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Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s
Philip K. Dick was a writer of incandescent originality and astonishing fertility, who made and unmade fictional world-systems with ferocious rapidity and unbridled speculative daring. “The floor joists of the universe,” he once wrote, “are visible in my novels.” The five novels collected in this volume—a successor to Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s—offer a breathtaking overview of the range of this science-fiction master. In these classics from the height of his career, the wild humor, freewheeling inventiveness, and darkly prophetic insights of Dick at his best are fully on display.
Martian Time-Slip (1964) unfolds on a parched and thinly colonized Red Planet where the unscrupulous seek to profit from a troubled child’s time-fracturing visions. Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965) chronicles the interwoven stories of a multiracial community of survivors, including the scientist who may have been responsible for World War III. Into this apocalyptic framework Dick weaves observations of daily life in the California of his own moment. Famous, among other reasons, for a therapy session involving a talking taxicab, Now Wait for Last Year (1966) explores the effects of JJ-180, a hallucinogen that alters not only perception, but reality.
In Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974), a television star seeks to unravel a mystery that has left him stripped of his identity. A Scanner Darkly (1977), the basis for the 2006 film, envisions a drug-addled world in which a narcotics officer’s tenuous hold on sanity is strained by his new surveillance assignment: himself. Regarded by some as Dick’s most powerful novel, A Scanner Darkly mixes futuristic fantasy with an all-too-real evocation of the culture of addiction in 1970s America. Mixing metaphysics and madness, Dick’s work remains exhilarating and unsettling in equal measure.
Martian Time-Slip (1964) unfolds on a parched and thinly colonized Red Planet where the unscrupulous seek to profit from a troubled child’s time-fracturing visions. Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965) chronicles the interwoven stories of a multiracial community of survivors, including the scientist who may have been responsible for World War III. Into this apocalyptic framework Dick weaves observations of daily life in the California of his own moment. Famous, among other reasons, for a therapy session involving a talking taxicab, Now Wait for Last Year (1966) explores the effects of JJ-180, a hallucinogen that alters not only perception, but reality.
In Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974), a television star seeks to unravel a mystery that has left him stripped of his identity. A Scanner Darkly (1977), the basis for the 2006 film, envisions a drug-addled world in which a narcotics officer’s tenuous hold on sanity is strained by his new surveillance assignment: himself. Regarded by some as Dick’s most powerful novel, A Scanner Darkly mixes futuristic fantasy with an all-too-real evocation of the culture of addiction in 1970s America. Mixing metaphysics and madness, Dick’s work remains exhilarating and unsettling in equal measure.
1128 pages, Hardcover
First published July 31, 2008
43 people are currently reading
1056 people want to read
About the author
Philip K. Dick
2,006 books22.4k followersPhilip Kindred Dick was a prolific American science fiction author whose work has had a lasting impact on literature, cinema, and popular culture. Known for his imaginative narratives and profound philosophical themes, Dick explored the nature of reality, the boundaries of human identity, and the impact of technology and authoritarianism on society. His stories often blurred the line between the real and the artificial, challenging readers to question their perceptions and beliefs.
Raised in California, Dick began writing professionally in the early 1950s, publishing short stories in various science fiction magazines. He quickly developed a distinctive voice within the genre, marked by a fusion of science fiction concepts with deep existential and psychological inquiry. Over his career, he authored 44 novels and more than 100 short stories, many of which have become classics in the field.
Recurring themes in Dick's work include alternate realities, simulations, corporate and government control, mental illness, and the nature of consciousness. His protagonists are frequently everyday individuals—often paranoid, uncertain, or troubled—caught in surreal and often dangerous circumstances that force them to question their environment and themselves. Works such as Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly reflect his fascination with perception and altered states of consciousness, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health struggles and drug use.
One of Dick’s most influential novels is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for Ridley Scott’s iconic film Blade Runner. The novel deals with the distinction between humans and artificial beings and asks profound questions about empathy, identity, and what it means to be alive. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, each reflecting key elements of his storytelling—uncertain realities, oppressive systems, and the search for truth. These adaptations have introduced his complex ideas to audiences well beyond the traditional readership of science fiction.
In the 1970s, Dick underwent a series of visionary and mystical experiences that had a significant influence on his later writings. He described receiving profound knowledge from an external, possibly divine, source and documented these events extensively in what became known as The Exegesis, a massive and often fragmented journal. These experiences inspired his later novels, most notably the VALIS trilogy, which mixes autobiography, theology, and metaphysics in a narrative that defies conventional structure and genre boundaries.
Throughout his life, Dick faced financial instability, health issues, and periods of personal turmoil, yet he remained a dedicated and relentless writer. Despite limited commercial success during his lifetime, his reputation grew steadily, and he came to be regarded as one of the most original voices in speculative fiction. His work has been celebrated for its ability to fuse philosophical depth with gripping storytelling and has influenced not only science fiction writers but also philosophers, filmmakers, and futurists.
Dick’s legacy continues to thrive in both literary and cinematic spheres. The themes he explored remain urgently relevant in the modern world, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with human identity and governance. The Philip K. Dick Award, named in his honor, is presented annually to distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. His writings have also inspired television series, academic studies, and countless homages across media.
Through his vivid imagination and unflinching inquiry into the nature of existence, Philip K. Dick redefined what science fiction could achieve. His work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a
Raised in California, Dick began writing professionally in the early 1950s, publishing short stories in various science fiction magazines. He quickly developed a distinctive voice within the genre, marked by a fusion of science fiction concepts with deep existential and psychological inquiry. Over his career, he authored 44 novels and more than 100 short stories, many of which have become classics in the field.
Recurring themes in Dick's work include alternate realities, simulations, corporate and government control, mental illness, and the nature of consciousness. His protagonists are frequently everyday individuals—often paranoid, uncertain, or troubled—caught in surreal and often dangerous circumstances that force them to question their environment and themselves. Works such as Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly reflect his fascination with perception and altered states of consciousness, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health struggles and drug use.
One of Dick’s most influential novels is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for Ridley Scott’s iconic film Blade Runner. The novel deals with the distinction between humans and artificial beings and asks profound questions about empathy, identity, and what it means to be alive. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, each reflecting key elements of his storytelling—uncertain realities, oppressive systems, and the search for truth. These adaptations have introduced his complex ideas to audiences well beyond the traditional readership of science fiction.
In the 1970s, Dick underwent a series of visionary and mystical experiences that had a significant influence on his later writings. He described receiving profound knowledge from an external, possibly divine, source and documented these events extensively in what became known as The Exegesis, a massive and often fragmented journal. These experiences inspired his later novels, most notably the VALIS trilogy, which mixes autobiography, theology, and metaphysics in a narrative that defies conventional structure and genre boundaries.
Throughout his life, Dick faced financial instability, health issues, and periods of personal turmoil, yet he remained a dedicated and relentless writer. Despite limited commercial success during his lifetime, his reputation grew steadily, and he came to be regarded as one of the most original voices in speculative fiction. His work has been celebrated for its ability to fuse philosophical depth with gripping storytelling and has influenced not only science fiction writers but also philosophers, filmmakers, and futurists.
Dick’s legacy continues to thrive in both literary and cinematic spheres. The themes he explored remain urgently relevant in the modern world, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with human identity and governance. The Philip K. Dick Award, named in his honor, is presented annually to distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. His writings have also inspired television series, academic studies, and countless homages across media.
Through his vivid imagination and unflinching inquiry into the nature of existence, Philip K. Dick redefined what science fiction could achieve. His work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
July 9, 2012
plato's cave myth has particular resonance in the age of oprah, dr. phil, and tea party/occupy jackassiness -- it reinforces the idea that I am special, I have a unique handle on the truth, that I am the one peering out there at the mouth of the cave & pity (but take secret schadendelight in) all you poor fools whiling away your days staring at flickering shadows. it offers a direct appeal to our egos, our fear of being ordinary, our fear of mortality, that there's something else out there so if it doesn't work out here... well, that ain't no thang. maybe that's why dick's experienced such a major bump in popularity over the past decade: b/c no other contemporary writer so powerfully taps into the cave myth? eh... i'm probably just talking outta my ass. occam's razor says this: sci-fi nerds persist. forever.
so why do i continue to give the individual books 3 stars and the collections 4? eh... maybe it's b/c when it's all crushed into one biggun, the great ideas, oddball characters, and nutball psychedelia can blot out all the slapdashittiness found in the individual works. lemme explain:
there's a scene toward the end of ulysses in which bloom, locked out of his house, scales a wall. joyce, who was not living in dublin at the time, contacted his aunt for the exact measurements of the actual wall so as to verify the believability of a stout 40 yr old jewboy making it over. now, the accuracy of this specific example doesn't really bring too much to the novel itself, but it's indicative of a larger attitude which does: all that painstaking detail junk is actually the glue which holds that disparate, difficult, obscure, & surreal novel together. and this is why PDK's novels, while much leaner & stylistically unified, frequently feel baggy, sloppy, &, yes, lazy.
should i ignore all that stuff and just respond to the emotional truth, the philosophical truth, the thematic truth...? naw. if you're working in a fictional world, and you've set up the 'rules' for that world, you've gotta adhere. PDK throws in way too many a plot contrivance and convenience -- one gets the feeling that an idea explodes into dick's head (<-- not meant as a joke; i don't go for PDK book reports with dick jokes) and in a rush to get it out he quickly comes up with any rehashed and lameasfuck plot mechanism at his disposal.
well, i've just blasted the hell through 15 PDK novels in a row. about 13 of 'em are - despite the 3 star ratings - must reads. just do your best to ignore all the so-so stuff.
so why do i continue to give the individual books 3 stars and the collections 4? eh... maybe it's b/c when it's all crushed into one biggun, the great ideas, oddball characters, and nutball psychedelia can blot out all the slapdashittiness found in the individual works. lemme explain:
there's a scene toward the end of ulysses in which bloom, locked out of his house, scales a wall. joyce, who was not living in dublin at the time, contacted his aunt for the exact measurements of the actual wall so as to verify the believability of a stout 40 yr old jewboy making it over. now, the accuracy of this specific example doesn't really bring too much to the novel itself, but it's indicative of a larger attitude which does: all that painstaking detail junk is actually the glue which holds that disparate, difficult, obscure, & surreal novel together. and this is why PDK's novels, while much leaner & stylistically unified, frequently feel baggy, sloppy, &, yes, lazy.
should i ignore all that stuff and just respond to the emotional truth, the philosophical truth, the thematic truth...? naw. if you're working in a fictional world, and you've set up the 'rules' for that world, you've gotta adhere. PDK throws in way too many a plot contrivance and convenience -- one gets the feeling that an idea explodes into dick's head (<-- not meant as a joke; i don't go for PDK book reports with dick jokes) and in a rush to get it out he quickly comes up with any rehashed and lameasfuck plot mechanism at his disposal.
well, i've just blasted the hell through 15 PDK novels in a row. about 13 of 'em are - despite the 3 star ratings - must reads. just do your best to ignore all the so-so stuff.
