Not a lot of love for H. Beam Piper around here.
― Poll Man River: The Jerome Kern Poll (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:10 (thirteen years ago) link
kinda agree that 334 > Dispossessed > Flow My Tears. Flow My Tears is pretty good, but it's basically an extended Twilight Zone episode. Linklater's OTM in that the best/most striking thing about it is the weird biblical allegory towards the end
― never meant to heart anyone (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:11 (thirteen years ago) link
As I said on another thread I love Dick, but its not like he's some unassailable giant of sci-fi. There are dozens of sci-fi authors from the 50s-60s-70s who were equally great writers and just as prolific.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:16 (thirteen years ago) link
PKD has never clicked with me, despite 2-3 extended good-faith attempts to get into his work. Dunno why.
― old man yells at poop first thing in the morning (pixel farmer), Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:17 (thirteen years ago) link
Reminds me that skot just said something about sci-fi writers and graphomania.(xp)
― Poll Makossa (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:19 (thirteen years ago) link
I love his mid-to-late 60's stuff the most, I think. Sure there's lots of other good writers but I don't know of anyone who wrote more deliciously paranoid, dystopian short stories.
all 5 collected storiesDr. BloodmoneyRadio Free AlbemuthWe Can Build YouClans Of The Alphane MoonThe Simulacra
― sleeve, Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:21 (thirteen years ago) link
Lots of writers are nuts, lots of writers are coherent, but I do think it's a rare commodity to be coherently nuts like PKD, which trumps a lot of other things, like say writing good endings.
― Philip Nunez, Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:23 (thirteen years ago) link
Man in the High Castle is the only PKD published as a Penguin Modern Classic in the UK, which I think partly accounts for its high reputation here.
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:43 (thirteen years ago) link
Barjo was pretty good, but it annoyed me that they cut out the whole last act of Confessions of a Crap Artist, which I thought was the best part.
― peter in montreal, Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:51 (thirteen years ago) link
Man in the High Castle is great and worth its reputation. It's not my favourite PKD, and it's probably more highly regarded amongst non-SF readers because of its relative lack of hard SF elements, but you're very wrong about it being "unfinished", Captain L.
The anti-ending (in general) is my favourite device in 20th century fiction I think.
― Elmer Fuiud (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:56 (thirteen years ago) link
I don't think I got to the end of High Castle (because someone had ripped out the pages!), but in general PKD's endings were not ... the best, particularly in the ones adapted for movies. They weren't really anti-endings so much as not-very-good endings, but it probably reflects the kind of "crank them out so I have money to eat" mode he was in.
― Philip Nunez, Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:04 (thirteen years ago) link
I don't know what you guys are talking about, he has some of my favorite endings ever - Ubik, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, A Scanner Darkly, Divine Invasion, Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Eye in the Sky
― never meant to heart anyone (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:06 (thirteen years ago) link
someone on the internet reviewing TMitHC:"The ending is maddeningly inconclusive, loose ends popping up everywhere. Dick has taken, in a literal sense, slices of life and left them as they stand. They begin messily and end messily, just as in "real life" (a phrase every serious reader of PKD should have doubts about)."
I mean, I guess it's not unfinished but was at a loss when I got to the end of the book. I wanted it to keep going
― call me king bubbles and sound like a sheik sheik (CaptainLorax), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:07 (thirteen years ago) link
You can't always get what you want (from a book)
― Elmer Fuiud (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:07 (thirteen years ago) link
I rarely read anything. And that was the only Dick book I've read
― call me king bubbles and sound like a sheik sheik (CaptainLorax), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:09 (thirteen years ago) link
"A Scanner Darkly"
This is maybe my favorite ending of any book. Gets me misty just thinking about it. And then the afterword, oh boy.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:09 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah. I was so happy (well, maybe happy is the wrong word... gratified?) when they appended the afterword in the film.
― never meant to heart anyone (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:11 (thirteen years ago) link
xxpost
Ok. I'm not trying to be mean or sniffy. For me leaving "loose ends popping up everywhere" is an important literary device and speaks to my distrust of narrative arcs. It's not the only satisfying way of ending a book, obv.
― Elmer Fuiud (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:12 (thirteen years ago) link
"I might as well put those packets of proof-artifacts away, McClane said to himself resignedly. He walked, step by step, back to his office. Including the citation from the UN Secretary General. After all, the real one probably would not be long in coming."
― Philip Nunez, Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:13 (thirteen years ago) link
In fact the dissatisfaction is part of the point? If the book is a nightmare alternate world, or if it's just a writer's nightmare vision of/in this world - and the leaks make me think that's closer to what it is - then waking up is not a very viable plot option.
― Elmer Fuiud (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:15 (thirteen years ago) link
it's not so much loose ends as all the ends hastily tied at the last minute.
― Philip Nunez, Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:15 (thirteen years ago) link
i mean they affect the short stories much more than the serious novels, but it's the short stories that have the more quintessentially PKD elements.
