posted
On your recommendation I checked out "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch".
I remember you saying something along the lines of it being your favorite PKD book. And while I loved it, I still think "A Scanner Darkly" is a bettter book. Or atleast more interesting to me.
Three Stigmata, while a great book in it's own right, seems like a non-farcical version of Ubik.
I always feel like Dick just loses steam towards the end of his books. He raises the level of confusion to the breaking point and then neatly(but not so neatly) solves everything, a bit too quickly for me.
posted
I should add, that the reason Scanner Darkly is my favorite is probably because I think the ending worked the best out of all of his books that I've read.
Even if it was a sort of depressing ending.
"The Man in the High Castle" had an interesting ending, but even that ended just a little to sudden for me. I liked the ending, and i get Dick's point with it, but it still seemed liked it needed more explanation. Or that "I" wanted more explanation to understand "how".
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah, I remember the thread you're referring to, and I think that I mentioned that I'm continually changing my mind about which one I like better.
I first read 3 Stigmata in junior high school, and it really appealed to me. I just thought it was so out there compared to what I had read up 'til that point. Maybe my enjoyment from that first read left an indelible impression on my mind, because even when I reread it I feel the same level of satisfaction.
(mild spoilers) I like A Scanner Darkly on a different level than 3 Stigmata. 3 Stigmata is so fantastical, and Dick just hits you with that right from the start. A Scanner Darkly starts with a tenuous grip on reality, which slips away slowly as the novel progresses. I love Arctor's gradual decline into insanity (of a sort). I've also never read such a great description of the paranoia of being high as when Arctor and his pals come back to the house and think that someone has broken in, and proceed to make elaborate plans to sell the house.
I'm really looking forward to the movie.
Posts: 1855 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I guess I'm a Dick-head, but only for his short stories. I have not yet gotten around to his novels in general. I read one, but I don't remember what it was called.
I think he was the master of short-fiction, though.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
You know, I've never read any of his short stories. And I should.
For some reason I just don't read alot of short stories in general. Though the ones I have read from OSC or Science Fiction compilations I have always loved. I took a Science Fiction class in high school where we read only short stories and I loved all of them. And it introduced me to "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" , which is my favorite short story of all time.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
While Card is my favorite novelist, he shares the top spot with Dick when it comes to short stories.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I loved that story Strider. Thanks for posting it. I'm a little freaked out now. (Could be because I have a 2 year old daughter named Emma and an older son just like the story.)
Posts: 127 | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't think I've read even one Philip K. Dick short story either, which is pretty disappointing. The local library and book stores don't have any Dick collections. Anybody know of any popular anthologies that contain some of his work?
I've read my fair share of short stories, but the only author who's short work I've read a great deal of is Card. And that's only because of Maps in a Mirror.
posted
Philip K. Dick is my second favorite author, period. His novels are good (A Scanner Darkly is also my favorite), but they pale next to his best short stories. In fact, he was one of those authors whose novels almost entirely consist of a handful of successful short stories strung together with bits of filler. The stories themselves are the thing.
Fans of PKD are tremendously lucky because his stories have been collected in a six (might be wrong on the number) volume set called The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick. I own only the first volume, but I've read all the others at the library. After only a few, you really get the "feel" for a PKD story. He has a distinctive style and tone, and familiar themes that keep popping up over and over. A number of the stories are quite dark, even pessimistic or, in some cases, hopeless. I don't normally go in for that kind of thing, but in PKD's case I can't get enough of it. And some are pretty psychedelic, since he was stoned out of his gourd during a period of his writing career.
A couple of my favorite stories:
The Variable Man -- The Earth is trapped by a vastly more powerful space empire which does not permit humanity to have access to the rest of the universe. Naturally, they are at war. A supercomputer tells the human leaders when the circumstances for attack are right, and when it would be futile. However, the computer ceases to provide useful information when a variable is introduced that it doesn't know what to do with -- a man brought forward in time from the early 20th century. His improbable impact on the outcome of the war is a thrill for me every time I read it.
The Pre-Persons -- This story was written shortly following the Roe v Wade decision, and takes an angrily anti-abortion stance. It depicts a future in which children are allowed to be "aborted" at any time before the age of eight or so, which has been determined to be the time when a child becomes truly human, as measured by the child's ability to perform advanced mental feats such as algebra. The story has an undercurrent of misogyny, which can be disturbing, but it is a powerful story nonetheless.
Don't stop with just PKD's novels. They don't do him justice!
Printer-friendly view of this topic