July 28, 2010
I’d love you but I’m not sure you’re real: musings on PK Dick
The past few months I’ve been immersed in the canonical Library America edition of the collected works of Philip K Dick, consecutively reading The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney, Now Wait for Last Year, and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and figured it was time to ramble a little about what, for me, makes PK such a genius writer.
Perhaps most interesting to learn was that for most of his life all PK wanted was to write a good literary novel, that and form a healthy interpersonal relationship, neither of which he ever really managed to do, instead revolving in a speed-induced science fiction paranoia that would eventually consume him. While it’s pretty clear that PK’s characters and plotting are a little too flat to ever by truly literary, it’s also true that he was a brilliant if not visionary imagineer, cramming more fascinating ideas into each one of his 44 novels than most authors have in their entire careers, so many ideas and realities that PK himself could barely flesh them out or tie them together. And beneath all the wild ideas lies his main theme, that the reality we think we’re living in may not be reality after all, and for anyone who’s ever been confronted with this question in their own life or mind, PK manages to truly capture this experience of uncertainty to the extent that reading some of his more reality-bending scenes is likely to make you question if you may actually be living in one of his stories.
But while PK’s most famous for this sense of uncertain realities, what struck me most reading this selection of his works is that, despite all the wild ideas, the characters are driven most by that need to find love and human connection. They may be flat but they are desirous, lonely, full of longing and the inability to express that longing, they struggle to find and hold onto love even though as soon they do it becomes uncertain that the love or lover is not just a hallucination too. This isn’t always effective, but the human relationships are pivotal to the emotional tension of each story, effective enough that when the policeman’s twin sister dies in Flow My Tears, and he reaches up asking what’s this wet stuff on my cheeks, I couldn’t help but cry with him, and I’m not typically a sentimental person. The reason I suspect this works, from my own experiences in irrealities, is that humans seem to believe that love, the connection to another whether romantic, friendship or even with animals, we believe love is the most real and stable state, despite that it rarely is in the reality we actually live in. But when everything else you thought was true is suddenly thrown into question, it becomes imperative to rely on that connection to another, even just in reaffirming that your perceptions are correct. I suspect this understanding helped make the Beatles so successful, between the irrealities of war and drugs, love really is all you need.
Speaking of drugs, my next point is about the mechanics whereby PK renders his irrealities understandable to the reader. The literary technique of using explanations for otherwise inexplicable events is highly intriguing to me, going back to mythology as explanens for itself, to its peak in Romantic and Fantastic literatures using dreams or madness to make supernatural experiences believable (a topic I’ve discussed multiple times on this blog). Science Fiction obviously likes to rely on logical and technological explanens, though primarily to justify space travel and alien life. If PK Dick were writing today he might explain his irrealities through computers and virtual reality, but almost never goes there as he was writing before the advent of home computing and its imagined conception in Vinge, Gibson, and Stephenson. Similarly, PK could rely on mystical experiences, which though often in need of explaining themselves certainly account for many historically recorded irreal experiences. In fact, PK goes there after his own mystical revelation, exploring this mode in his VALIS trilogy, but primarily sticks to something much more hard edged (it was the 60s after all): hallucinogenic drugs. Whether street drugs or research pharmaceuticals, almost every character in a PK story is on something (which might go a long way to explain why they seem flat: real human beings on drugs can seem pretty flat too), and it’s precisely because even the most basic drug like caffeine effects perception that it’s impossible to get a clear sense of just what’s real.
Interestingly though, while drugs are the explanens, the irrealities they explain are often what could be classified as temporal anomalies: flash backs, flash forwards, even some flash sideways, along with all sorts of rewinding and cyclical loops &c. I’m not really sure what to make of this fascination with time, beyond that PK personally preferred drugs of a time-bending nature, and was also extremely obsessed with the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes, using it to write the plots to a number of his stories. Granted time is man’s greatest enemy, the vanquisher of all stable relationships, and it’s possible that through his work, PK was trying to find a way to reverse the loss of the relationship he felt most defined him and his reality, the childhood death of his twin sister. Either that or time travel’s just really a lot of fun. But regardless, I think these themes of uncertain love, dangerous drugs, and evading time’s arrow are some of the most central to contemporary America (and to science as an imaginative field), and warrant PK Dick’s inclusion in the literary canon.
The past few months I’ve been immersed in the canonical Library America edition of the collected works of Philip K Dick, consecutively reading The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ubik, Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney, Now Wait for Last Year, and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and figured it was time to ramble a little about what, for me, makes PK such a genius writer.
Perhaps most interesting to learn was that for most of his life all PK wanted was to write a good literary novel, that and form a healthy interpersonal relationship, neither of which he ever really managed to do, instead revolving in a speed-induced science fiction paranoia that would eventually consume him. While it’s pretty clear that PK’s characters and plotting are a little too flat to ever by truly literary, it’s also true that he was a brilliant if not visionary imagineer, cramming more fascinating ideas into each one of his 44 novels than most authors have in their entire careers, so many ideas and realities that PK himself could barely flesh them out or tie them together. And beneath all the wild ideas lies his main theme, that the reality we think we’re living in may not be reality after all, and for anyone who’s ever been confronted with this question in their own life or mind, PK manages to truly capture this experience of uncertainty to the extent that reading some of his more reality-bending scenes is likely to make you question if you may actually be living in one of his stories.
But while PK’s most famous for this sense of uncertain realities, what struck me most reading this selection of his works is that, despite all the wild ideas, the characters are driven most by that need to find love and human connection. They may be flat but they are desirous, lonely, full of longing and the inability to express that longing, they struggle to find and hold onto love even though as soon they do it becomes uncertain that the love or lover is not just a hallucination too. This isn’t always effective, but the human relationships are pivotal to the emotional tension of each story, effective enough that when the policeman’s twin sister dies in Flow My Tears, and he reaches up asking what’s this wet stuff on my cheeks, I couldn’t help but cry with him, and I’m not typically a sentimental person. The reason I suspect this works, from my own experiences in irrealities, is that humans seem to believe that love, the connection to another whether romantic, friendship or even with animals, we believe love is the most real and stable state, despite that it rarely is in the reality we actually live in. But when everything else you thought was true is suddenly thrown into question, it becomes imperative to rely on that connection to another, even just in reaffirming that your perceptions are correct. I suspect this understanding helped make the Beatles so successful, between the irrealities of war and drugs, love really is all you need.
Speaking of drugs, my next point is about the mechanics whereby PK renders his irrealities understandable to the reader. The literary technique of using explanations for otherwise inexplicable events is highly intriguing to me, going back to mythology as explanens for itself, to its peak in Romantic and Fantastic literatures using dreams or madness to make supernatural experiences believable (a topic I’ve discussed multiple times on this blog). Science Fiction obviously likes to rely on logical and technological explanens, though primarily to justify space travel and alien life. If PK Dick were writing today he might explain his irrealities through computers and virtual reality, but almost never goes there as he was writing before the advent of home computing and its imagined conception in Vinge, Gibson, and Stephenson. Similarly, PK could rely on mystical experiences, which though often in need of explaining themselves certainly account for many historically recorded irreal experiences. In fact, PK goes there after his own mystical revelation, exploring this mode in his VALIS trilogy, but primarily sticks to something much more hard edged (it was the 60s after all): hallucinogenic drugs. Whether street drugs or research pharmaceuticals, almost every character in a PK story is on something (which might go a long way to explain why they seem flat: real human beings on drugs can seem pretty flat too), and it’s precisely because even the most basic drug like caffeine effects perception that it’s impossible to get a clear sense of just what’s real.
Interestingly though, while drugs are the explanens, the irrealities they explain are often what could be classified as temporal anomalies: flash backs, flash forwards, even some flash sideways, along with all sorts of rewinding and cyclical loops &c. I’m not really sure what to make of this fascination with time, beyond that PK personally preferred drugs of a time-bending nature, and was also extremely obsessed with the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes, using it to write the plots to a number of his stories. Granted time is man’s greatest enemy, the vanquisher of all stable relationships, and it’s possible that through his work, PK was trying to find a way to reverse the loss of the relationship he felt most defined him and his reality, the childhood death of his twin sister. Either that or time travel’s just really a lot of fun. But regardless, I think these themes of uncertain love, dangerous drugs, and evading time’s arrow are some of the most central to contemporary America (and to science as an imaginative field), and warrant PK Dick’s inclusion in the literary canon.
January 19, 2017
“I'm not much but I'm all I have.”
― Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip
While I may not have given all the books here five stars, this is almost (or close enough to) a five star combo. I've linked to my past reviews of the five novels:
1. Martian Time-Slip - Read January 2017 (5-stars)
2. Dr. Bloodmoney - Read February 2015 (4-stars)
3. Now Wait for Last Year - Read February 2015 (5-stars)
4 Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Read December 2013 (4-stars)
5. A Scanner Darkly - Read December 2014 (5-stars)
― Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip
While I may not have given all the books here five stars, this is almost (or close enough to) a five star combo. I've linked to my past reviews of the five novels:
1. Martian Time-Slip - Read January 2017 (5-stars)
2. Dr. Bloodmoney - Read February 2015 (4-stars)
3. Now Wait for Last Year - Read February 2015 (5-stars)
4 Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Read December 2013 (4-stars)
5. A Scanner Darkly - Read December 2014 (5-stars)
April 23, 2025
Martian Time-Slip ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Dr. Bloodmoney ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Now Wait For Last Year ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Scanner Darkly ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Library of America collections are the best way to binge on PKD novels.
These collections are cloth bound hardcovers and fit perfectly in my hands. These will last a lifetime, same as the novels. I am sure to come back and reread these novels in a decade or two.
Dr. Bloodmoney ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Now Wait For Last Year ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Scanner Darkly ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Library of America collections are the best way to binge on PKD novels.
These collections are cloth bound hardcovers and fit perfectly in my hands. These will last a lifetime, same as the novels. I am sure to come back and reread these novels in a decade or two.
October 14, 2013
Chris' Pick!
I never know where I am with Philip K. Dick. I never know what’s real, or what real even is. When a friend in high school told me I needed to read A Scanner Darkly, I thought, “Great another book from the 70’s about drugs by some burnt out hippie.” But PKD, like an android from a distant planet, or some strange future-Earth timeline, destroyed my expectations. He shattered my expectations of reality, of the universe, and of the human condition. Those shattered pieces lodged in my brain, and I haven’t been the same since. PKD doesn’t create heroes, he creates people thrown into overwhelming situations, and it is their humanity that causes them to either succeed or fail. Either way, it’s something no one should miss.
I never know where I am with Philip K. Dick. I never know what’s real, or what real even is. When a friend in high school told me I needed to read A Scanner Darkly, I thought, “Great another book from the 70’s about drugs by some burnt out hippie.” But PKD, like an android from a distant planet, or some strange future-Earth timeline, destroyed my expectations. He shattered my expectations of reality, of the universe, and of the human condition. Those shattered pieces lodged in my brain, and I haven’t been the same since. PKD doesn’t create heroes, he creates people thrown into overwhelming situations, and it is their humanity that causes them to either succeed or fail. Either way, it’s something no one should miss.
November 25, 2018
Only read Flow My Tears, having read the rest of the stories elsewhere
739 were following - we're
827 oversize oak desk - oversized
757's weaving in a character fitting in a fart while they talk underlines how well Dick casually builds the realism of his characters
795's bringing up Shetland pony porn was amusing. Thought it was just a Vonnegut joke
Epilogue was a bit goofy. Totally broke the well set tripartite ending. Could've been better to cast it like the epilogue in A Handmaid's Tale, being written as the historic perspective Buckman allude's to in the chapter before
Confusing that the topic of the tentacle thing is totally dropped. Taverner dismisses its potentially being the cause of his dilemma, that he doesn't ask Heather how he went from hospital to motel
739 were following - we're
827 oversize oak desk - oversized
757's weaving in a character fitting in a fart while they talk underlines how well Dick casually builds the realism of his characters
795's bringing up Shetland pony porn was amusing. Thought it was just a Vonnegut joke
Epilogue was a bit goofy. Totally broke the well set tripartite ending. Could've been better to cast it like the epilogue in A Handmaid's Tale, being written as the historic perspective Buckman allude's to in the chapter before
Confusing that the topic of the tentacle thing is totally dropped. Taverner dismisses its potentially being the cause of his dilemma, that he doesn't ask Heather how he went from hospital to motel
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 12, 2020
MARTIAN TIME-SLIP (***)
Arnie Kott: ‘... we got the future, and where else do you think things happen except in the future?’ (p. 115)
Martian Time-Slip refers to living in different times instead of present, also past or future.
This novel by Philip K. Dick is set in a colony on Mars and tells the story of Manfred Steiner, an autistic boy who can help other people to live in the past or in the future.
Arnie Kott, leader of the water worker’s union, becomes interested in Manfred because he wants to use Manfred’s skill to predict future in his business ventures.
Martian Time-Slip is a speculative science-fiction novel because Dick doesn’t tell about space ships or other futuristic electronic devices; so who remembers Blade Runner (or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) is crowded out by reading this novel.
FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID (***)
(Dec 6, - Dec 18, 2011)
"The exclusiveness of space, we've earned, is only a function of the brain as it handles perception. It regulates data in terms of mutually restrictive space units. Millions of them, trillions, theoretically, in fact. But in itself, space does not exist at all." (page 40)
"Do you now see what happened to Taverner?
He passed over an universe in which he didn't exist. And we passed over with him because we're objects of his percept system. And then when the drug wore off he passed back again." (page 842)
"No nights are black enough for those that in despair their last fortune deplore." (page 736)
DR. BLOODMONEY (****)
It was a peculiar, nonsensical idea. It was as if the man had been gripped by his unconscious. He was no longer living a rational, ego-directed existence; he had surrended to some archetype.
(page 286)
In his earphones a loud signal came in. "Dangerfield, this is the New York Port Authority; can you give us any idea of the weather?"
"Oh," Dangerfield said, "we've got fine weather coming. You can put out to sea in thoese little boats and catch those little radioactive fish; nothing to worry about."
(page 319)
"Good lord," Barnes said. "He doesn't know what you're talking about. He's mentally ill." To Stockstill he said, "Listen, Doctor, isn't schizophrenia where a person loses track of their culture and its values? Well, this man has lost track; listen to him."
(page 395)
NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR (***)
Because, the cab said, life is composed of reality configurations so constituted.
(page 667)
It's the same, Kathy informed him. Everything's the same, when you break through to absolute reality; it's all one vast blur.
(page 494)
Are you waiting for last year to come by again or something?
(page 646)
A SCANNER DARKLY (****)
Do you know Bob Arctor or Bob the actor?
Who are you?
Who am I?
Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.
(907)
"A dream woke me," Arctor said. "A religious dream. In it there was this huge clap of thunder, and all of a sudden the heavens rolled aside and God appeared and His voice rumbled at me - what the hell did He say? - oh yeah. 'I am vexed with you, my son,' He said. He was scowling. I was shaking, in the dream, and looking up, and I said, 'What'd I do now, Lord?' And He said, 'You left the cap off the toothpaste tube again.' And then I realized it was my ex-wife."
(918)
"Do you think," he said aloud as he painstakingly drove, "that when we die and appear before God on Judgment Day, that our sins will be listed in chronological order or in order of severity, which could be ascending or descending, or alphabetically?
(941)
"In fact , we could put an ad in the L.A. Times: 'Modern three-bedroom tract house with two bathrooms for easy and fast flushing, high-grade dope stashed throughout all rooms; dope included in sale price.'"
(945)
When he turned on the tape-transport once more, Arctor was saying, "-as near as I can figure out, God is dead."
Luckman answered, "I didn't know He was sick."
(1033)
(Nietzsche neither!)
Arnie Kott: ‘... we got the future, and where else do you think things happen except in the future?’ (p. 115)
Martian Time-Slip refers to living in different times instead of present, also past or future.
This novel by Philip K. Dick is set in a colony on Mars and tells the story of Manfred Steiner, an autistic boy who can help other people to live in the past or in the future.
Arnie Kott, leader of the water worker’s union, becomes interested in Manfred because he wants to use Manfred’s skill to predict future in his business ventures.
Martian Time-Slip is a speculative science-fiction novel because Dick doesn’t tell about space ships or other futuristic electronic devices; so who remembers Blade Runner (or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) is crowded out by reading this novel.
FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID (***)
(Dec 6, - Dec 18, 2011)
"The exclusiveness of space, we've earned, is only a function of the brain as it handles perception. It regulates data in terms of mutually restrictive space units. Millions of them, trillions, theoretically, in fact. But in itself, space does not exist at all." (page 40)
"Do you now see what happened to Taverner?
He passed over an universe in which he didn't exist. And we passed over with him because we're objects of his percept system. And then when the drug wore off he passed back again." (page 842)
"No nights are black enough for those that in despair their last fortune deplore." (page 736)
DR. BLOODMONEY (****)
It was a peculiar, nonsensical idea. It was as if the man had been gripped by his unconscious. He was no longer living a rational, ego-directed existence; he had surrended to some archetype.
(page 286)
In his earphones a loud signal came in. "Dangerfield, this is the New York Port Authority; can you give us any idea of the weather?"
"Oh," Dangerfield said, "we've got fine weather coming. You can put out to sea in thoese little boats and catch those little radioactive fish; nothing to worry about."
(page 319)
"Good lord," Barnes said. "He doesn't know what you're talking about. He's mentally ill." To Stockstill he said, "Listen, Doctor, isn't schizophrenia where a person loses track of their culture and its values? Well, this man has lost track; listen to him."
(page 395)
NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR (***)
Because, the cab said, life is composed of reality configurations so constituted.
(page 667)
It's the same, Kathy informed him. Everything's the same, when you break through to absolute reality; it's all one vast blur.
(page 494)
Are you waiting for last year to come by again or something?
(page 646)
A SCANNER DARKLY (****)
Do you know Bob Arctor or Bob the actor?
Who are you?
Who am I?
Sometimes I wish I knew how to go crazy. I forget how.
(907)
"A dream woke me," Arctor said. "A religious dream. In it there was this huge clap of thunder, and all of a sudden the heavens rolled aside and God appeared and His voice rumbled at me - what the hell did He say? - oh yeah. 'I am vexed with you, my son,' He said. He was scowling. I was shaking, in the dream, and looking up, and I said, 'What'd I do now, Lord?' And He said, 'You left the cap off the toothpaste tube again.' And then I realized it was my ex-wife."
(918)
"Do you think," he said aloud as he painstakingly drove, "that when we die and appear before God on Judgment Day, that our sins will be listed in chronological order or in order of severity, which could be ascending or descending, or alphabetically?
