspiration there, anyway. (Speaking of the record store, he owned or managed his own for a while, and even had his own radio show---classical, I think.)

― dow, Friday, August 7, 2015 2:05 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Great piece, one way street! I'll have to check out more Spicer. The affinities of SF and Beat (-era) poetry, h'mmm....

― dow, Friday, August 7, 2015 2:13 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That record store or something like it, fictionalized, figures prominently in Radio Free Albemuth, iirc. You should definitely check out Spicer! Even with the Spicer revival of the last several years (i.e. since the bulk of his poetry came back into print in 2008), he deserves to be read much more widely.

― one way street, Friday, August 7, 2015 2:23 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm obliged to link to his 1965 lectures on poetics, since his notion of composition as dictation from the Outside gets fairly Dickian: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/238196?page=1

It’s impossible for the source of energy to come to you in Martian or North Korean or Tamil or any language you don’t know. It’s impossible for the source of energy to use images you don’t have, or at least don’t have something of. It’s as if a Martian comes into a room with children’s blocks with A, B, C, D, E which are in English and he tries to convey a message. This is the way the source of energy goes. But the blocks, on the other hand, are always resisting it.

― one way street, Friday, August 7, 2015 2:28 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eye in the sky is great!

yeah that's my favorite of his early ones

halfway through re-reading Our Friends From Frolix 8 - using the real name of one of his ex-wives for a an ex-wife character that one of the main protagonists fantasizes about murdering is a lil grim

Jack Spicer was a great poet

i'm 100 pages into three stigmata, eager to see where it goes, trying to keep my expectations in check knowing how many people rate it as their #1. UBIK seriously fucked with my head, i read it in two sittings and was literally vibrating when i finished it, really scared, late at night...

Also from Rolling Science Fiction etc.:

"The local heroin rehab center assured Phil that the break-in was undoubtedly the work of the Terra Linda Minutemen..." Paul Williams' epic coverage (prob his best journalism) of PKD for Rolling Stone, via time capsule mirror.pdf of the original issue---come along if you can:http://www.philipkdickfans.com/mirror/articles/1974_Rolling_Stone.pdf"> http://www.philipkdickfans.com/mirror/articles/1974_Rolling_Stone.pdf

― dow, Sunday, November 15, 2015 5:12 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've been looking for that story, thanks dow! have you read Only Apparently Real?

No, what is that?

a book by Paul Williams about PKD, I just ordered it. The cover is the same illustration used in the RS piece.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517JMN0APZL._SX303_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Has anyone seen the Man in the High Castle show on Amazon? It just got renewed for another season, I thought it was a limited miniseries. How are they going to stretch it out like that considering the ending? Is it radically different from the book?

haven't seen it yet, but from the little tidbits i read the series was already quite a bit different than the book (a PKD adaptation tradition i guess) so it doesn't surprise me.

did you read the paul williams book? how was it?

in related news i continue to believe the Exegesis is one of the best bathroom books out there

haven't read much of it yet, it has the RS story from 1974 and other conversations with PKD. highly recommended from all the fans i know. i'm working my way through all of his novels rn, just started time out of joint