philip k dick C/D, S+D

Episode one had a very nothing plot, and shamelessly nicked most of its aesthetic from Bladerunner - don't have much hope for the rest of the series if this was its flagship.

I was hoping that they would maybe do some stories as multiple episodes to have room to adapt some of the novels.

After reading and re-reading quite a few PKD novels in the last year or so also while there was no indication in any of the novels, but so many of them circling around Mars and various views of the Bay area, one could almost envision them being put together as a tapestry kind of like how Cronenburg's Naked Lunch and the Kafka movie.

it seems like the perpetual problems with PKD adaptations is that people who don't understand his work always try to shoehorn the basic elements into some other kind of story/framework, and everything that makes the material unique or engaging gets muddled or stripped out. Really the only ones I think are successful are Bladerunner and A Scanner Darkly.

Yup

Don't remember any problems with the time loop in Tempunauts apart from the usual. Do like the fact that it was inspired by a - somewhat similar?- Sladek story.

I think Bladerunner and A Scanner Darkly both work in part because they fully embrace the sadness that is part of the core of PKD's work, these very empathetic evocations of loss, failure, sacrifice

It's going to be on Prime Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=470TG3AdA1A

Second episode had Dr Who level production values

I'll give this a shot but the reviews here don't inspire confidence

"The Father Thing" seems like it would be impossible to fuck up but maybe they find a way lol

Mark E Smith, last fall, on film adaps:

"I think the original Blade Runner is the most obscene film ever made, I fucking hated it. The Man in the High Castle is one of my favorite books; how they fucked that TV show up I don’t know. It gets blander and blander. In the book the level of comprehension of that world is fucking astounding, in the show it’s just everybody going around normally except they’ve got swastika armbands on. The only good Philip K. Dick film is Total Recall, it’s faithful to the book. Arnie gets it. I was physically sick watching A Scanner Darkly, it was like an episode of Cheers painted over except they all smoke dope and imagine women with no clothes on."

brb going to spend the next few months painting over an episode of Cheers

The Father Thing kicked off part 2 of the Electric Dreams series last night.

Ended up being a run of the mill Body Snatchers thing. Though I didn't think the original story was much cop either tbf.

Also, did we really need the fifteen minutes of baseball guff at the start ?

I read Valis at the weekend, holy crap pretty amazing.

A friend of mine has never read any of his stuff and wants me to recommend one to start off with, suggestions? At the monent I'm thinking Ubik.

I like ELECTRIC DREAMS. It's good to have this kind of thing on UK TV.

I would not start with UBIK but with the short stories.

man in the high castle might be a good starting point too - although alternate-post-ww2 is a cliche now, it's maybe his most conventionally well-written book and it introduces a lot of his traditional themes/obsessions

I agree - of the novels, great starting point.

actually now i'm thinking about it the transmigration of timothy archer might be his most conventionally well-written book as far as character goes but it might be a bit uh philosophically daunting for a newbie

Man in the High Castle is the Kind of Blue of PKD recommendations.

I've only read Ubik but loved it. I have Scanner Darkly and Electric Sheep - are they good next steps?

well yeah - i was erring on the side of caution cuz i suspect throwing a new reader into pages-long discussions about the hagia sophia and gnosis via pink lasers from outer space might be a bit... offputting

chuck, those are both all-time greats

The first one I read (like most people I suspect) is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I enjoyed it, but the ones that really hooked me were Three Stigmata and Ubik.

I liked most of the short stories too

i might be the exception, but Man in the High Castle was the first PKD i read, and although i liked it enough, i didn't end up reading anything else by him for years. when i dipped back into the pool, it was with Ubik and VALIS and they blew my mind

yeah i guess ste's friend's tolerance for wiggy reality-melting divine-invasion fiction is gonna be the deciding factor

I'd recommend Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. not as far out as VALIS (which is the book that got me obsessed), not as procedural as Man in the High Castle (which disappointed me), not as conventional and non-representative as Transmigration of Timothy Archer. the short stories are great but you can read most of his novels in a day or two. UBIK is another great place to start. but I'd say Flow My Tears because it has a great, fascinating, and simple conceit, it's more considered than the books he cranked out in a week, and it has inklings of the gnostic weirdness of the work that would immediately proceed it. if you're going for realistic, I'd say A Scanner Darkly over Timothy Archer.