(941)
"In fact , we could put an ad in the L.A. Times: 'Modern three-bedroom tract house with two bathrooms for easy and fast flushing, high-grade dope stashed throughout all rooms; dope included in sale price.'"
(945)
When he turned on the tape-transport once more, Arctor was saying, "-as near as I can figure out, God is dead."
Luckman answered, "I didn't know He was sick."
(1033)
(Nietzsche neither!)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 12, 2015
Segundo libro del set de tres, que reúne varias de las mejores novelas de Philip K. DICK. Este tomo, que reúne obras de los años 60's y 70's contiene obras maduras, bastante complejas, con mundos futuristas muy bien logrados. Mis reseñas de cada novela por separado, están aquí:
"Martian Time-Slip"
"Dr. Bloodmoney"
"Now Wait for Last Year"
"Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said"
"A Scanner Darkly"
"Martian Time-Slip"
"Dr. Bloodmoney"
"Now Wait for Last Year"
"Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said"
"A Scanner Darkly"
Read
September 26, 2019Martian Time-Slip - 3/5
More of a beginner's class in identifying Dick's narrative proclivities although from a later period of his career. The time-space concept remains involving to varying degrees of quality, delving into Jack and his peers' mental-illness-as-ability affliction in a manner that's both incisive and inventive, not to mention (potentially) personal given Dick's own battle with depression around this time. Exudes an air of hopelessness and futility as key players engage in sinful, self-satisfying acts throughout.
Dr. Bloodmoney - 3/5
Dick's always been excellent with interpersonal relationships among individuals, subtly linking each while highlighting their fears of one another brought on by paranoia and insecurity. This works particularly well here thanks to the circumstances of all those struggling desperately to survive at any cost. They harbor secrets never to be uttered despite constant innerconnectivity, adding more tension to an already taxing overarching scenario. Falls off toward the end and abruptly at that, tidily putting a period at the end of these disparate threads with an unceremonious drop of the hammer.
Now Wait for Last Year - 4/5
Dick's infatuation with reality-bending time slippage is illustrated as masterfully as ever. There's no question as to how JJ-130 works once Dr. Sweetscent and company's roles fluctuate via hallucinatory ebb and flow, yet this suffers from the resigned hopelessness infecting the protagonist's exhausting efforts. Underwhelming when paired with complexity of sci-fi and political intrigue that escalates until it all abruptly ceases, making our diligence in following along with minutiae of preceding plot feel wasted.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - 4/5
Begins less concerned with Taverner's self-eradicating dimension hopping in favor of laying down a simpler narrative. An appreciably Dickian cat-and-mouse tale with requisite genre trappings littering a dystopian police state. It exudes a revisionist noirish vibe as Jason traverses this parallel landscape, employing every square inch of his past life's experience and six-level intelligence.
Flow My Tears veers off into the realm of the inexplicable as Dick tends to do late in the game, opting to exploit our curiosity instead of presenting something conventionally conclusive. He hand-waves certain details out of existence with drug-infused tropes, employing a modicum of technical jargon to imbue all with the basic plausibility we require as readers.
More of a beginner's class in identifying Dick's narrative proclivities although from a later period of his career. The time-space concept remains involving to varying degrees of quality, delving into Jack and his peers' mental-illness-as-ability affliction in a manner that's both incisive and inventive, not to mention (potentially) personal given Dick's own battle with depression around this time. Exudes an air of hopelessness and futility as key players engage in sinful, self-satisfying acts throughout.
Dr. Bloodmoney - 3/5
Dick's always been excellent with interpersonal relationships among individuals, subtly linking each while highlighting their fears of one another brought on by paranoia and insecurity. This works particularly well here thanks to the circumstances of all those struggling desperately to survive at any cost. They harbor secrets never to be uttered despite constant innerconnectivity, adding more tension to an already taxing overarching scenario. Falls off toward the end and abruptly at that, tidily putting a period at the end of these disparate threads with an unceremonious drop of the hammer.
Now Wait for Last Year - 4/5
Dick's infatuation with reality-bending time slippage is illustrated as masterfully as ever. There's no question as to how JJ-130 works once Dr. Sweetscent and company's roles fluctuate via hallucinatory ebb and flow, yet this suffers from the resigned hopelessness infecting the protagonist's exhausting efforts. Underwhelming when paired with complexity of sci-fi and political intrigue that escalates until it all abruptly ceases, making our diligence in following along with minutiae of preceding plot feel wasted.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - 4/5
Begins less concerned with Taverner's self-eradicating dimension hopping in favor of laying down a simpler narrative. An appreciably Dickian cat-and-mouse tale with requisite genre trappings littering a dystopian police state. It exudes a revisionist noirish vibe as Jason traverses this parallel landscape, employing every square inch of his past life's experience and six-level intelligence.
Flow My Tears veers off into the realm of the inexplicable as Dick tends to do late in the game, opting to exploit our curiosity instead of presenting something conventionally conclusive. He hand-waves certain details out of existence with drug-infused tropes, employing a modicum of technical jargon to imbue all with the basic plausibility we require as readers.
August 6, 2024
This series of novels, and the order they are presented in, is all excellent. It's what I'd consider some of his best work. A lot of it borders on his schizo ideas but all stays mostly grounded and interesting.
Slight spoilers below.
Martian time slip: 4, fine but reminds me in some ways of Ubik a little. Schizo autistic time bender.
Dr. Bloodmoney: 4, a interesting future and interesting battle takes place at the end. Similar to above but nuclear and no time bending.
Now wait for last year: 5, the be all end all of time travel adjacent story telling, no bullshitting about for 10 pages trying to hamfist explain how complicated time travel is, the characters simply move forward with it.
Flow my tears: 4, sometimes boring especially the beginning but the monologs/dialogs between the characters can be interesting.
A scanner darkly: 4, PKD's best autobiographical work (maybe I will try valis again in the future but I hated it.)
Slight spoilers below.
Martian time slip: 4, fine but reminds me in some ways of Ubik a little. Schizo autistic time bender.
Dr. Bloodmoney: 4, a interesting future and interesting battle takes place at the end. Similar to above but nuclear and no time bending.
Now wait for last year: 5, the be all end all of time travel adjacent story telling, no bullshitting about for 10 pages trying to hamfist explain how complicated time travel is, the characters simply move forward with it.
Flow my tears: 4, sometimes boring especially the beginning but the monologs/dialogs between the characters can be interesting.
A scanner darkly: 4, PKD's best autobiographical work (maybe I will try valis again in the future but I hated it.)
December 19, 2019
I could only get to page 49 in th Martian Time-Slip and got so disgusted with Dick's repeated use of the N word to call the native Martians, and his constant misogomist description of all the women characters, and the extreme antisemitism exhibited by the main characters toward the Jewish community on Mars. Their internal dialogue contantly repeated every known antisemitic stereotype that I've ever read or heard and dialogue between genital characters also freely engaged in this. There appeared to be no sensor nor plot purose except to describe life on Mars.
From studing PKDs life and nonfiction writing I got a hint of perhaps an Arian leaning but this is over the top. And yet no mention of any of this discusting crap from any critic but what a icon he was! Ya right for the Arian brothers.
From studing PKDs life and nonfiction writing I got a hint of perhaps an Arian leaning but this is over the top. And yet no mention of any of this discusting crap from any critic but what a icon he was! Ya right for the Arian brothers.
July 21, 2018
I have no experience with hallucinogenic drugs, but some of the descriptions Philip Dick gives honestly make me think I know how it might feel. These novels weren’t “incredible” and won’t be my favorites, but they are all thoughtful in the way great writing should be. Of the five, I think I would have to point to Now Wait for Last Year as my favorite. Maybe I’m just a sucker for a plot that includes trans-dimensional time travel though!
January 16, 2019
PKD is one of the most unique writers I've ever read, the ultimate idea man. Dick's prose is so workmanlike and unremarkable but there's just something so fascinating and gripping about his writings. This was a great collection of novels.
July 6, 2011
This is a collection of five PKD novels from the 60s and 70s: ‘Martian Time-Slip’, ‘Doctor Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After the Bomb’, ‘Now Wait For Last Year’, ‘Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said’ and ‘A Scanner Darkly’.
Martian Time-Slip
Takes place on a desolate, dry Mars, inhabited by poor colonists and the remnants of the poorer native population, the Bleekmen. Jack Bohlen is a repairman with a bored wife hooked on barbiturates. His neighbour's young son, Manfred, is an autistic with untapped paranormal abilities. Jack is convinced to devise a contraption to communicate with Manfred in order to capitalize on the boy's theoretical ability to glimpse the future. It's an odd setup, but the store is turns out really good. The same scene, the same moment in time, is played over and over again, each time shown from a slightly different perspective. Which interpretation of reality is really real? Are any of them? It's a chilling, haunting, beautiful piece of writing. Even though it is an early novel and his writing is a little inconsistent, it is still one of his better novels.
Doctor Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After the Bomb
A story about the people in a post apocalyptic society, told from the perspective of several characters. This is weakest of the five stories. The first and last third of the novel is ok, but the middle third is far to slow. Also there are too many points of views, too many main characters that tell their story, and it becomes hard to distinguish one story from another.
