Philip K Dick discussion

A book that isnt one of his 5-6 major,most rated books that you liked enough to praise as a quality Dick book.

one of his first THE GAME PLAYERS OF TITAN.

so quaint, so lovely, so mind-f**k.

So mind f**k that sounds really good when it comes to PKD :)


Myself i havent read a good minor PKD. The ones i have read are his famous ones. A Maze of Death is the only minor i have read and frankly it was very weak. For Dick it was almost outright bad....

you'll have to be careful liberally plunging into the non-famous books, Mohammed, for every ho' knows 'Dick' is an acquired taste.

LOL

Really i dont choose his books by fame or lack of fame. I choose them only by the how the story sound in the synopsis.
For example i got The Man Who Japed in a new paperback at the same time as Dr Bloodmoney just because it sounded good and were a 50s PKD.

He is acquired taste i like very much.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21...
The writing could have been better, but the story itself was phenomenal.

Like Mohammed says, I never chose what I read next of his by popularity. Ive read almost all of his novels (about 25 without getting OCD and actually counting)

I guess I would have to say its among Eye in the Sky, A Maze of Death (dude, how could you not just LOVE it for the fucked-up depressing ending?), and The Cosmic Puppets. I would also include Martian Time-Slip in that list, but I think it ranks somewhere in the middle...

Oh, its so hard to choose. I can only ever give a "brief" answer if I was asked which one do you hate? The answer to that is We Can Build You...that one was horrible. Beyond that there are a couple of OK ones and the rest are godlike for Philip K Dick is a god.

Btw, if you havent read The Man Who Japed yet, do so ASAP. If you hate HOAs as much as I do, you will fnuggin love this book!

I've still gotta read Man Who Japed and Crap Artist.

cheers

:)

NumberLord wrote: "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21...
The writing could have been better, but the story itself was phenomenal."

Stigmata of Palmer is seen as one of the major.

Its not one of his best ones to me cause characters wise it could have been better. Story,ideas wise it was very good.

Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is great. I also loved some of the writing in The World That Jones Made. There's a scene toward the end where three characters get into a car while it's raining. A minor scene, but the writing so put me there.

Heh A Maze of Death made Jeffrey Deaver's Top 10 Computer novels where he hails its as one of his favourite Dick books.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/...

Yeah, the Cosmic Puppets really shook me up quite a bit.

:)

I thought that "Dr Futurity" was very good for a lesser well known PKD.

As of now, The World Jones Made is the only minor book of his I've read. It is noticable that the book is by a new/inexperienced author, but overall I'd still say it was good, very enjoyable, and worth recommending to Dick fans

So far, 'Ubik' is my favourite closely followed by 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch'.

that's cool Adam, but I'd hardly call those two books MINOR books.

:)

Giggsy wrote: "As of now, The World Jones Made is the only minor book of his I've read. It is noticable that the book is by a new/inexperienced author, but overall I'd still say it was good, very enjoyable, and ..."

I agree. One of the things I enjoy about PKD is you can chart his development as an author. He was so prolific, and published so much work that was still fresh from the typewriter that his process and growth is very evident. World That Jones Made is one of my favorite minor novels. There are some passages in that book that show the strength of his later writing.

Hi everyone - just joined this group - how about "Clans of the Alphane Moon"? An interesting take on mental illness - not a great book, but I quite enjoyed it!

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22...

Clans of the Alphane Moon i have heard very good things about, it does like a good minor PKD.

The 'minor books' are sometimes problematic because Dick worked a lot under financial pressure and time constraints. He published a lot of stuff that really should have been left in the cooker a little longer.

William wrote: "The 'minor books' are sometimes problematic because Dick worked a lot under financial pressure and time constraints. He published a lot of stuff that really should have been left in the cooker a l..."

Saying Alot of stuff wasn't ready might be a bit much since as how popular his so called minor works are. I think they would have had bad reps if they were.

Sure the early ones might be like that but he was such visionary writer that even his decent works are interesting.

wrong, his early works are sometimes better than his later works, I'm thinking about real early-career books like Solar Lottery and The Game Players of Titan which were both great.

I wouldnt really know i have read mostly his 60s,70s books.

I think his early short stories are quality works.

I assumed he would be less sure of his ability early in his career and i'm not saying all his early books are weak.

Game Players of Titan sound real good,its in the library i really wonder if i should get it from there or buy it. I usually feel like buying my big fav authors.

I just read Clans of the Alphane Moon and really enjoyed it, even if it is flawed. As far as "minor" goes, everyone talks about Valis, or the Valis trilogy but no one really talks about the Divine Invasion, which I loved.
I would also mention Radiofree Albemuth, one of the first Dick books I read and really loved.

well, I talked (in very positive terms) about THE DIVINE INVASION on a recent issue of Scene360.

:)

http://scene360.com/articles/744/divi...

The Zap gun, a really minor book and it feels that way, light and almost airy. It's like he predicted the iphone or a gadget that makes us addicts in some way. It also contains one of my favourite PKD lines "like booby trapping a crucifix".

