Philip K. Dick thread

[theBeamisHome]

I hope this hasn't been done already.. If it has I cry everyone's pardon.

So... Phillip K. Dick anyone? I haven't readed everything, but I did read A Scanner Darkly (excellent) and The Divine Invasion (i think lol).. Now from what I hear he was on some serious drugs and I think what I've read so far of his reflects that. Anybody? Anybody? lol Comments?

[Ka-mai]

My boyfriend loves this guy to the point that it's a little unnatural. :lol:

I haven't read anything yet, but I'm trying to get him to lend me something. It's only taking so long because he's deliberating so hard on which one to give me first.

[Ka-tet]

I just finished Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep(Blade Runner to the movie buffs).

Really good book and ive yet to see the movie.

[educatedlady]

I love DADES but my favorite Philip K. book is Voices From the Street. It isn't sci-fi but i adore it. It was written in the early 50s but it wasn't released until last year. I also really like Dr. Bloodmoney.

[Ka-mai]

Matt just had me watch Total Recall.

I think the best part of that movie was finally understanding the end of the South Park "Asspen" episode. :P Nah, seriously, it was ok. Not fantastic, but not completely awful. Also, Ahnold didn't totally piss me off.

[sarah]

this is sarajean's most favorite author. She'll be so excited when I tell her that a thread has been started in his honor.

[mae]

I highly recommend the hardcover omnibus released by LOA: http://totaldickhead.blogspot.com/2008/06/pkds-loa-volume-fastest-selling-ever.html

[ladysai]

I hope this hasn't been done already.. If it has I cry everyone's pardon.

So... Phillip K. Dick anyone? I haven't readed everything, but I did read A Scanner Darkly (excellent) and The Divine Invasion (i think lol).. Now from what I hear he was on some serious drugs and I think what I've read so far of his reflects that. Anybody? Anybody? lol Comments?

I have a collection of PKD stories on audio: Minority Report, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, Paycheck, and others.
Very good stories, imho.

I haven't heard that he was on serious drugs while writing,
but if he was, it must have been some seriously good stuff...
the stories I've read were great reading. :D

[theBeamisHome]

well A Scanner Darkly is about drugs and it's dedicated to all his friends that died from drugs.. I believe there was something the intro or the afterward or something like that where he talked about it. Made me believe he did them too... I also heard rumor that they had something to do with how he died, but don't quote me on that.

[Seymour_Glass]

I love VALIS and Ubik.

[Ka-mai]

I just watched Blade Runner with Matt... I was kind of unimpressed. It was too long, too slow, and too fucking dark, I couldn't see what was going on. I also found it kind of predictable.

I also just finished reading The Man in the High Castle... it was interesting, but the ideas in it aren't exactly original. I pretty much liked it, though.

[blackrose22]

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep is the only book I've read so far by PKD but do intend to read more of his as I loved it. Different from the film but its years since I've seen it. Must look for it on DVD.

[Seymour_Glass]

I just watched Blade Runner with Matt... I was kind of unimpressed. It was too long, too slow, and too fucking dark, I couldn't see what was going on. I also found it kind of predictable.

I also just finished reading The Man in the High Castle... it was interesting, but the ideas in it aren't exactly original. I pretty much liked it, though.

Blade Runner was way too slow.

But I think the ideas in The Man in The High Castle are, or were, original, as it's pretty much credited with starting the whole "alternate history" thing.

[Ka-mai]

Just one question about tMitHC:

Did Juliana really swallow that razor blade? Because that would probably kill you pretty horribly.

[fernandito]

Hey Sarah - I checked out the description of TMITHC over at Amazon.com, looks interesting. How many pages is it?

[Ka-mai]

Not that long... it's about as wide as my thumb.

[fernandito]

Not that long... it's about as wide as my thumb.

You are the Queen of Things That Can Easily Be Taken Out Of Context! :lol:

[Ka-mai]

:lol: I hate you. Can you take that out of context?

Ok, maybe 300 pages? I'm too lazy to go upstairs.

DON'T TAKE THAT OUT OF CONTEXT!

[Ka-mai]

Ok, I finally went upstairs and checked. Matt's copy is 259 pages long. So there.

[fernandito]

So that's how long it is.