Now Wait For Last Year
Kathy rebels against her unhappy marriage by experimenting with whatever drugs she can lay her hands on. She finds herself handed a tab of JJ-180, something new on the market and she gulps it down not even caring what it might do to her. Big mistake! JJ-180 is far from recreational. The drug is both hallucinogenic, not mind altering, but reality altering. It causes the subject to move through time, backwards, forwards and even, depending on the individual, sideways! One capsule is also enough to make the recipient hopelessly addicted and the next dose causes irrevocable damage. This is a very good story, it is hard to find a character to trust or sympathize with, as they all seem at times seems both flawed and even unpleasant. The writing for sure transmits both the worries and paranoid feelings of the characters, with no doubt at times PKD’s own feelings. I particularly liked how the author handled the effects of the time-travelling drug. Characters meet themselves in the future or the past, interact, give advice and in one extraordinary moment even how the main character contemplates the effect his suicide might have on the various futures he has already witnessed.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Taverner is a famous television host, proud of having 30 million viewers, he is at the top. Then all of a sudden, somehow, goes away. Quite literally overnight, he finds himself an unperson, awakening in a flophouse in the bad part of town with little more than the clothes on his back and the cash in his wallet. He tries to call his agent and lawyer, and even his girlfriend with whom he spent the previous night. They have no idea who he is. In short order, Taverner learns to his horror that his hometown hasn't even got a birth certificate for him on file. Jason Taverner does not exist. The story reveals a scary world that embodies the anxieties of PKD’s growing sense of paranoia. The idea of a surveillance society that monitors its citizens' every move while keeping it docile and compliant through vapid entertainment, material reward, and drugs makes ‘1984’ at times look almost humane. This story move you in directions that only really good fiction can do, and it will give you some perceptions on the world we live on, and reminds us that we should cherish what we have as it can easily be lost.
A Scanner Darkly
The war on drugs has been lost, and when a reluctant undercover cop is ordered to spy on those he is closest to, the toll that the mission takes on his sanity is hard to grasp. Once again under precept of concern over national security the paranoid government officials to begin spying on citizens, trust is a luxury and everyone is a suspected criminal until proven otherwise. Arctor is a narcotics officer who is ordered to spy on his friends and report back to headquarters. Arctor is also an addict. His drug of choice is a ubiquitous street drug called Substance D, a drug known well for producing split personalities in its users. I think the author is reliving his past in this story and thereby setting a warning example. The novel explores the dual life that many drug users experience. The conclusion provides an interesting view on the sources of abuse. Those who have been there might find the parallels between fiction and real life quite unnerving. This is a novel that makes you feel more and more paranoid with every page you turn. It is a very convincing and disturbing story with a twist, even unforgettable.
Overall, this is a very good collection of Philip K. Dick stories, and it is easy to see why so many of his stories have been adapted to movies.
Martian Time-Slip
Takes place on a desolate, dry Mars, inhabited by poor colonists and the remnants of the poorer native population, the Bleekmen. Jack Bohlen is a repairman with a bored wife hooked on barbiturates. His neighbour's young son, Manfred, is an autistic with untapped paranormal abilities. Jack is convinced to devise a contraption to communicate with Manfred in order to capitalize on the boy's theoretical ability to glimpse the future. It's an odd setup, but the store is turns out really good. The same scene, the same moment in time, is played over and over again, each time shown from a slightly different perspective. Which interpretation of reality is really real? Are any of them? It's a chilling, haunting, beautiful piece of writing. Even though it is an early novel and his writing is a little inconsistent, it is still one of his better novels.
Doctor Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After the Bomb
A story about the people in a post apocalyptic society, told from the perspective of several characters. This is weakest of the five stories. The first and last third of the novel is ok, but the middle third is far to slow. Also there are too many points of views, too many main characters that tell their story, and it becomes hard to distinguish one story from another.
Now Wait For Last Year
Kathy rebels against her unhappy marriage by experimenting with whatever drugs she can lay her hands on. She finds herself handed a tab of JJ-180, something new on the market and she gulps it down not even caring what it might do to her. Big mistake! JJ-180 is far from recreational. The drug is both hallucinogenic, not mind altering, but reality altering. It causes the subject to move through time, backwards, forwards and even, depending on the individual, sideways! One capsule is also enough to make the recipient hopelessly addicted and the next dose causes irrevocable damage. This is a very good story, it is hard to find a character to trust or sympathize with, as they all seem at times seems both flawed and even unpleasant. The writing for sure transmits both the worries and paranoid feelings of the characters, with no doubt at times PKD’s own feelings. I particularly liked how the author handled the effects of the time-travelling drug. Characters meet themselves in the future or the past, interact, give advice and in one extraordinary moment even how the main character contemplates the effect his suicide might have on the various futures he has already witnessed.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Taverner is a famous television host, proud of having 30 million viewers, he is at the top. Then all of a sudden, somehow, goes away. Quite literally overnight, he finds himself an unperson, awakening in a flophouse in the bad part of town with little more than the clothes on his back and the cash in his wallet. He tries to call his agent and lawyer, and even his girlfriend with whom he spent the previous night. They have no idea who he is. In short order, Taverner learns to his horror that his hometown hasn't even got a birth certificate for him on file. Jason Taverner does not exist. The story reveals a scary world that embodies the anxieties of PKD’s growing sense of paranoia. The idea of a surveillance society that monitors its citizens' every move while keeping it docile and compliant through vapid entertainment, material reward, and drugs makes ‘1984’ at times look almost humane. This story move you in directions that only really good fiction can do, and it will give you some perceptions on the world we live on, and reminds us that we should cherish what we have as it can easily be lost.
A Scanner Darkly
The war on drugs has been lost, and when a reluctant undercover cop is ordered to spy on those he is closest to, the toll that the mission takes on his sanity is hard to grasp. Once again under precept of concern over national security the paranoid government officials to begin spying on citizens, trust is a luxury and everyone is a suspected criminal until proven otherwise. Arctor is a narcotics officer who is ordered to spy on his friends and report back to headquarters. Arctor is also an addict. His drug of choice is a ubiquitous street drug called Substance D, a drug known well for producing split personalities in its users. I think the author is reliving his past in this story and thereby setting a warning example. The novel explores the dual life that many drug users experience. The conclusion provides an interesting view on the sources of abuse. Those who have been there might find the parallels between fiction and real life quite unnerving. This is a novel that makes you feel more and more paranoid with every page you turn. It is a very convincing and disturbing story with a twist, even unforgettable.
Overall, this is a very good collection of Philip K. Dick stories, and it is easy to see why so many of his stories have been adapted to movies.
April 11, 2021
It was alright. I guess it could have been worse. It was good to understand slightly where sci-fi has gained some of it's footing. He truly was prolific in sci-fi and literature in general.
July 25, 2013
I only read three of the five novels in this anthology, as I already own and have read two of them. So this review will only be about the three I just finished reading. All in all, it wasn't the best anthology of Dick's work I could expect, but I guess the first volume of this three volume series was. I thought a couple of the novels in this book were a little weak, but a couple were also very good -- thus, the four out of five stars....
The book starts with Martian Time-Slip. It's about human colonies on a desolate Mars, and right away you meet the indigenous Martian population, the Bleekmen -- also called "niggers" because they're black, I guess. I tell you, I'm starting to get pissed off at Dick's overt racism in his novels, even though I've never read of any evidence that he was a racist. In my review of Flow My Tears, I wrote the following:
"I’m starting to notice a disturbing theme in Dick’s books: he doesn’t seem to hold black people in high regard. In this novel, black people are being sterilized out of existence and Jason seems to be glad of it. Dick also treats blacks oddly in The Crack in Space and there are pissed off, drugged out black people in Counter-Clock World. Evidently, Watts serves as Dick’s place of ultimate black fear and evil."
To refer to your characters as "niggers," even in the early '60s, seems outrageous to me. It's not like Dick was from the South or anything....
Anyway, we meet Jack Bohlen, a schizophrenic repairman, who is hired to construct a device for communicating with Manfred, a severely autistic child who others think can tell the future. I found the novel boring and it was obsessed with schizophrenia, which in odd 1960s understandings of it, is shakily discussed here. Apparently every third person in the world has it. Okay then.... I stayed the course and read the book, but the ending completely threw me, and not in a good way. Of course, Dick's endings are often very twisty, but this one made no sense to me at all. It's like he wrote himself into a corner and came up with this quick "fix" to get himself out of the jam, and that's how he left it. I found the book depressing and unsatisfying and would be hard pressed to give it three stars.
The next book was Dr. Bloodmoney, which was better. It's a post-apocalyptic novel, which might seem trite now, but was probably fairly original when it was published in the '60s. There are a LOT of characters and sometimes it's hard to remember all of them and what they all do, but Dick ties them together (sometimes TOO neatly) so that everything works out. It's a far fetched idea he writes about, but I was willing to buy it, so there you go. I did think it was a little too long and could have been more concise. Maybe 3.5 stars.
A pretty good novel was the third one, Now Wait For Last Year. It's about a drug called JJ-180, a hallucinogenic that's not only mind altering, but it causes people to move in time, forwards, backwards, etc. One capsule is completing addicting, and it eventually causes death. It was developed as a weapon of war, since Terra (Earth) is joined with the Starmen to fight the Reegs, a war the Terrans are losing. We meet Dr. Eric Sweetscent and his wife Kathy, who he's on the outs with. He works for a large company, but is hired to serve as the UN Secretary General's personal physician. However, the plot starts getting odd when Eric encounters several different version of the "The Mole" and when Kathy sneakily addicts Eric to JJ-180, where he discovers he goes forward in time. He seeks an antidote, and finds one. He also finds alternate realities, a recurring PKD theme, and even talks to himself in other years to get advice. He finds that the Reegs are actually a good ally to have in the future, and that with them, the Terrans defeat the Starmen, but as there are alternate realities to different years, he has a lot to deal with. He's on the run throughout part of the novel, and things are not always what they seem. There seem to be some irrelevant plot points in the novel, which weakens it a bit in my mind (why does the Mole send him to the girl in Pasadena -- pointless...), but the characters in this book seem, for PKD, surprisingly fleshed out and it's a good read. My only significant complaint is the abrupt ending, a complaint I have about a lot of Dick's books. I was reading and wondering what was going to happen next, only to turn the page and find out I'd come to the end of the novel. No warning. Very disquieting. Still, a pretty decent book.
You'll find my review of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said at http://hankrules2011.wordpress.com/20... and of A Scanner Darkly (a very good book) at http://hankrules2011.wordpress.com/20....