I like The Zap Gun as well, even if it seems pretty self contradictory in places. My favorite, though, is Clans of the Alphane Moon. The society of high functioning madness that he outlines is so enjoyable and strange. I also like that the villain is essentially redeemed through self awareness.

Haha Zap Gun sounds a real fun :)

If "The World Jones Made" is minor, it has to be his best minor book. I believe (without evidence) it was the starting point for Ursula LeGuin's "The Lathe of Heaven".
As I read the book I just kept thinking "Hitler!"

Hmm. I remember really enjoying "The Unteleported Man" just for its novel (heh) concept. I heard a researcher talking about quantum entanglement and teleportation on the radio the other day, and he brought up the same existential problem as Dick's protagonist. If they disintegrate you and build a copy somewhere else, don't you die?

yup,

as soon as the time-stamped matrix of your atoms are rebuilt in another part of space, you're nothing but a euthanised replica of your former self.

Hmm. We all have days like that.

I'd have to go with The Man Who Japedtoo just something about the zaniness of the idea I loved.

Maze of death is my favorite so far.

Eye in the Sky is my favorite minor novel of Pkd. But I haven't read many of them.

Now Wait for Last Year, The Zap Gun and Eye in the Sky are all minor works I like. I think Dr Futurity and The Man Who Japed are among his worst, but then again I kind of like The Crack in Space so who am I to judge.

I thought Clans of the Alphane Moon was very fun.

I guess you could say all of his non science fiction novels are minor. I've read all but two of them and enjoyed all the ones I have read.

Lessor PKD that I enjoyed would include Vulcan's Hammer. It's kind of a straightforward SF pulp book of the 1950s, but you can see PKD sort of getting familiar with the genre, about to stretch his wings. As I read it, I thought about how it could get made into a movie since that is happening with so many of his stories over the last several years or so - I think it would be pretty good but would need a lot of updating.

I also really enjoyed Radio Free Albemuth but I wouldn't recommend it to PKD newbies.

I saw that a couple people really enjoyed The Game-Players of Titan but that one never really grabbed me. Maybe I'll have to give it another shot one of these days. That's what's great about PKD - his books are short so they don't require an enormous time commitment if you want to read one or re-read one.

Next up for me, in terms of lesser-known PKD, is going to be The Crack in Space. One of Crack's characters, Jim Briskin, appeared in a couple PKD short stories so I want to read this book to see how else PKD used the character (I don't think the stories and the book are completely related).

ｈｕｍｐｔｙ ｄｕｍｐｔｙ ｉｎ ｏａｋｌａｎｄ

Merry Christmas, everyone. I think THREE STIGMATA is wonderful, but I do not think of it as "minor." Here it is at no. 5 in the top six of GR's most prominent PKD novels:


1
Ubik Ubik
by Philip K. Dick
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2
Do Androids Dream of Electr... Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick
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3
A Scanner Darkly A Scanner Darkly
by Philip K. Dick
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4
The Man in the High Castle The Man in the High Castle
by Philip K. Dick
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5
The Three Stigmata of Palme... The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
by Philip K. Dick
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6
Flow My Tears, the Policema... Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
by Philip K. Dick
3.93 avg rating — 26,492 ratings
Vote For This Book score: 8,442, and 87 people voted

By the way, no. 7 is the first VALIS, and no. 8 is my nomination for best minor work, though at number eight it may not be all THAT minor: TIME OUT OF JOINT, an excellent "trapped in a false reality" tale that anticipates more successful novels of the Sixties.

Here's the link to the GR list, by the way:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Dr. Bloodmoney is an underrated book IMO. Intricate multi-character weirdness at its best.

Definitely true Rene, a real gem!

I love Now Wait for Last Year, but there are several more of the mid tier that I also love. I almost find this group the most satisfying to read. It is PKD truly working in his genre, and I think it is right to recognise and celebrate that aspect of his work

Does anyone have an entry for their favorite PKD work that
is not sci-fi/fantasy? I've heard there are a couple.

Confessions of a Crap Artist is very dark, but also very powerful. I also very much enjoyed In Milton Lumky Territory which is more social realist

i think Upon the Dull Earth was excellent and deserves to be mentioned. short, simple, and creepy as f___.

Time Out of Joint, 1959. The first PDK novel to really delve into the "what is reality" question. A middle-aged man in a leafy small town lives to complete the daily newspaper contest with every help from his family and neighbors -- until things start spinning more and more out of hand. It is my favorite minor PKD work but is very much future fiction.

I 2nd that, I have a soft spot for Time Out of Joint

I'm not sure which books would be considered minor but one that have may have been somewhat forgotten is "The Cosmic Puppets" which is one of the first books he wrote in 1953 if not actually THE first one. I decided to read it to get some perspective on where his head was when he first started to write novels (he had been writing short stories since the early '40's). While it's not the PDK we are familiar with from the late 60's and later I found it very enjoyable. There is a much bigger element of horror and fantasy than usual. I enjoyed the way the story built it's way to the finale and I don't think it has dated that much.