― Philip Nunez, Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:17 (thirteen years ago) link
I don't wanna question the books as they stand in terms of PKD's autobiography tho - whether they're a fact of his business life or a deliberate artistic statement they stand as they are and you have to appreciate them or not within the book's context. To me it works v. well.
― Elmer Fuiud (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:18 (thirteen years ago) link
like whyever the style is like it is, it is a fact of his style, now.
― Elmer Fuiud (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:19 (thirteen years ago) link
do you read comic books Noodle Vague?
― call me king bubbles and sound like a sheik sheik (CaptainLorax), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:19 (thirteen years ago) link
those never end :)
― call me king bubbles and sound like a sheik sheik (CaptainLorax), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:20 (thirteen years ago) link
i don't really read comics but yeah I like that in them.
― Elmer Fuiud (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:21 (thirteen years ago) link
It's not really a dealbreaker -- Hitchcock has terrible endings, too. ("Whoops the killer who got away with it was captured sometime later for morality's sake.")
― Philip Nunez, Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:25 (thirteen years ago) link
again I like Hitch's discarded endings - it's because endings don't matter, obviously
― Elmer Fuiud (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:26 (thirteen years ago) link
except the ones that do. actually his endings aren't really like that, much.
― Elmer Fuiud (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 17 February 2011 22:27 (thirteen years ago) link
Three Stigmata of Palmer EldritchMartian Time-SlipOur Friends from Frolix 8A Scanner DarklyClans of the Alphane MoonThe Game-Players of TitanUBIKFlow My Tears, The Policeman SaidNow Wait For Last YearThe Penultimate Truth
― more barn (Myonga Vön Bontee), Thursday, 17 February 2011 23:41 (thirteen years ago) link
The Three Stigmata of Palmer EldritchUbikThe Man in the High CastleDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?A Scanner DarklyMartian Time-SlipGalactic Pot-HealerOur Friends From Frolix 8Eye in the SkyClans of the Alphane Moon
― tricked by a toothless cobra, Friday, 18 February 2011 06:58 (thirteen years ago) link
The Man in the High Castle ending is awesome fourth-wall breaking reality-questioning metafictional headfuck, and surely prefigures his later extreme and personal obsessions with the nature of reality, VALIS, etc (which I haven't read and am a little bit scared to, I don't find that kind of thinking terribly healthy).
― ledge, Friday, 18 February 2011 10:01 (thirteen years ago) link
I get a little excited by those promos for Adjustment Bureau because...the John Slattery/Terence Stamp scenes really scream that it's a PKD work
This is, ultimately, not the case. Movie is about true love, lol.
Michel Gondry allegedly developing film of Ubik.
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Friday, 18 February 2011 12:20 (thirteen years ago) link
hey philip k dick ppl - which of those volumes of the collected short stories do you recommend to start w/?
― just sayin, Friday, 18 February 2011 12:55 (thirteen years ago) link
Damn. Well, thanks for the warning, Morbs.
― w/no hesitation (mh), Friday, 18 February 2011 14:09 (thirteen years ago) link
re: short stories - whatever volume has 'the electric ant' in it (think its vol 4).
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 18 February 2011 14:19 (thirteen years ago) link
volume 4 is the best, but electric ant is actually in vol 5
― peter in montreal, Friday, 18 February 2011 14:34 (thirteen years ago) link
thx dudes
― just sayin, Friday, 18 February 2011 15:06 (thirteen years ago) link
I would say... not Volume 1
― ice cr?m's world of female people (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 18 February 2011 16:27 (thirteen years ago) link
whatever happened to that Giamatti PKD biopic sorta thing that was supposed to have something to do with Ubik...?
― ice cr?m's world of female people (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 18 February 2011 16:29 (thirteen years ago) link
just finished NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR, really phenomenal, don't know why it doesn't get more praise
― flappy bird, Thursday, 19 November 2015 17:57 (eight years ago) link
conversation with the cab at the end is so great
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 November 2015 18:00 (eight years ago) link
yes! i can't believe it's passed over so often. the mariner editions are either matte (well-known & popular) or glossy (lesser works), i don't understand how THE MAN WHO JAPED is a matte and NWFLY is a glossy
― flappy bird, Thursday, 19 November 2015 18:56 (eight years ago) link
I don't remember it too clearly tbh - reading the wiki on it makes it sound like a jumbled fix-up but I'm not sure if it's based on an earlier story or what. Probably worth re-reading, I think I have this on my shelf.
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 November 2015 18:58 (eight years ago) link
It's one of my top ten favorite Dick books. Concept and ending are fantastic.
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Thursday, 19 November 2015 19:22 (eight years ago) link
what should i read next: THE MAN WHO JAPED, MAZE OF DEATH, or CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON?
― flappy bird, Thursday, 19 November 2015 19:56 (eight years ago) link
Clans, but Maze is good too.
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Thursday, 19 November 2015 20:00 (eight years ago) link
Maze->Clans------------>Japed
― めんどくさかった (Matt #2), Thursday, 19 November 2015 20:02 (eight years ago) link
^^^ otm
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 19 November 2015 20:04 (eight years ago) link