This book isn't perfect, but it's worth reading. There are some fine tales here. Recommended.
The book starts with Martian Time-Slip. It's about human colonies on a desolate Mars, and right away you meet the indigenous Martian population, the Bleekmen -- also called "niggers" because they're black, I guess. I tell you, I'm starting to get pissed off at Dick's overt racism in his novels, even though I've never read of any evidence that he was a racist. In my review of Flow My Tears, I wrote the following:
"I’m starting to notice a disturbing theme in Dick’s books: he doesn’t seem to hold black people in high regard. In this novel, black people are being sterilized out of existence and Jason seems to be glad of it. Dick also treats blacks oddly in The Crack in Space and there are pissed off, drugged out black people in Counter-Clock World. Evidently, Watts serves as Dick’s place of ultimate black fear and evil."
To refer to your characters as "niggers," even in the early '60s, seems outrageous to me. It's not like Dick was from the South or anything....
Anyway, we meet Jack Bohlen, a schizophrenic repairman, who is hired to construct a device for communicating with Manfred, a severely autistic child who others think can tell the future. I found the novel boring and it was obsessed with schizophrenia, which in odd 1960s understandings of it, is shakily discussed here. Apparently every third person in the world has it. Okay then.... I stayed the course and read the book, but the ending completely threw me, and not in a good way. Of course, Dick's endings are often very twisty, but this one made no sense to me at all. It's like he wrote himself into a corner and came up with this quick "fix" to get himself out of the jam, and that's how he left it. I found the book depressing and unsatisfying and would be hard pressed to give it three stars.
The next book was Dr. Bloodmoney, which was better. It's a post-apocalyptic novel, which might seem trite now, but was probably fairly original when it was published in the '60s. There are a LOT of characters and sometimes it's hard to remember all of them and what they all do, but Dick ties them together (sometimes TOO neatly) so that everything works out. It's a far fetched idea he writes about, but I was willing to buy it, so there you go. I did think it was a little too long and could have been more concise. Maybe 3.5 stars.
A pretty good novel was the third one, Now Wait For Last Year. It's about a drug called JJ-180, a hallucinogenic that's not only mind altering, but it causes people to move in time, forwards, backwards, etc. One capsule is completing addicting, and it eventually causes death. It was developed as a weapon of war, since Terra (Earth) is joined with the Starmen to fight the Reegs, a war the Terrans are losing. We meet Dr. Eric Sweetscent and his wife Kathy, who he's on the outs with. He works for a large company, but is hired to serve as the UN Secretary General's personal physician. However, the plot starts getting odd when Eric encounters several different version of the "The Mole" and when Kathy sneakily addicts Eric to JJ-180, where he discovers he goes forward in time. He seeks an antidote, and finds one. He also finds alternate realities, a recurring PKD theme, and even talks to himself in other years to get advice. He finds that the Reegs are actually a good ally to have in the future, and that with them, the Terrans defeat the Starmen, but as there are alternate realities to different years, he has a lot to deal with. He's on the run throughout part of the novel, and things are not always what they seem. There seem to be some irrelevant plot points in the novel, which weakens it a bit in my mind (why does the Mole send him to the girl in Pasadena -- pointless...), but the characters in this book seem, for PKD, surprisingly fleshed out and it's a good read. My only significant complaint is the abrupt ending, a complaint I have about a lot of Dick's books. I was reading and wondering what was going to happen next, only to turn the page and find out I'd come to the end of the novel. No warning. Very disquieting. Still, a pretty decent book.
You'll find my review of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said at http://hankrules2011.wordpress.com/20... and of A Scanner Darkly (a very good book) at http://hankrules2011.wordpress.com/20....
This book isn't perfect, but it's worth reading. There are some fine tales here. Recommended.
April 12, 2024
Started: Sunday, September 3, 2023
Finished: Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Martian Time-Slip (1964)
Aside from the character monologues / dialogues that include racist epithets, which made me question reading the novel in itself, but not to rationalize, it has occurred before in the other compilation of novels from The Library of America, with Jonathan Letham, editor, apparently not needing to put such rhetoric into context in an Introduction; it's great.
Started: Wednesday, October 25, 2023
Finished: Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Dr. Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965)
The writing still has an antiquated misogyny and racism underlying character and themes, as if P. K. Dick wrote for his readers who would have been deeply entrenched in patriarchal values, unwittingly, or perhaps, knowledgeably, to their own benefit. Most of the text takes place on Earth and/or in the vicinity but no further, as stories about living on Mars. The date set in 1981 and seven years later, so ironically, during the Reagan administration, unknown in 1965 and previously. Mention of Richard M. Nixon, outside of the reality of post-1965 events is humorous at best, and fascinating, as an alternative fictional reality to what actually took place by the year 1988. The character sketches are getting more individual in appearance and style; not so dependent on storyline. Okay, hopefully, no spoiler alerts. Between two and four stars, I would give it a solid three stars. If I had read this in 1988, my first year in college, my head would have turned inside-out trying to make sense of how it relates to the present-day of that time. But now it seems like a scholastic Proustian endeavor, dredging up history and memories of a time just before the fall of the Soviet Union, world communism, and ironically, Reagan's alleged Star Wars defense missile program. Thank goodness, life didn't imitate art, as in Dr. Bloodmoney.
Started: Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Finished: Sunday, December 31, 2023
Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
A good day to finish the novel, last day of the year. A very introspective work, not much actually takes place beyond the primary character, the protagonist. Slow. It is a meditation on love and sorrow.
Started: Monday, January 1, 2024
Finished: Monday, January 22, 2024
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
A stitch in time saves nine. Starts magnificently, twists, writhes like a snake in the desert sun, and finishes with an epilogue that wraps it all up nicely like the end of a television series. The ending, a bit outlandish but I'm sure he had moved on by then to another project, I would guess.
Started: Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Paused: Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Returned: CPL HWLC
"Note: Another patron has placed this item on hold."
Purchased: Saturday, February 3, 2024
Started: Thursday, February 15, 2024
Finished: Friday, April 12, 2024
A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Sad.
Finished: Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Martian Time-Slip (1964)
Aside from the character monologues / dialogues that include racist epithets, which made me question reading the novel in itself, but not to rationalize, it has occurred before in the other compilation of novels from The Library of America, with Jonathan Letham, editor, apparently not needing to put such rhetoric into context in an Introduction; it's great.
Started: Wednesday, October 25, 2023
Finished: Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Dr. Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965)
The writing still has an antiquated misogyny and racism underlying character and themes, as if P. K. Dick wrote for his readers who would have been deeply entrenched in patriarchal values, unwittingly, or perhaps, knowledgeably, to their own benefit. Most of the text takes place on Earth and/or in the vicinity but no further, as stories about living on Mars. The date set in 1981 and seven years later, so ironically, during the Reagan administration, unknown in 1965 and previously. Mention of Richard M. Nixon, outside of the reality of post-1965 events is humorous at best, and fascinating, as an alternative fictional reality to what actually took place by the year 1988. The character sketches are getting more individual in appearance and style; not so dependent on storyline. Okay, hopefully, no spoiler alerts. Between two and four stars, I would give it a solid three stars. If I had read this in 1988, my first year in college, my head would have turned inside-out trying to make sense of how it relates to the present-day of that time. But now it seems like a scholastic Proustian endeavor, dredging up history and memories of a time just before the fall of the Soviet Union, world communism, and ironically, Reagan's alleged Star Wars defense missile program. Thank goodness, life didn't imitate art, as in Dr. Bloodmoney.
Started: Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Finished: Sunday, December 31, 2023
Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
A good day to finish the novel, last day of the year. A very introspective work, not much actually takes place beyond the primary character, the protagonist. Slow. It is a meditation on love and sorrow.
Started: Monday, January 1, 2024
Finished: Monday, January 22, 2024
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
A stitch in time saves nine. Starts magnificently, twists, writhes like a snake in the desert sun, and finishes with an epilogue that wraps it all up nicely like the end of a television series. The ending, a bit outlandish but I'm sure he had moved on by then to another project, I would guess.
Started: Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Paused: Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Returned: CPL HWLC
"Note: Another patron has placed this item on hold."
Purchased: Saturday, February 3, 2024
Started: Thursday, February 15, 2024
Finished: Friday, April 12, 2024
A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Sad.
December 12, 2022
This is one of the best and most surprising books (a collection of novels, in fact) that I've read in a long time. I was turned on to Dick by reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? on my way back to Chicago from Tokyo via San Francisco this summer. I really enjoyed that book, and feeling quite fine after a couple weeks of travel at the end of summer I decided to dive right into more of Dick's writing.
Dick's stories can be called sf, but they differ from many other entries in that genre in that they are far more interested in examining the inner lives of their characters and the personal crises that they inevitably suffer than they are in constructing richly detailed speculative worlds. The settings of Dick's books are almost invariably in the (frightening, if not quite dystopian) near future, but the details of the world usually feel as though they have been warped to the contours of the protagonist's innermost fears and shortcomings. And yet, these worlds are not quite personal hells, because there is the sense that redemption is possible, if only one is resolute enough, and finally willing to face their own worst hypocrisies, the ones that seem to wind down into the very foundations of their soul.
The first three stories here are among Dick's quirkiest and they seem relatively low key in comparison to some of his other books. I find that the subtle tones that Dick is able to strike in these stories, which often meander through their strange alternate realities, are more carefully rendered than what Dick conjures in some of his more feverishly creative tales, that feel as though they were set down on paper without editing just as they were being dreamt up. Of these three, my favorite is Now Wait for Last Year, featuring a time travel-inducing drug and a protagonist who is able to examine his own personal crisis through the lens of a fragmented time continuum. Oh yes, and by talking to a robotic cab. Though a summary of any of Dick's stories might seem ridiculous, his absolute sincerity and dedication to his characters is always felt, and this makes even his most absurd contrivances work. At least they work here.
