philip k dick C/D, S+D

My faves: 'A Scanner Darkly' (captures the paranoid mindset of the heavy drug user better than any 'straight' nov), 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch' (terrifying in places), 'Ubik' (his wildest and most exciting bk), 'Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said', 'A Maze of Death', 'Martian Timeslip', 'Time out of Joint', 'Valis', 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep', and prob. the last volume of his collected short stories. Lawrence Sutin's biog is useful and open- minded, too.

There are quite a few dud Dicks, and some bks that only half-work, but it's gd to discover them for yrself (as kind of like a 'control' measure for the 'real' PKD). 'The Man in the High Castle' is his most 'respectable' bk - well-written, a clever idea - but for me it lacks the wild, visionary flavour of his best writing.

Best American author of the Twentieth Century? No; I'd go for Faulkner but would accept arguments for Fitzgerald or Dos Passos as valid.

PKD update! I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon - first collection of PKD short stories I've read & fairly much living up to all the accolades attributed to them etc etc etc. The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer - latter Dick & very, very affecting to me - completely¹ unSF meditations on death, with random touches of the pre-Socratics, the sort of heretical-Christian fragments Beckett was so fond of, & the least irritating wranglings of Dante & Goethe I've seen in a long time. & his San Francisco rings true, to boot.
& just stayed up last night to read through Clans of the Alphane Moon (& something I'm glad I approached after becoming acquanting with PKD etc) - alternately hilarious &, er, provocative (=> heh my current mental state=the book). Grebt ideas & the like (when I clicked to the Clan names), + Lord Running Clam is possibly the bestest PKD character ever!

& what did people think about PKD's "Valis" experience being probably the "climax" (etc) of Linklater's "Waking Life"? If anything else much better than the Crumb interpretation (thanx to duane).

¹this is untrue, obv.

(haha re : my earlier comments (obv?))

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i wonder if the film version will make the ending less ambiguous.

i could imagine that one working out much more easily than ASD.

Nice enough story about PKD and his influence, based around interviews with his daughter Ilsa. Talks about the Blade Runner rerelease, the Giamatti biopic etc.

Nice piece - Giammatti thing sounds interesting. No mention of the Bill Pullman pseudo-biopic...?

There was also a piece in the New Yorker recently although I didn't trust it (anything that claims that VALIS is his masterpiece is suspect in my view.)

it is!

See!

Sci-fi crank 'em out one after another Dick >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> kooky am I crazy or not religious-o Dick.

hey, I read Vulcan's Hammer and Cosmic Puppet and Doctor Futurity this year: I'll take the kooky nutbag over the typewriter-monkey responsible for those three

i love UBIK b/c its best-of-both-dicks

I think the final trilogy of VALIS, Divine Invasion, and Transmigration of Timothy Archer are tops, and the ones I keep rereading all these years. They're the things that got me into philosophy in the first place, and that's not too bad a place to start.

Haha the mind fucking boggles at the idea of people whose start in "philosophy" is the Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

Naming three of the weakest books he wrote in that period, doesn't change the fact that almost everything else he wrote then is leagues more interesting than The Divine Invasion or VALIS.

To be honest, I exempt the Pike "bio" because it is pretty unquestionably the best non-sci fi book he wrote. But compared to Dr. Bloodmoney, UBIK, The Martian Time-Slip, Now Wait For Last Year, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Three Stigmata of Palmet Eldritch it's no contest at all.

perhaps I'm stupid or liquored up or both, but VALIS presented me w. some provocative ideas that had never occurred to me before -- or at least a new and interesting formulation/articulation of paranoid gnosticism that i'd never previously considered.

Naming three of the weakest books he wrote in that period, doesn't change the fact that almost everything else he wrote then is leagues more interesting than The Divine Invasion or VALIS.

it isn't just those three that drove me nuts. i mean, i adore time-slip, stigmata, ubik, transmigration, even eye in the sky... which i'd hardly call sci-fi crank 'em out! they're - i imagine you agree with me - pretty thoughtful books.

what i'm getting at is that i don't feel like this is an either/or proposition. one isn't definitionally pro-VALIS and anti crank 'em out. i like both, and enough to have read +/- 80% of pkd's novels. that i prefer strangely-executed drug-addled mystical fantasy to high-concept space-time wackiness doesn't devalue my opinion or stance on the matter.

Placing a large(r) emphasis on late and kooky x-tian Dick basically = being more interested in placing Dick in a certain continuum of metaphysical fiction writers rather than as just another, more talented and profilic than most admittedly, sci-fi writer. It's telling to me that a most people I've talk to, met, or read who loved loved loved those last three tend to be largely uninterested in other sci-fi writers or the history of science-fiction, but instead are interested in viewing Dick as being some sort of unique genius who somehow trancends the limitations of his chosen genre. That's ignorant at best and downright insulting at worst. And yes it is a viewpoint which is NOT at all trustworthy to me.

alex thats TOTALLY unfair

and not really confronting remy's point which is that its totally possible to love both the gnostic trilogy and the rest of dicks oeuvre

I've never understood how in "A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" they are trapped in a time loop but there are periods that they can observe this from the outside and know what happened the previous loops and attend their own funerals. How can they do this? Is it supposed to make complete sense?

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."