Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Philip K. Dick Thread  (Read 3666 times)

Sheb

  • Bay Watcher
  • You Are An Avatar
    • View Profile
Philip K. Dick Thread
« on: January 13, 2016, 04:34:31 am »

So I was reading a review of Amazon's "The Man in the High Castle" in the New York Review of Books, and the author claimed that "The Man in the High Castle" was "widely accepted as Dick's best book. Now, I've read a fair numbers of Dick's works (Ubik, Flow My Tear, a scanner darkly, Do android dream of electric sheeps and a bunch of others), and frankly I found "The Man in the High Castle" lackluster. The idea of the Nazi winning light have been original then, but it's a trope by now. But mostly, the novel is too damn short. It doesn't take the time to really explore the setting (which, granted, isn't Dick's strength), but it also doesn't take the time to really explore how the characters cope with the occupation, which is the central theme of the novel.

Overall, it was good, but not great, certainly not Dick's best.

So what do you guys think? What's your favourite Dick novel?
Logged

Quote from: Paul-Henry Spaak
Europe consists only of small countries, some of which know it and some of which don’t yet.

Nunzillor

  • Guest
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2016, 04:37:55 am »

I'm quite partial to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Logged

Orange Wizard

  • Bay Watcher
  • mou ii yo
    • View Profile
    • S M U G
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2016, 04:55:21 am »

Blade Runner
Logged
Please don't shitpost, it lowers the quality of discourse
Hard science is like a sword, and soft science is like fear. You can use both to equally powerful results, but even if your opponent disbelieve your stabs, they will still die.

Nunzillor

  • Guest
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2016, 04:56:53 am »

Logged

Orange Wizard

  • Bay Watcher
  • mou ii yo
    • View Profile
    • S M U G
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2016, 04:58:02 am »

Pretty sure Philip K. Dick sang Blade Runner, or maybe I'm mixing up my poetry.
Logged
Please don't shitpost, it lowers the quality of discourse
Hard science is like a sword, and soft science is like fear. You can use both to equally powerful results, but even if your opponent disbelieve your stabs, they will still die.

Caz

  • Bay Watcher
  • [PREFSTRING:comforting whirs]
    • View Profile
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2016, 04:59:31 am »

Pretty sure Philip K. Dick sang Blade Runner, or maybe I'm mixing up my poetry.


o__o no more bath salts for you
Logged

Nunzillor

  • Guest
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #6 on: January 13, 2016, 05:02:01 am »

I think you meant to say this:

Quote from: Orange Wizard
I'm quite partial to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Why, I am as well, fine fellow!  Jolly good!  Pass the bath salts, please.
Logged

wobbly

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #7 on: January 13, 2016, 05:23:12 am »

Galactic Pot Healer is my favourite. I haven't read the man in the high castle, so no real opinion on that one.
Logged

scriver

  • Bay Watcher
  • City streets ain't got much pity
    • View Profile
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #8 on: January 13, 2016, 06:44:51 am »

So what do you guys think? What's your favourite Dick novel?

Hö hö hö...


Blade Runner

The movie Bladerunner was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Ship by Mr Key Dick. The name however was taken from an different and entirely unrelated book by another author, which Ridley Scott the movie rights to solely for the purpose of using that name on his adaption of Androids.
Logged
Love, scriver~

Orange Wizard

  • Bay Watcher
  • mou ii yo
    • View Profile
    • S M U G
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2016, 06:53:59 am »

The movie Bladerunner was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Ship by Mr Key Dick. The name however was taken from an different and entirely unrelated book by another author, which Ridley Scott the movie rights to solely for the purpose of using that name on his adaption of Androids.
I know, I just felt like shitposting as a glorified PTW.
Logged
Please don't shitpost, it lowers the quality of discourse
Hard science is like a sword, and soft science is like fear. You can use both to equally powerful results, but even if your opponent disbelieve your stabs, they will still die.

