PHILIP K. DICK

I do like PKD, and I've enjoyed the cimematic treatments of his novels. Ridley Scott's BLADERUNNER is deservedly a genre classic, capturing much of the flavor, if not the meat, of the differently titled book from which it was derived ... one of my all time Favorites, and stunning seen from DVD on a capable Home Theater System. Rachel's entrance is just cinematographic poetry, among any number of equally well crafted scenes ... yeah, I like that movie.

All that typed, and PKD really isn't one of my favorite authors. Nothing against him; I've read him with interest, and freely acknowledge his talent and genious. There are other authors I find more entertaining. I certainly expect my own favorites to be contestred by some folks. In no order, I'd put my Top Five as Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, J. R. R. Tolkein, and Robert Heinlein



timber


timber

There is no accounting for taste, timberlandko. However, the quality Dick has is not "genious" but genius...something the five authors you prefer to him all conspicuously lack!!!!

HeHeHee ... yup, it come down to taste and and typing sometimes ... perhaps a part of"Genius" lies in proofreading! I notice a couple things in my first post I should have caught and edited before clicking "Submit. Oh, well. There's probably a typo or two in this post.

Then too, perhaps we all have differing perspectives on "Artistic Genius". Among the Authors I mention as personal-taste-favorites there are members of Mensa. To some, there might be disputable "lack of genius" in that group, regardless their qualifications as "Artist". But as

Many industries and philosophies exist due to variances in individual taste.


PKD is good, even great. As with any artist, there are varying appreciations of hs oevre. That diminishes neither him nor his varying appreciators, to my mind.



timber

Pohl/Kornbluth in their satirical portrayal of possible futures equal PDK for ingenious concepts. Alfred Bester, especially in "The Demolished Man" (on a theme quite similar to "Minority Report") is one of my favorites. Frank Herbert's best novels are "Mission of Gravity," "Under Pressure" and "Santaroga Barrier."

Modesty compels me to admit that I have read much less sci-fi than you gentlemen appear to have. Indeed, as a genre sci-fi doesn't even interest me very much and it is not as a sci-fi writer that I praise PKD so highly. He USES the genre to write philosophical novels about reality, madness, perception, salvation, addiction, and angst. I very much doubt that his ambition was to outdo Isaac Asimov. More like to match Franz Kafka.

Very illuminating clarification, Larry, thanks. And now that you mention it, there perhaps is something Kafka-esque about PKD. You've motivated me to at least revisit both, with an added appreciation. I very much buy your assessment that PKD was using SF as a vehicle ... something I had not considered before, regarding him as an SF author. Thought provoking. Thanks for this thread, and for the insight.



timber

You're welcome, timber!

Galaxy Magazine in the fifties and sixties was the periodical that began publishing largely futuristic sociological fiction, the editor H. L. Gold being more enamored of George Orwell than Jules Verne. Science fiction has always had factions of the space opera (which bear more resemblance to westerns and war stories), the techonological sense of wonder tale and the sociological extrapolation. Galaxy excelled in publishing the sociological extrapolation and there was some pretty hefy doses of philosophy therein (which made it not so palatable for the crowd who just wanted a rousing future adventure). There are mixes of these three basic thematic schemes and what relegated Sci-Fi to the lowest echelon of fiction was, of course, the space opera. A. E. Van Vogt also wrote about future societies which mirrored the human and societal conditions of the present and created a whole philosophical plan. One of his main characters had two brains, the second brain for special powers). Azimov's Foundation series has a lot of philisophical points about the state of civilization. His robot stories have a lot to do with philosophy. The murder mystery in an underground future city, "The Caves of Steel" is one of my favorites.
Philip K. Dick is amoung the ten best authors in the genre and one of the most literate. Let's face it, of all the authors who write conventional fiction, how may can come close to being compared to Kafka?

Ahhhh .... Galaxy, Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine ... Asimov's Science fiction Magazine ... I devoured 'em. The serials really had me hooked, and so many of todays' giants in the genre first were published in such, and have since become personal favoritesd. Today's fanzines and Weblogs just aren't the same.


<sigh>

Larry, you may have missed this.
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2660

Lightwizard: My favorite was "White Plague" by Herbert.

I recently read Dick's SELECTED SHORT STORIES. A very uneven selection--some gems, some duds. In general I think he is better suited to the novel form, since the kind of baroque imagination he has needs a certain amount of space to stretch its legs and walk around the block (so to speak.) But some of the stories are quite clever. He achieves real metaphysical terror rarely, though, compared to what he can manage in his novels--perhaps because his stories depend on plot twists more than atmosphere or character and ideas.

Lightwizard, surely calling Dick one of the 10 best sci-fi writers is damning him with faint praise. Either he is one of the VERY best or he ain't. Take a position, nobody will shoot at you for it!

anyone familiar with Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay?

Dyslexia, I have heard for years that the Lindsay novel is excellent but have never run across it in my travels. Can you recommend it?

absolutely but it is a very strange mixture of sci-fi/fantasy that is difficult to catagorize.

PKD was, in my opinion, one of the Beatnik inflected voices of science fiction, along with Theodore Sturgeon and William Tenn. Not a great writer in any technical sense, but enormously entertaining, with bold, larger than reality ideas and a dark mordant streak.

My favorite of his works are: The Man in the High Castle, a parallel uniberse novel about a post WWII America dominated by victorious Germany on the East Coast, Japan on the West. The story revolves around an author gone into hiding for writing a parallel universe novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, about a post WWII America that was victorious. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, about a man who manages to infect everyone in the Solar System with his own persona, leaving nothing but a world full of Palmer Eldritches. Through a Scanner Darkly, a very troubling study of what drugs do to people, the tale of a narc agent who becomes so spaced out that he no longer realizes he is spying on himself.

All of these give a hint at what Dick is up to: epistemology, a theology of consciousness and identity.

While I have enjoyed some of the movie treatments of his stories, particularly Blade Runner and Minority Report (Impostor tanked, IMO) I feel that they've all avoided going into this part of his territory, I suppose because the producers felt the audiences couldn't go there... possibly true.

Actually, while I do reread the novels from time to time, I find in the long run I'm much more impressed by his ability with short stories. There are several collections of his shorts out currently, and all well worth connecting up with.

I have tried to read "Voyage to Arcturus" several times, after several people raved about it. Can't get through it.

Beedles, it's strange that you list your favorite PKD novels and then announce that you prefer his stories. I like the novels better myself. Dick's imagination needed space to roam around in. The confines of a 5-10,000 word story often handicapped him, reducing him to pure plot, which he did very well, but at the expense of atmosphere and psychology.

I am reading an excellent biography of PKD called DIVINE INVASIONS by Lawrence Sutin which gives a very good picture both of Dick as a man and of the best of his novels. It is well worth reading for all PKD fans.