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Philip K. Dick


Eldric Storm

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I personally love Philip K. Dick so far. Read a couple of his books and found them to be very entertaining. It's interesting to note that the guy had so many mental problems (schizophrenia as well as permafried from drugs). Man In The High Castle was somewhat slow but very interesting. I have yet to read the "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep," but heard it's great.


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I have not read all of Dick's but all I read was worthwhile. Although several novels end somewhat disappointingly: either very surprisingly without all narrative strains really converging or just petering out.



Dick was borderline crazy, you can probably find online the story of a religious epiphany he had which is also connected to some of his stories. (Bottom line is that we somehow? (spiritually?) still are in the 1st century AD, early christians oppressed by Rome, but the devil? somehow makes us believe we are in the 20th (this was in the 1970s) so we would despair that the Second Coming took so long. Dick "realized" this by certain encounters with people that parallel certain episodes in the Acts of the Apostles.)



http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm



Maybe overall the shorter stories (like Minority Report) are better.


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I think I admire PKD more as a short-story writer than anything else. I have read 4 of the 5 volumes of his complete short stories.



I have read, I think, six of his novels. DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP was the one that made the most impression on me. It is an anti-robot story, unlike the film. The others (A Maze of Death; A Scanner Darkly; Confessions of a Crap Artist; The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; The Transmigration of Timothy Archer) have left less of an impression with me, though I vaguely recall sort of liking the first two of these at the time I read them.

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I don't know why I haven't read more PKD to be honest with you...only Do Androids Dream and A Scanner Darkly...must remedy this soon...

Same here, I've only read two of his books (DADOES and The Man in the Hight Castle in my case) but feel I should read more. I do have a copy of Ubik so it would make sense to read that next out of his books.

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Same here, I've only read two of his books (DADOES and The Man in the Hight Castle in my case) but feel I should read more. I do have a copy of Ubik so it would make sense to read that next out of his books.

I think I might read The Man in the High Castle next of his tbh; heard good things.

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My favourite is THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. I also quite liked UBIK.



I didn't really like DO ANDROIDS DREAMS OF ELECTRIC SHEEP. Personally, I think it's one of his weaker novels. But that said, I think the joy of Dick is not any one singular novel, but the body of work, and the whole of it.


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I think I might read The Man in the High Castle next of his tbh; heard good things.

Back in the 70's, while I was a teenager, I read a lot of PKD's stuff. There is some uneven stuff considering his lifestyle then but if you can find a collection of his short stories, that is where he did his best work. Not that the novels weren't good also.

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It's been a while but one novel I did find disappointing was "Now wait for last year". Even "The man in the high castle" and "A scanner, darkly" do not have very satisfying endings (but in those cases it is probably on purpose). In any case the latter must be one of the most chilling literary descriptions of a) drug addiction and b) surveillance state methods including agents provocateurs.



Another one I think I found very impressive (although also depressing) is "Martian timeslip".


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