that's about where my PKD taste is, too. (except i still haven't Transmigration for some reason)

still haven't ^read^ Transmigration

I think Ubik is the best intro, it’s a nice balance of what he’s about. Timothy Archer is good but atypically low-key, VALIS is probably easier if you’ve read a couple of his other books, A Scanner Darkly is amazing but maybe sets a standard of writing that a lot of the earlier books won’t quite live up to. Man in the High Castle is cool but I know several people who found it frustrating and disappointing, maybe because it’s operating in a more established format but doesn’t obey that format’s rules.

tolerance for wiggy reality-melting divine-invasion fiction is gonna be the deciding factor

I'm not sure really, but I know she really likes Blade Runner so maybe Android is the best start.

UBIK or Flow My Tears. otm about Timothy Archer being atypically low-key. Karl i'd recommend it only if you've read The Divine Invasion, which is somehow even wilder than VALIS and makes Timothy Archer seem even more straightforward. even though it's an unintended trilogy, I think it works- there are hints of mysticism/gnosticism in Timothy Archer that are explicit throughout the other two books. but its strongest suit is the voice: Ursula K. LeGuin criticized PKD's lack of well developed female characters, and he wrote Timothy Archer from the POV of a woman, and imo did a surprisingly good job.

as far as Scanner Darkly setting the bar high... I mean, that's bound to happen if you start with any of the books mentioned. like I wouldn't recommend Eye in the Sky (even though I love it) first over Flow My Tears.

Flow My Tears just has a classic, simple setup (famous person wakes up and no one knows who he is), and its peculiarity unfolds more gradually than other of the later works. like the whole first bit with the girl he's following around the city is paced very strangely, and then how it all ends up with the incest thing and the woman in bondage, and then she's a skeleton? that shit rules

I recall I was just constantly wtfing and pausing for mental breath reading Three Stigmata.

I just mean that Ubik still has a somewhat unpolished and pulpy style to the writing (though it’s funny and fast-paced). It doesn’t bother me, but A Scanner Darkly stands apart in terms of his writing imo, and going from that to something like Three Stigmata (which I love) might be startling.

Xp yeah Three Stigmata has like 15 insane plot twists in the last 50 pages I think.

you've definitely gotta be primed for Three Stigmata, that was maybe the 10th novel of his that I read and honestly I missed a lot, and knowing its reputation, was let down when I finished it. I really need to revisit it. agree that UBIK is pulpy but it's probably the best work of that period of his writing.

I read “Faith of Our Fathers” recently. All-time line - “And I will tell you this: there are things worse than I. But you won't meet them because by then I will have killed you.”

Dr. Bloodmoney for total insanity

I read Martian Time-Slip today, not quite out there like most of his work but man I can't stop loving his books.

yea i wasn't keen on that one either, a lot of people like it

Electric dreams: Autofac was pretty good. Janelle Monae as a customer service bot!

I would not start with UBIK but with the short stories.

This is madness

Just started Skull. Hurrah

PKD's widow Tessa has a youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/busby777/

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ee_H1VMX0AUzLRG?format=jpg&name=small

Schmowen
@themoosemingles

Philip K. Dick, The Germs’ manager Nicole Panter, author KW Jeter, and artist Gary Panter at Philip K. Dick’s Santa Ana condo. Note poster of Fat Freddy of Freak Bros fame.

Marc ʄⁿ Laidlaw
@marc_laidlaw
·
7h

Paul Mavrides tells an amazing story about how he was ghost-drawing a Fat Freddy poster for Shelton just when "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (which hinges on such a poster, and the possibility it's a forgery (in a forged reality)) appeared in Playboy.

Whole thread is worth reading, but got to go now.

Whole Twitter thread, that is (this one too o course)

Poster is the 'Keed Spills' Freddy anti-speed warning, appropriately/ironically.

PDK seems to have been speed-dependent, to an extent, during extended bouts of writing---for reasons of inspiration, obsession, and/or financial desperation---think he acknowledged it in intro to at least one of his books (A Scanner Darkly, maybe?), and it may well have shortened his life---as William Burroughs observed, there were some old junkies, hardly any old speed freaks.

I think nearly every major work was written in a speed haze or post-74 theophany (tho he still used speed, like that speech in France 1977)

"Non-woven masks better to stop Covid-19, says Japanese supercomputer."