philip k dick C/D, S+D

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."