"We can remember it for you wholesale" is the original short story, I think. Philip K. Dick's works taken as a whole, are mind-boggling. At some point, I want to work through Ubik. Stanislaw Lem, the great Polish sci-fi author of works like Solaris, called Western sci-fi "A Hopeless Case with exceptions" - one of the very very few exceptions was Philip K. Dick. There's also a nice essay on Philip K. Dick specifically. [1], [2] [1] https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm [2] http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?253191
"Like take the exchange with the front door that you mentioned, where the protagonist basically had a human argument with it to be let out (and with his fridge). It indeed seems humorous at first, but once you realize that the book isn't a Douglas Adams'esque comedy, it seems downright bonkers!" To enjoy soft scifi and fantasy, you have to be able to be able to suspend disbelief. Your complaint about the protagonist arguing with his door reminds me of people who read Tolkien and then complain that elves and balrogs don't exist. No, they don't, and you have to be able to get past that to…
Ubik spoilers ahead. I read Ubik, it was a wild ride. I was not sure what to make of it. The story, especially the end, is logically inconsistent even if you take its wild premises into account (though what the premises are is itself a bit of a guess); but that's part of the charm of course. The whole thing is so bizarre overall that it was also impossible for me to relate to any characters, and it was more like reading a dream diary than a story. Anyway, one thing that I often think about is something not directly intended by the author. In the book, the perceived world around the…
Right, Pat's powers are a very good point. She is so incredibly powerful, that it's hard for me to imagine how you can spin any serious long story around this, much less a story where she's not even really one of the main characters. It's one of the things that make the book bizarre before the event that we are supposed to think that makes it bizarre (and then the end plays some games with whether that half-life plot twist is really what's happening anyway). On the spot, I can only come up with a rather stupid analogy, but if stories are carefully mixed and balanced cocktails, then a…
Somebody had foreseen this: "The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for…
I've been on a PKD kick recently, because I had read some of his short stories as a teenager and seen movies based on his work, and kept hearing how much of a genius he was. In the past month or so I've been going through his body of work, and my mind is getting blown at every turn. My goal is to read all that he's ever written over 2015. Here's a rough progression I recommend for those who want to delve into one of the best writers who has ever lived (of course hardcore PKD fans might disagree with the following, and I'd be happy to debate with them :-): STARTING POINT: - Ubik, Flow My…
I've read a lot of PKD, though not everything. My top three picks would be: 1 - Ubik 2 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch 3 - Martian Time Slip Honorable mentions: 4 - A Maze of Death 5 - Divine Invasion (the 2nd of the VALIS trilogy) 6 - Eye in the Sky Of his short stories, I'd recommend "Beyond Lies the Wub" and "Roog". Regarding movies influenced by his work: The original "Blade Runner" movie is far better than "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". The original "Total Recall" movie is far better than "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". "The Terminator" is…
> Is [Ubik] a symbol, and, if so, of just what? This is not easy to answer. I thought Ubik was the in-breaking of the divine Logos ("I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.") Ubik is thus the only force capable of rolling back entropy and rescuing man from death. The subtle thing about the…
I'll just put out my list since it's probably what people browse those threads for. I just finished it so I might be biased, but Miller's "A canticle for Leibowitz" is some of the best Sci-fi I've read. Extremely thought provoking, and you get the opportunity to read from someone coming from a very different place than your usual sci-fi writer. I loved the setting and the plot, monasteries are definitively a unique setting for Sci-fi (Think Il Nome della Rosa by Eco meets Mad Max) Philip K. Dick also has a very unique outlook and is worth a read, either through "Do Androids dream of…
Gibson isn’t the only person writing cyberpunk although he definitely gets most of the credit in internet forums. Tbh I feel like he only really has one story to tell which is about some manic pixie cyberpunk dream girl who is more daria than Elizabethtown existing alongside dudes doing things. His contribution is more about how he crafts the visuals from words like >> In the non-space of the matrix, the interior of a given data construct possessed unlimited subjective dimension; a child’s toy calculator, accessed through Case’s Sendai, would have presented limitless gulfs of nothingness…