The two novels that conclude this volume show Dick stepping up the level of his writing considerably. The last one, A Scanner Darkly, particularly shows the evolution of his literary skills. In interviews, Dick said that for this book he worked closely with his editor to perfect the characterizations, and it shows. This story is permeated with an elegiac sense of sorrow for departed friends. There are many outstanding, perfectly composed scenes here that have stuck with me. Though lacking the frantic inventiveness of some of his most popular novels, A Scanner Darkly is quite possibly his most deeply felt book.
Dick's stories can be called sf, but they differ from many other entries in that genre in that they are far more interested in examining the inner lives of their characters and the personal crises that they inevitably suffer than they are in constructing richly detailed speculative worlds. The settings of Dick's books are almost invariably in the (frightening, if not quite dystopian) near future, but the details of the world usually feel as though they have been warped to the contours of the protagonist's innermost fears and shortcomings. And yet, these worlds are not quite personal hells, because there is the sense that redemption is possible, if only one is resolute enough, and finally willing to face their own worst hypocrisies, the ones that seem to wind down into the very foundations of their soul.
The first three stories here are among Dick's quirkiest and they seem relatively low key in comparison to some of his other books. I find that the subtle tones that Dick is able to strike in these stories, which often meander through their strange alternate realities, are more carefully rendered than what Dick conjures in some of his more feverishly creative tales, that feel as though they were set down on paper without editing just as they were being dreamt up. Of these three, my favorite is Now Wait for Last Year, featuring a time travel-inducing drug and a protagonist who is able to examine his own personal crisis through the lens of a fragmented time continuum. Oh yes, and by talking to a robotic cab. Though a summary of any of Dick's stories might seem ridiculous, his absolute sincerity and dedication to his characters is always felt, and this makes even his most absurd contrivances work. At least they work here.
The two novels that conclude this volume show Dick stepping up the level of his writing considerably. The last one, A Scanner Darkly, particularly shows the evolution of his literary skills. In interviews, Dick said that for this book he worked closely with his editor to perfect the characterizations, and it shows. This story is permeated with an elegiac sense of sorrow for departed friends. There are many outstanding, perfectly composed scenes here that have stuck with me. Though lacking the frantic inventiveness of some of his most popular novels, A Scanner Darkly is quite possibly his most deeply felt book.
October 26, 2010
FYI: I didn't read Martian Time Slip or A Scanner Darkly as part of this anthology. I've read MTS before and intend to re-read it soon as my review wasn't at all thorough. I also intend to read A Scanner Darkly at a later time, as I own it. Once I read them I'll go through and update this review accordingly. So I'll just be reviewing Dr. Bloodmoney, Now Wait for Last Year and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said in the context of an anthology.
To be honest, I don't think that these were great choices for an anthology. I'm not sure if that's due to the quality of Philip K Dick's work during this period, or the fault of the editor who compiled the book. I haven't read enough of Dick's stories to form a comprehensive opinion of his body of work, but I don't want to entirely blame the editor either. I recall really enjoying Martian Time Slip, but I have to say that the 3 stories I read fall really flat.
I will concede that I enjoyed the nuclear apocalypse and "magic" aspects of Dr. Bloodmoney; I enjoyed the drug-induced time travel in Now Wait For Last Year; and I enjoyed the dystopian society and "time/space travel" in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. However, I didn't enjoy these stories in their entirety. I found that these stories left many loose ends untied, and sometimes I straight up hated the main characters. I also found that these stories dragged and the overlap in themes can make for a mentally exhausting read.
I think this book would be best enjoyed if each story were read at a different period of time - I personally suggest going away and reading a fantasy or YA novel as a buffer. I chose to read all three close together as this was a library book that I didn't want to have to check out at a later date, and I felt really drained toward the end. I dont know if it was the themes or the length of the stories, but I think I would have a more positive review if I'd been able to read it at my own leisure.
If you're interested in more comprehensive (and spoiler-laden) reviews of each story, they're linked below:
Dr. Bloodmoney
Now Wait for Last Year
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
To be honest, I don't think that these were great choices for an anthology. I'm not sure if that's due to the quality of Philip K Dick's work during this period, or the fault of the editor who compiled the book. I haven't read enough of Dick's stories to form a comprehensive opinion of his body of work, but I don't want to entirely blame the editor either. I recall really enjoying Martian Time Slip, but I have to say that the 3 stories I read fall really flat.
I will concede that I enjoyed the nuclear apocalypse and "magic" aspects of Dr. Bloodmoney; I enjoyed the drug-induced time travel in Now Wait For Last Year; and I enjoyed the dystopian society and "time/space travel" in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. However, I didn't enjoy these stories in their entirety. I found that these stories left many loose ends untied, and sometimes I straight up hated the main characters. I also found that these stories dragged and the overlap in themes can make for a mentally exhausting read.
I think this book would be best enjoyed if each story were read at a different period of time - I personally suggest going away and reading a fantasy or YA novel as a buffer. I chose to read all three close together as this was a library book that I didn't want to have to check out at a later date, and I felt really drained toward the end. I dont know if it was the themes or the length of the stories, but I think I would have a more positive review if I'd been able to read it at my own leisure.
If you're interested in more comprehensive (and spoiler-laden) reviews of each story, they're linked below:
Dr. Bloodmoney
Now Wait for Last Year
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Currently reading
October 23, 2013
Martian Time-Slip (1963) p. 1
:
This PDK story takes place on the eerie surface of the red planet, Mars, in what I think is the mid 1990's. Mars has been colonized starting in the 1970's, and people started to immigrate there to escape the now over populated earth to make a fresh start. Martian Time-Slip includes some of PDK's favorite themes; mental illness, alternate realities, precognition, and time perception. I'd rate this somewhere around a 3.5 or so. PDK does a great job in the first 200 pages spinning a suspenseful web of interweaving plots, and you really anticipate a climactic finally where the tangle of characters and story lines blow up in the faces of the characters with the unraveling of time and reality. Unfortunately, for me, the ending was OK; it could have been a little bit better.
Dr. Bloodmoney (1965) p. 233 :
Another post-nuclear apocalyptic story in the Bay Area, California. As with many of PDK's stories, there are people born with defects from a drugs, experiments, or in this case environmental pollution. With these defects also come super-human powers. Why did the war start? Who is responsible? And, who now holds the power? 3 Stars.
Now Wait for Last Year (1966) p. 459 :
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974) p. 669 :
A Scanner Darkly (1977) p. 859 :
"I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again -Bob Arctor
A Scanner Darkly is a murky tale of the world of Substance D (aka "D" or "Death"), and the subculture surrounding it. Drugs have altered society in such a way where it isn't accepted, but it seems that the effects are viewed as inevitable. However, law enforcement has started to employ informants and undercover officers to identify where this new drug is coming from. When at the station, undercovers wear scramble suites so that they can keep their anonymity. The imbedded officers are the only ones who know who they are. But as they get deeper into their cover, they too become unsure who they really are.
This is definitely one of my favorite PDK stories so far. 5 Stars
This PDK story takes place on the eerie surface of the red planet, Mars, in what I think is the mid 1990's. Mars has been colonized starting in the 1970's, and people started to immigrate there to escape the now over populated earth to make a fresh start. Martian Time-Slip includes some of PDK's favorite themes; mental illness, alternate realities, precognition, and time perception. I'd rate this somewhere around a 3.5 or so. PDK does a great job in the first 200 pages spinning a suspenseful web of interweaving plots, and you really anticipate a climactic finally where the tangle of characters and story lines blow up in the faces of the characters with the unraveling of time and reality. Unfortunately, for me, the ending was OK; it could have been a little bit better.
Dr. Bloodmoney (1965) p. 233 :
Another post-nuclear apocalyptic story in the Bay Area, California. As with many of PDK's stories, there are people born with defects from a drugs, experiments, or in this case environmental pollution. With these defects also come super-human powers. Why did the war start? Who is responsible? And, who now holds the power? 3 Stars.
Now Wait for Last Year (1966) p. 459 :
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974) p. 669 :
A Scanner Darkly (1977) p. 859 :
"I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again -Bob Arctor
A Scanner Darkly is a murky tale of the world of Substance D (aka "D" or "Death"), and the subculture surrounding it. Drugs have altered society in such a way where it isn't accepted, but it seems that the effects are viewed as inevitable. However, law enforcement has started to employ informants and undercover officers to identify where this new drug is coming from. When at the station, undercovers wear scramble suites so that they can keep their anonymity. The imbedded officers are the only ones who know who they are. But as they get deeper into their cover, they too become unsure who they really are.
This is definitely one of my favorite PDK stories so far. 5 Stars
June 23, 2020
Martian Time-Slip: 3.5 stars -- I have so many 'what' and 'huh' moments with Dick that sometimes I find it easy to underestimate or ignore the shear depth of his creativity. It's testament to his abilities that despite the book containing some outdated ideas on things like; The Mars Canals, schizophrenia & autism -- his sheer imaginativeness begs you to forgive him and instead focus on his character's journeys and the bigger-picture concepts and dramatisations -- like a main character not accepting he is dying because he believes he is caught in a Schizophrenics dream. Delicious.
Dr Bloodmoney: 3.5 stars
This one had a bit of everything. A nuclear fallout story featuring a phocomelus with psychokinetic powers and a young girl with a sentient foetus inside her named Bill. Oh and the sentient foetus has telepathic contact with the dead.
Now Wait For Last Year: 3.5 stars
The one with the artificial organ transplant doctor with a wife who is addicted to a powerful drug that causes time travel and the world leader with a psychosomatic condition causing him to mirror the illness of anyone in his vicinity. Oh and there's an intergalactic war happening.
"Life is composed of reality configurations so constituted. To abandon her would be to say, I can't endure reality as such. I have to have uniquely special easier conditions."
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said: 3 Stars
The story of a celebrity waking up after an accident to find out no one knows who he is. Once again, great ideas and plenty of imagination but just didn’t amount to much for me in the end. The kind of story that felt like Dick made it up as he went. On a plot/story level it’s essentially several vignettes of a guy on a bad trip meeting different women.