SirQuiamus

  • Bay Watcher
  • Keine Experimente!
    • View Profile
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #10 on: January 13, 2016, 07:01:03 am »

I have no idea which of Philip K's works is the "best" – I'm sure they all have their strong points and weak points, since he was such a brilliantly dopey and consistently inconsistent author. I think Scanner darkly may be one of his strongest efforts on the whole, although it's locally marred by the superfluous and weak ending. On the other hand, Ubik is an absolute mess as a narrative-driven novel, but it contains stark and powerful nightmare sequences that would have made a great short story in their own right. As a general rule, you can pick up any of his works and find quite a few striking passages, even if the book in its entirety is mostly crap.

I've also enjoyed his later non-SF works for the unbridled kookiness and cracked erudition: VALIS reads like a scholarly essay on the ideas of Gene Ray and Dr. Bronner, written by someone who has swallowed entire library aisles of ancient philosophy and Gnostic apocrypha along with reams of blotting paper. It's also semi-autobiographical, which makes it a rather eerie reading experience at times. Transmigration of Timothy Archer is also good: it draws on the same reinterpreted Spiritistic-New-Age-Acid-Christian mythology as the VALIS trilogy, but unlike most of his later writings, it's also a well-rounded work of fiction.

Pretty sure Philip K. Dick sang Blade Runner, or maybe I'm mixing up my poetry.
it was david bowie, you blasphemous philistine

EDIT:
I read most of Philip K's novels in my early teens, and The Man in the High Castle was one of those that I filed under "forgettable."
« Last Edit: January 13, 2016, 07:12:11 am by SirQuiamus »
Logged

Sappho

  • Bay Watcher
  • AKA Aira; Legendary Female Gamer
    • View Profile
    • Aira Plays Games
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #11 on: January 13, 2016, 03:09:23 pm »

Now and then a grab a random obscure Dick novel. He doesn't explore a setting well in one book, but he has many set in the same, or almost the same setting, most of them very little-known. There are a lot of concepts that you can find dotted all over a lot of his works. Right now I'm reading Now Wait For Last Year, which was very slow to start, but I'm getting into it at last. I'm partial to Clans of the Alphane Moon, The Simulacra, and The Game-Players of Titan. I loved all the more well-known ones as well, of course. Interestingly, the first time I read The Divine Invasion (part of the Valis series) I absolutely hated it. Then I re-read it and loved it.

NJW2000

  • Bay Watcher
  • You know me. What do I know?
    • View Profile
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #12 on: January 13, 2016, 03:22:25 pm »

Alphane Moon is great. I always felt "The man in High Castle" was one of those ones where there was something I wasn't quite getting, but the simple experience of the book nearly did it, but not fully. Sort of Kafka in that way, I didn't get all of it, but felt that was kinda intrinsic to the stuff going on.

I'm not really sure where it stands with his other works, the alternate-history one, as many of the others have that wonderful mix of K. Dick explaining the world and his experiences to himself (the druggier stuff) and somewhat lighter, very narrative driven scifi as was written in that era. His work has that conflict between well-crafted space opera or whatever, and rather spiritual, introspective stuff, and I think that's partially what makes him so unique.

By the by, I've found Brian Aldiss a bit short of Philip K Dick in terms of the depth I can percieve, but really liked him too. Anyone else?

And as for favourite... The Penultimate Truth or Deus Irae, I reckon.
Logged
One wheel short of a wagon

Gigaz

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #13 on: January 13, 2016, 05:27:33 pm »

I read Do Androids, Ubik, Minority Report and Martian Time-Slip and I think I liked Martian Time-Slip the most. Dicks visions of the future are never remotely plausible, but I guess they are more about people accepting and trying to cope with the things that cannot be, which kind of also removes some of the restraints of society.
Logged

Sappho

  • Bay Watcher
  • AKA Aira; Legendary Female Gamer
    • View Profile
    • Aira Plays Games
Re: Philip K. Dick Thread
« Reply #14 on: January 14, 2016, 02:07:04 am »

Actually, he did think they were plausible. That's why you see so many of the same technology and terminology across most of his books: simulacrum, precog, prefab, conapt, etc. All the drugs he took caused him to see visions. Many were religious (hence the Valis series) and others were of the future. He believed his visions were real. You have to admit they were pretty damn interesting, even if he was way off the mark in terms of reality.