:cyclops:

[Ka-mai]

I hate you so, so much.

[fernandito]

No you dont :huglove:

[fernandito]

I am deeply enjoying The Man In The High Castle.

:)

[Sam]

Phillip K. Dick is ok, but I never got deep into his writing. I HAVE enjoyed Frank Herbert and Robert Heinlein greatly though. DUNE changed my outlook on life and affects me still, as did STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND and STARSHIP TROOPERS.

[jhanic]

I've always been a great Robert A. Heinlein fan. My favorite from him is Time Enough for Love.

John

[MrQuint]

this is sarajean's most favorite author. She'll be so excited when I tell her that a thread has been started in his honor.

Where is Lady T anyway? She hipped me to The Man In The High Castle way back in the day.

And believe it or not Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was required reading in a College course I took.

[theBeamisHome]

that's awesome. i wish classes i took would assign great authors like PKD

[MrQuint]

that's awesome. i wish classes i took would assign great authors like PKD

You need a teacher that's a pothead. We read A Clockwork Orange too.

[theBeamisHome]

dammit. and i'm going to this conservative school.. it'll never happen... *sigh* maybe i'll get lucky and get one of those profs that aren't really part of the school.

[Ka-tet]

Im in college right now, i just finished Ubik....And i dont get it :(

Why did Runciter find a coin with joe chips head on it? Is it runciter thats actually in the half-life state?

Are they both in the half-life state in different places?

I just dont get it, it dosnt make sense to me. Maybe given time to think ill understand, or make up my own theories. I just wonder what the rest of you think.

So without futer ado...Discuss Ubik!

[mae]

Library of America is releasing their third Dick volume on July 30th:

http://totaldickhead.blogspot.com/2009/01/third-library-of-america-volume-to.html

:nana:

[Brice]

The name of the site is total dick head? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[flaggwalkstheline]

My favorite book by him is Valis, its the one he wrote after he had a nervous breakdown and it shows:P

[Seymour_Glass]

Valis was awesome. It's tied with Ubik for me.

[wolverine0712]

I've read a little bit of his stuff. I love Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep. I've also read a lot of his short stories, including Total Recall, the Minority Report, and the one that was made into a horrible Nic Cage movie (I can't remember the name of it). They are good reads and normally pretty quick.

[bluelph24]

just finished androids about 20 min ago. i really enjoyed it, much more than i enjoyed scanner a year or so ago. since the existential movement is one of my favorite literary movements, and because i love both the styles of early scifi and hardboiled/noir, this book really jumped out at me. Dick did a great job on this one

[sarajean]

this is sarajean's most favorite author. She'll be so excited when I tell her that a thread has been started in his honor.

Where is Lady T anyway? She hipped me to The Man In The High Castle way back in the day.

And believe it or not Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was required reading in a College course I took.

sarajean would be more excited if his name was spelled correctly in the title (only one "l" in philip). i don't have all of his stuff, but i do have quite a bit. ka mai, you said the ideas in the man in the high castle weren't exactly original, but you have to remember that when it was written, they were. most speculative fiction writers from the 60s on were influenced by pkd in some way. his best works were always his short fiction. the reason that his books don't necessarily translate well into movies is that they were so full of ideas that in order to make a film, most of the story had to be left out.

a good place to start is with his collected stories volume 1: the short happy life of the brown oxford. (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&ISBN=9780806511535&ourl=The-Collected-Stories-of-Philip-K-Dick-Volume-1%2FPhilip-K-Dick)

[Jean]

sarajean would be more excited if his name was spelled correctly in the title (only one "l" in philip).
Thank you for bringing it to my attention! I had suspected I was seeing double.

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mishemplushem/Facilitation/0134-bear.gifhttp://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mishemplushem/Facilitation/0134-bear.gifhttp://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mishemplushem/Facilitation/0134-bear.gif

[mae]

Beautiful:



http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mcYyfS8IL.jpghttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412C1wjX1yL.jpghttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41KBquyBB6L.jpg

[sarajean]

pablo, that's amazing. i love it.

in other news: radio free albemuth is being made into a movie. i'm not sure how well that will be translated into film. :unsure:

[Ka-tet]

First things first my friends, there will be SPOILERS!

Okay so i read this book some time ago, and really thourougly enjoyed it. But i just dont get it.....then ending left me puzzled and after some serious consideration i cant come up with anything. Can any of you guys shed some light on it for me?

[sarajean]

i'm going to go ahead and merge this with the pre-existing philip k dick thread. :)

what specifically about the ending was it that confused you?

[Darkmaniscoming]

I was deeply enjoying that book as well, hope this isn't a spoiler but the end pisses me off to this day.......

I have a nice anniversary copy for sale pretty much cover price including shipping to all of north america:

http://cgi.ebay.ca/Philip-K-Dick-MAN-IN-THE-HIGH-CASTLE-HC-DJ-FINE-1ST_W0QQitemZ120448498479QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAntiqu arian_Collectible?hash=item1c0b4a3b2f&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14





I am deeply enjoying The Man In The High Castle.

:)

[Ka-tet]

i'm going to go ahead and merge this with the pre-existing philip k dick thread. :)

what specifically about the ending was it that confused you?

Thanks for the merge :)

and everything, i just dont understand what happend, specially with that coin ;p

[Lily-sai]

Thanks to pablo for directing me to this thread! I've only recently started to read his books, now Ubik is in my hands. I'll be back soon - ie. when I've read at least five of Dick's books so I can comment more. So far, so good. :)

[Kronz]

Thanks to Pablo pointing out the Library of America editions on the other thread I just got the first two in the mail today (one was a first printing, the other a fifth). Very classy treatment for someone like PKD. Almost all the other figures they've published are way over my head. I'm pretty eager to read him again, he's always mesmerized me but it's been hard to find his stuff.

[mae]

Those LOA editions are sexy. And they have very useful notes at the end. Too bad more of Dick wasn't published this way...

[DoctorDodge]

Read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? a short while ago, and I really liked it. Obviously, I read it because I'm a huge Blade Runner fan (although it took 3 viewings before I eventually decided that I liked it), but it was very different, storywise, at least. However, both are very similar in tone and spirit at least. Need to read more of his stuff, I think.

[Brice]

I just read We Can Remember It for You Wholesale in an anthology earlier this week. I just love dick.


That's what she said.


and that is so NOT what I meant. :rofl:

[Kronz]

Halfway through Three Stigmata which I just started a few hours ago and so far it's probably one of the best he ever wrote (and one of my favorite books of all time more than likely). It's crazy I somehow skipped it when I was reading so many of his books years ago.

[mae]

Breaking Dick News: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/books/30author.html?ref=books


After a lifetime’s worth of literature from Philip K. Dick that explored the future, the farthest regions of space and the afterlife, a posthumous work will take readers to a different alien terrain: the inside of the author’s mind.

Mr. Dick, who died in 1982 at 53, was best known for existential science-fiction novels like “The Man in the High Castle,” “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch” and “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” He also spent years wrestling with what he considered to be religious visions, which he began experiencing in the 1970s. He recorded his reactions to and attempts at deciphering these spiritual visions in a work he called the “Exegesis,” reputed to be 8,000 pages — or longer.

Though few have read the work and fewer still have fully understood it, the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt plans to release “The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick” in two consolidated volumes edited by Jonathan Lethem and Pamela Jackson, a Philip K. Dick scholar, with the first to be released next year.

Mr. Lethem, the author of novels like “Chronic City” and “The Fortress of Solitude,” and who has written frequently on Mr. Dick, said Thursday in a telephone interview that he hesitated to describe the original, unedited “Exegesis” as a work.

“The title he gave it, ‘Exegesis,’ alludes to the fact that what it really was was a personal laboratory for philosophical inquiry,” Mr. Lethem said. “It’s not even a single manuscript, in a sense. It’s an amassing or a compilation of late-night all-night sessions of him taking on the universe, mano a mano, with the tools of the English language and his own paranoiac investigations.”

In 1974, after a number of novels that explored the notions of personal identity and what it means to be human, Mr. Dick had a series of experiences in which he believed he had information transmitted to his mind by a pink beam of light. He wrote about these and similar occurrences in autobiographical novels like “Valis,” but also contemplated their meanings in personal writings that were not published.

“It’s something that he talked about and created a kind of amazing aura around,” Mr. Lethem said, “so that people have an image of it as if it’s some kind of consummated effort. ‘I’m working on my exegesis.’ But what he really meant was he was turning his brain inside out on the page, on a nightly basis, over a period of years of his life.”

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which has also acquired the rights to 39 of Mr. Dick’s previously published works and will release them next year, plans to release Volume 1 of “Exegesis,” which is about 350 pages, in the fall of 2011, and Volume 2, at the same length, a year later.

Mr. Lethem described the books as a chronicle of the period in which Mr. Dick “pulled himself together again, as a writer and a human being.”

“He’d been launched into outer space by the visions of the early ’70s,” Mr. Lethem said, “and he was going to try to come back with the truth. And that, by definition, is an impossible task.”

He added: “It’s absolutely stultifying, it’s brilliant, it’s repetitive, it’s contradictory. It just might contain the secret of the universe.”

[Brice]

Breaking Dick News:

*giggles*

I wan't the 8,000+ page Exegesis. :drool:

[Kronz]

I am not too interested in his ramblings but 39 reissues sounds interesting. It'd be great to get some retro style hardcovers of his novels. The Vintage paperbacks you can get currently are all dogs.

[mae]

I too am hoping all of his novels get re-released in hardcover finally.

[NicNac]

I've never read any of his books, but I'm chiming in b/c I am INTERESTED in reading some of his stuff. I've loved several movies based on his books (Total Recall--had no idea this was PDK, Minority Report). I just put one of his collections of novels on hold at my library, so I'll assume you all are interested and chime back in here after I've read them. ;)

I am a little worried that it will be too technical or dry for me, but I read the beginning of A Scanner Darkly at the library, and it seemed interesting and...idk, different. So I'm looking forward to it.

[Brice]

It is very different...and very entertaining. I look forward to your thoughts.

[mae]

Just ordered the first two volumes of the complete short stories of PKD published by Subterranean:

http://www.subterraneanpress.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/dick03_b.jpghttp://www.subterraneanpress.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/dick04_b.jpg

:rock:

[mae]

Breaking Dick News:

*giggles*

I wan't the 8,000+ page Exegesis. :drool:

Forgot about it, but The Exegesis will be published very very soon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0547549253/

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41j1zwXSwkL.jpg

Nearly a thousand pages.

[Brice]

Wow, that's a lot of Dick.

(that's what she said)

[Erin]

OMG, Brice. I just about died. :rofl:

[WeDealInLead]

I've had my eye on those SubPress collections for a while. It'll have to wait until I get de-brokefied.

[ur2ndbiggestfan]

Those look great, but too much on my plate right now to buy them. As long as you keep collecting books I'm afraid you may never become de-brokefied.

[WeDealInLead]

Those look great, but too much on my plate right now to buy them. As long as you keep collecting books I'm afraid you may never become de-brokefied.

I hear ya.

[mae]

Those Subterranean volumes are available with a discount on Amazon.

[Brice]

*runs to see*


OMG, Brice. I just about died. :rofl:

;)

[mae]

http://www.lfla.org/event-detail/664/The-Exegesis-of-Philip-K-Dick

[ALOUD] at Central Library
Monday, November 14, 2011 7:00 PM
THE EXEGESIS OF PHILIP K. DICK

Panel Discussion with co-editors Jonathan Lethem and Pamela Jackson, Isa Dick Hackett, and Laura Leslie.
Moderated by David L. Ulin, book critic, Los Angeles Times

Philip K. Dick dedicated his life to questioning the nature of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the relationship between the human and divine. Dick’s two daughters and novelist Jonathan Lethem— Exegesis co-editor—serve as guides to exploring the magnificent final work of the author.

Unless otherwise indicated, ALOUD programs take place at the Los Angeles Central Library's Mark Taper Auditorium, 630 W. Fifth Street, Los Angeles, CA 90071.

[DoctorDodge]

Those look great, but too much on my plate right now to buy them. As long as you keep collecting books I'm afraid you may never become de-brokefied.

I hear ya.

Oh yeah. It can be really difficult sometimes when you're a collector and you actually have to avoid getting other really cool stuff in order to fill in as many gaps in your collection as possible.

[mae]

Received my copy of The Exegesis today. Stunning book.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kookkFZP77Y