Philip K. Dick

Anyone read his stuff? P.S. If you giggled, get lost. Hubby giggled when I asked him.

Since no one seems to like the movies I recommend, let's try more books.

I actually am new to Dick's stories. I was in the library and saw a collection which included the Minority Report, so I checked it out.

Man, these stories really make me think. I loved the "Minority Report" it was slightly different than the movie, and really makes you think about destiny.

His other stories are very enjoyable. They seem to focus a lot on wars, and are very dated, yet still relevant. I find it funny to read all this futuristic stuff about robots and everything, and then he mentions everyone working away at their typewriters.

I found these stories a little more difficult to get into and read compared to other SF I read, but well worth it.

RE: Philip K. Dick

I read my first Phillip K. Dick when I was in high school in the early '70s and have been fascinated by him ever since. His work never was mainstream; he lived most of his life in poverty, barely able to support himself with his writing. As an impressionable young man, I found this hard to understand, because I thought he was a genius!!

The only other writer I can compare him to is Harlan Ellison, who has the same dark visions. What drew me to him was his common themes: a lone individual fighting ferociously (and usually futilely) against an overwhelming world, protagonists living within an illusion who begin to grasp the realities behind their existences, and the transience of everything we may consider substantial. The Wachowski brothers are self-confessed "Phillip K. Dick junkies" and it's easy to see their shallow interpretations of his ideas in the pseudo-philosophies of the Matrix movies.

This leads me to what I consider one of the universe's great injustices: Dick's posthumous popularity. Shortly before his death in 1982, he sold the rights to "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" for $2500. He was quoted, "That $2500 was the difference between a good year and a bad year." That became Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Since then, "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" became Total Recall, "Second Variety" became Screamers, and Paycheck, Minority Report, and Imposter have all been released as movies.

I haven't read a short story of his I didn't like and I recommend the novels "A Scanner Darkly" and "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said".

RE: Philip K. Dick

Yes, I read that and find it amazing that his work didn't take off until he was dead. I'll have to check out his novels, and Harlan Ellison, too.

So far, I thought his version of Minority Report was better than the movie, but I did like the movie Paycheck better than the story.

RE: Philip K. Dick

Hi, Trixie!
I found it funny that your husband laughed at a perfectly good name like "Dick". Staying within the context of slang terms for genitalia, Canadians tend to smirk when we say the word/name, "Bush".

RE: Philip K. Dick

LOL :7

RE: Philip K. Dick

Arrrgh!! The universe is so unfair!! I just finished reading the post production report for "A Scanner Darkly" which is being prepped for a huge blockbuster marketing blitz. It's starring Keanu Reeves and Woody Harrelson!

RE: Philip K. Dick

Keanu??? Blech. His only good role was in Bill and Ted.

Maybe I should watch the movie first, and then read the book. If I read the book first I get seriously disappointed by the movie, but if I do it the other way around, I'm usually pleasantly surprised.

RE: Philip K. Dick

So Frankie, I finally read A Scanner Darkly and really enjoyed it.
However, the ending has me terribly confused.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS -
Is Donna a Fed? Was this all a set up to get Bob/Fred into the New Path? And what was up with Barris?

RE: Philip K. Dick

Hi, Trixie!

I think Barris is nothing; just a stereotypical character whose actions are simple plot devices to lead Bob/Fred to his inevitable doom. Trixie,I'm not sure you could understand Barris anyway- it's a guy thing! In any given group of men there's always one guy who talks the big talk, who compensates for inadequacy by having seen it all, has done it all, and knows it all. He usually finds some poor stooge who is impressed by his "prodigious knowledge" (Luckman), and any other guy who sees through his B.S. is just jealous!

Philip K. Dick had a problem with authority (I think that's pretty self-evident). In many of his stories he tries to demonstrate the duplicity of the government and its agencies. Yes, Donna was a merc working for the DEA. She admits it to Westaway (from New Path). She may seem to have an attack of conscience near the end of the book, but throughout it, she follows the wishes of her government paymasters and manipulates Bob/Fred, the man who loves her, into total physical and mental meltdown, so that he will be pathetic enough for New Path to take him in. I don't believe either she or her bosses realized what an ineffectual zombie he would be reduced to.

Being an outsider himself, it is pretty obvious Dick's sympathies lie with the freaks who are ostracized and disenfranchised by the general public (straights). This is never clearer than in Bob/Fred/Bruce's story about the beautiful and proud black-and-white wolf that was killed to protect the '...meager animals (that lived) to be slaughtered and eaten anyhow."

Since I first read A Scanner Darkly, one sentence in one vignette has become an integral part of my philosophical perception of the world, and was valid in the late '70s and is even more valid today as I see what goes on in the news, the attitudes of the Wal-mart-shopping-Fox viewing-Moral Majority hoi polloi, and the epidemic of high school bullying, humiliation, and crushing of anyone outside the norm:

"If I'd known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself."

RE: Philip K. Dick

Thanks Frankie! That really fits. And that last line, I loved that too!

That sheds more light on his speech to the straights about his job. I think now I really would like to see how they portray this in the movie, I hope it does the book justice.

It felt to me like he portrayed both groups as missing something. And it did seem to me like it was societally caused. I have another book of his that I'll read soon (I think it's UBIK, but I don't remember). But someone gave me a Harlan Ellison to read, and I'm anxious to read that, as I never have read his work before (except a few short stories).