A Scanner Darkly: 2.5 Stars
I couldn't vibe with this one at all. This one reminded me of how I felt reading Man in the High Castle but instead it's about junkies.
My favourite part was Charles Freck drinking Cabernet Sauvignon while contemplating his favourite page of The Illustrated Picture Book of Sex while a creature with several eyes from between dimensions read him his sins for the rest of eternity.
Dr Bloodmoney: 3.5 stars
This one had a bit of everything. A nuclear fallout story featuring a phocomelus with psychokinetic powers and a young girl with a sentient foetus inside her named Bill. Oh and the sentient foetus has telepathic contact with the dead.
Now Wait For Last Year: 3.5 stars
The one with the artificial organ transplant doctor with a wife who is addicted to a powerful drug that causes time travel and the world leader with a psychosomatic condition causing him to mirror the illness of anyone in his vicinity. Oh and there's an intergalactic war happening.
"Life is composed of reality configurations so constituted. To abandon her would be to say, I can't endure reality as such. I have to have uniquely special easier conditions."
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said: 3 Stars
The story of a celebrity waking up after an accident to find out no one knows who he is. Once again, great ideas and plenty of imagination but just didn’t amount to much for me in the end. The kind of story that felt like Dick made it up as he went. On a plot/story level it’s essentially several vignettes of a guy on a bad trip meeting different women.
A Scanner Darkly: 2.5 Stars
I couldn't vibe with this one at all. This one reminded me of how I felt reading Man in the High Castle but instead it's about junkies.
My favourite part was Charles Freck drinking Cabernet Sauvignon while contemplating his favourite page of The Illustrated Picture Book of Sex while a creature with several eyes from between dimensions read him his sins for the rest of eternity.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 2, 2018
I only read Martin Time-Slip, which is flat out amazing. The characters, the weaving of the characters together, the different themes of reality, time-travel, and mental illness are integrated together to make one incredible novel. It's the second time I have read MTS and it may be the last time. I have found that spending too much time with Manfred may not be in my best interest.
June 4, 2011
While my two favorite PKD stories (Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep and Ubik) were in the first volume, this volume still has some great stories. Martian Time-Slip was probably my least favorite, but that may have to do with the fact that I ended up reading it in a very fragmented way. All the stories are great PKD though. In particular I especially enjoyed Dr. Bloodmoney and Flow My Tears. Overall, I'd probably recommend the first volume as an introduction to PKD and this volume to those wanting more.
In addition to the stories being excellent, the quality of the book was also very nice. The PKD works were the first collections I bought from the Library of America collection, and though I rarely shell out this much on a book these were definitely worth it. I especially enjoyed the notes that accompanied each story at the end of the book which explained certain people and events mentioned in the stories. I've read older copies of many of these stories, and the notes were definitely a useful addition. Other material, such as the timeline of PKD's life were also nice additions in this collection.
In addition to the stories being excellent, the quality of the book was also very nice. The PKD works were the first collections I bought from the Library of America collection, and though I rarely shell out this much on a book these were definitely worth it. I especially enjoyed the notes that accompanied each story at the end of the book which explained certain people and events mentioned in the stories. I've read older copies of many of these stories, and the notes were definitely a useful addition. Other material, such as the timeline of PKD's life were also nice additions in this collection.
September 10, 2012
Five more from P.K. Dick.
"Martian Time Slip" and "Flow My Tears" are typical Dick reality twisters. Lots of fun and unlike anything any other author would have composed. "Dr. Bloodmoney" is Dick's contribution to the post-nuclear apocalyptic novel genre that was big at the time. It's a decent enough addition and distinctively Dickian, although with hindsight that theme was massively overworked and he could have skipped this one. "Now Wait for Last Year" however is an astonishingly excellent ride, one of Dick's finest books.
"A Scanner Darkly" is an entirely different animal. Although thinly disguised as science fiction, what it really is is an epic work of junkie lit. Deeply depressing, horrifically paranoid, morbidly funny, and painfully dull in all the right spots (because ultimately the drug addict's life is, beyond all else, excruciatingly boring). It does what any good work of drug fiction should do: it sucks you into that world, brings it alive, and leaves you never wanting to go down the same path, all without once pandering or preaching. This is where Philip K. Dick truly went mad, and he lived to tell us of it.
Onward to volume three in this series.
"Martian Time Slip" and "Flow My Tears" are typical Dick reality twisters. Lots of fun and unlike anything any other author would have composed. "Dr. Bloodmoney" is Dick's contribution to the post-nuclear apocalyptic novel genre that was big at the time. It's a decent enough addition and distinctively Dickian, although with hindsight that theme was massively overworked and he could have skipped this one. "Now Wait for Last Year" however is an astonishingly excellent ride, one of Dick's finest books.
"A Scanner Darkly" is an entirely different animal. Although thinly disguised as science fiction, what it really is is an epic work of junkie lit. Deeply depressing, horrifically paranoid, morbidly funny, and painfully dull in all the right spots (because ultimately the drug addict's life is, beyond all else, excruciatingly boring). It does what any good work of drug fiction should do: it sucks you into that world, brings it alive, and leaves you never wanting to go down the same path, all without once pandering or preaching. This is where Philip K. Dick truly went mad, and he lived to tell us of it.
Onward to volume three in this series.
October 20, 2010
Well this is my first time reading any signiifcant amount of Philip K Dick's work. In totality, within this volume, I will say it is average. I know the work is unusual, I know it has themes that appeal to audiences (Sex, Drugs, the obsession with ruined/ruinous relationships, taking a simple idea and weaving into something that most people think is oddly wicked.) so I understand the appeal. I do. But some of the charcters and themes, when read together, actually seem to start to meld together. What in one novel seemed original, gets recycled in another. I realize this is a petty point indeed, when the overall stories are vastly different, and nothing is taken at face value, but I would liked to have seen more depth of character. Who knows, If I had read them years apart as they were puiblished, I might not have given it a second thought, but there it is, just an opinion, any how. So interesting, thought provoking, definitely weird, and sometimes dated in its thoughts of the future. But overall good.
December 2, 2010
More PKD!
The novels contained in this volume weren't as strong as those in the first volume. Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney, and Flow, My Tears, the Policeman Said were just OK. Only Now Wait for Last Year and A Scanner Darkly lived up to the high standards PKD set for himself in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik.
A Scanner Darkly is REALLY good until the very end where it gets all fucked and overly philosophical where PKD uses one of the characters as a mouthpiece to express his views. Sort of stream-of-consciousness spiked with philosophy and introspection that could've been better shown than told, but oh well. The story overall IS good, so I have to give it to PKD for that.
This means I have one more volume of PKD to go through and that makes me sort of sad since I've been reading him for the past two months (!).
Another good read.
The novels contained in this volume weren't as strong as those in the first volume. Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney, and Flow, My Tears, the Policeman Said were just OK. Only Now Wait for Last Year and A Scanner Darkly lived up to the high standards PKD set for himself in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik.
A Scanner Darkly is REALLY good until the very end where it gets all fucked and overly philosophical where PKD uses one of the characters as a mouthpiece to express his views. Sort of stream-of-consciousness spiked with philosophy and introspection that could've been better shown than told, but oh well. The story overall IS good, so I have to give it to PKD for that.
This means I have one more volume of PKD to go through and that makes me sort of sad since I've been reading him for the past two months (!).
Another good read.
January 22, 2009
A long read, indeed, but what else could be expected of a five novel collection.
All five books have links that are only in the details (this makes it fun) - there are no over-arcing storylines between novels, but some things do make more sense when you see the details in the context of another story.
The only disappointment I had was with various spelling errors, incorrect chapter headings, etc. which the editor (Lethem, a great writer himself) claims to have fixed at the end of the (very informative) chronology.
Of the five novels, only the last, A Scanner Darkly, I had read before. Still, it was fun (and more informative) to go back through it, and it helped me to be sure how much the movie ruined the overall story (I enjoyed the acting though).
All five books have links that are only in the details (this makes it fun) - there are no over-arcing storylines between novels, but some things do make more sense when you see the details in the context of another story.
The only disappointment I had was with various spelling errors, incorrect chapter headings, etc. which the editor (Lethem, a great writer himself) claims to have fixed at the end of the (very informative) chronology.
Of the five novels, only the last, A Scanner Darkly, I had read before. Still, it was fun (and more informative) to go back through it, and it helped me to be sure how much the movie ruined the overall story (I enjoyed the acting though).
February 12, 2013
I took a big pause in between each of the four novels that I have read in this collection.(Still must read "A Scanner Darkly," which I'm told is one of his best.) The other four, in my opinion, aren't as strong as his two best novels, "Ubik" and "Do Androids.." But if you're a fan of PKD and SF, they're essential reading. Truth be told, PKD's writing is dense and slow moving, and I'm beginning to see the same collection of characters and basic plot lines repeated. Hard to complain ....but having read about 13 PKD novels now I am going to probably skip the third collection in this three-volume Library of America series (Valis and Later novels.)
June 19, 2010
I'd already read four of the five in this collection but picked it up to read the fifth book 'Dr. Bloodmoney' which I had always avoided, due to the not-to-promising title. It turned out to be a really excellent read and seeing these books bound and edited with such care is amazing. The previous printing had such revolting 90's cyber-puke covers that is was frankly hard to get people to take you seriously when you'd try to recommend them....Thanks Jonathan Lethem!
August 14, 2009
Many, many years after my initial read, I just re-read 'Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said'.
It seemed a bit rough to me; had it been better edited, I may have enjoyed it more.
There is no character to like in this book, except the Potter. I did enjoy the overall colour. The meanness was appalling, but, kinda thrilling, too, I suppose.
It seemed a bit rough to me; had it been better edited, I may have enjoyed it more.
There is no character to like in this book, except the Potter. I did enjoy the overall colour. The meanness was appalling, but, kinda thrilling, too, I suppose.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews