Suggest some works by Philip K. Dick :)

[Kyriakos]

I recently had some reason to look a bit into this author, and while i only read a few general bio notes and a synopsis of one of his main novels, i am considering looking into borrowing a book of his from the library.

If you are familiar with his writing, you can suggest which titles are deemed by yourself as more interesting, out of his creation (which seems to have quite some volume..).

Shorter books or story collections would be even better, but you can suggest novels too if you like

 

[Tahuti]

The Man the High Castle

Actually, it is the only book by him that I have read. The alt history is not always accurate, though the book itself is quite interesting, so it is recommended anyway.

I always have been itching to read Ubik and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? however.

 

[Kyriakos]

Ubik

I read the synopsis to Ubik and this was what got me interested.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

The only Philip K. Dick book that I read was The Man in the High Castle.

 

[Gigaz]

I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik and Martian time-slip and I think Martian time-slip was the one I liked most. Probably because in that one the story was actually going somewhere.

Edit: I think I also read Minority report some time after I watched the move. If you know it then you see how complex Dick's logic tends to become in his stories. It's easy to loose track.

 

[Kyriakos]

^I also read about his 8K pages 'Exegesis' (ie 'explanation') autobiographical work about his hallucinations in 1974. Seems pretty interesting (if one expects the connections he made there to be lucid and self-sustaining within the premise of the work, regadless of the general conclusion he had which iirc was that we still are in the Roman Empire). Might have a look to it as well. He wrote that in 8 years (i think), so roughly 1K pages each year (obviously in reality he would have different paces). Which is quite impressive. My own diary, the current form of which is from 9 years ago, is around 10K pages, so i can empirically sense that he was very involved in making this sort of treatise.

Although i have to assume that the article about him supposedly writing a part of it non-stop for something like 150 pages, is probably an exageration. I have written 300 pages in a week, many years ago, and surely if you write about something specific and keep analysing it you will have all the more to write after the first tens of pages, but non-stop 150 pages still sounds hard to believe as true.

 

[BvBPL]

Valis is my favorite book by him.

You should also check out his short stories.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Any particular short story? (wiki mentions he has 121 of those, at least in its main article).

 

[BvBPL]

"Sales Pitch" "the Father-Thing" "The Hanging Stranger" are all pretty good.

Dick's work changed a lot over the years. He started w/ pretty typical sci-fi stuff and then moved to more near sci-fi stuff.

 

[onejayhawk]

I think Dick's short work is better than his novel length. His strength as a writer was innovative ideas. He was not as good a character development. So many successful SF movies are spun off his short stories.

Much of his work is now public domain, so you should be able to find free e-copy. The story of how his estate fraudulently attempted to reinstate his copyrights is worth digging around in. Here is one site with a full novel e-published.
http://www.naderlibrary.com/dick.VALIStoc.htm
http://www.naderlibrary.com/dick.phildickreader.toc.htm

For the record, I like "Paycheck", which was made into a decent movie starring Ben Affleck, Uma Thurman and a great villain turn by Aaron Eckhart.

J

 

[Antilogic]

I do not recommend reading Ubik, that guy just could not deliver a good, focused product and went cray-cray threatening people with legal action.

 

[Spidernova]

Through a scanner darkly was depressing, but rather good. There is also Flow My Tears, The Policeman said

 

[onejayhawk]

Through a scanner darkly was depressing, but rather good. There is also Flow My Tears, The Policeman said

PKD's future is very distopic. His characters do well to find a small sunny spot.

J

 

[Kyriakos]

Thanks for the suggestions all, again

I will try to find some short stories first..

 

[Algeroth]

Yeah, his short stories are pretty good, I would recomend Paycheck and The Adjustment Team[/I].

Ubik and The Scanner Darkley are IMHO his best novels and I think that VALIS and Radio Free Albemuth is relevant to your interests.

 

[AdamCrock]

I know I would not want to have a second name "Dick" that's for damn sure

 

[Bootstoots]

My favorites by him are definitely VALIS and A Scanner Darkly, but a lot of others (e.g. Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch) are very good as well. And, though not by him, Divine Invasions is a good biography of him written well after he died. I would also recommend reading collections of his short stories - some are very interesting.

 

[BvBPL]

Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said is also really, really good and I feel ashamed for not previously mentioning it.

 

[GoodGame]

The Man the High Castle

Actually, it is the only book by him that I have read. The alt history is not always accurate, though the book itself is quite interesting, so it is recommended anyway.

I always have been itching to read Ubik and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? however.

Those three are pretty good. Ubik is the most fun of those imho.


The Solar Lottery is an earlier book, and pretty decent read too.

A Scanner Darkly was pretty good, but I have trouble remembering it well. Same for Clans of Alphane Moon.


I'm not a fan of his VALIS / Gnosticism-flavored novels, although you might enjoy them if you are into that.

 

[NihilZero]

I have read every single damn one, including the non sci-fi, realism novels, and they are all a mixture of wonderful yet flawed. The balance varies. Some are only slightly wonderful and very flawed (usually the ones he wrote on speed in a few hours because he was strapped for cash), while others are incredibly wonderful and only slightly flawed.

But the thing about PKD is, even the deeply flawed and mostly bad ones usually have at least something magical and memorable about them.

It's hard to pick one out of them all, but if I had to, I'd pick A Scanner Darkly.

Other notables: Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Martian Time Slip, We Can Build You, Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, and god knows what other ones I have forgotten.

Or you can just do what I did, and read them all...