Obligatory "not including this but check out the cover":
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/Project_Pope%2C_novel_by_Clifford_Simak%2C_1st_edition_cover.jpg
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 2 July 2021 10:53 (two years ago) link
Two main 80's trends I identified going through this: a fascination with Japan (in addition to the very serious Obasan, abt Japanese internment camps in Canada, we have Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Tomoe Gozen, set in an alternate universe resembling feudal Japan, and Robert Shea's historical novel Shike); and satanic panic involving RPGs - this is the year of Mazes & Monsters, but also John Coyne's Hobgoblin and, more tangentially, Fred Saberhagen's Octagon, about someone killing his opponents in the science fiction play-by-mail game Starweb.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 2 July 2021 10:58 (two years ago) link
I have read exactly 0 of these
― A viking of frowns, (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 2 July 2021 12:02 (two years ago) link
Imho 1970-1985 stands out for its theory and poetry more so than its novels, but I have my biases.
― pomenitul, Friday, 2 July 2021 12:11 (two years ago) link
Have read 3.3 of these (the .3 being Lanark, which I really should finish some day), but Valis is way ahead of the rest. PKD's finest moment for me.
― maybe you just don't need to comment on that (Matt #2), Friday, 2 July 2021 12:19 (two years ago) link
Yes. This lull in great novels ended in 1985, as I was born and authors decided that, now that there was someone worthy of reading them, they needed to up their game.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 2 July 2021 12:44 (two years ago) link
Couldn't have said it better myself! ;)
― pomenitul, Friday, 2 July 2021 12:45 (two years ago) link
just Cujo and The Comfort Of Strangers here. and i appear to have confused the latter with another of his books.
― koogs, Friday, 2 July 2021 13:55 (two years ago) link
I love the Borrible novels and realise I must have missed the first one so am tempted to vote for ...Go For Broke. I don't mind admitting I was dazzled by Rushdie once but dipped back into Midnight's Children a few years ago and found it exhausting. Hello America is weak Ballard and as much as I love Lanark I found sections of it a slog.
All of which is to say, I think it's Brookner.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Friday, 2 July 2021 13:55 (two years ago) link
Lanark.
― emil.y, Friday, 2 July 2021 14:28 (two years ago) link
Probably
― Planck Generation (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 2 July 2021 14:33 (two years ago) link
I read Lanark and thought it was a very impressive work that I never wanted to read again. Conversely I'm looking forward to rereading Little, Big, which as I said on the Crowley thread more effectively captures a childhood sense of wonder than anything else I've read. Also read The Comfort of Strangers and maybe Midnight's Children.
― In the wastelands of Birmingham and Manchester, massages are back (ledge), Friday, 2 July 2021 14:34 (two years ago) link
Got Starship & Haiku in the mail yesterday. It wasn't that popular was it?
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 2 July 2021 17:33 (two years ago) link
I second VALIS: PKD at top of his games, as artist, entertainer, and vision-dogged crackpot/researcher, juggling and balancing all sectors ov brane as well as he can, maybe as well as anybody can (recently thought of this again while struggling through Melville's struggle with Pierre, Or, The Ambiguities).
― dow, Friday, 2 July 2021 17:50 (two years ago) link
Also vaguely remember really enjoying The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas. Still want to read Little, Big and Tar Baby.
― dow, Friday, 2 July 2021 17:54 (two years ago) link
This is the kind of passage that makes me wonder why the hell it is that people think PKD can't write a sentence:
Fat was convinced that Stephanie would wind up in jail; he expected her to be arrested any day. All Fat's friends expected him to be arrested any day. We worried about that and about his slow decline into depression and psychosis and isolation. Fat worried about Stephanie. Stephanie worried about the price of hash. More so, she worried about the price of cocaine. We used to imagine her suddenly sitting bolt upright in the middle of the night and exclaiming, "Coke has gone up to a hundred dollars a gram!" She worried about the price of dope the way normal women worry about the price of coffee.
― Lily Dale, Friday, 2 July 2021 18:08 (two years ago) link
_Lanark_.
― The 💨 that shook the barlow (wins), Friday, 2 July 2021 18:08 (two years ago) link
xpost Great quote; thanks, Lily. My take seems to fit, as precursor, with this discussion, which I just now cam across in Wikipedia, of The Owl By Daylight, his unfinished novel in the VALIS Trilogy or Quartet: The Selected Letters of Philip K Dick Volume 6: 1980 -1982, where one can read Dick's own description of the story and what he wanted to do with it. The plot was to express what he believed was an evolutionary step in humanity, using an interpretation of Joachim de Fiore, where he believed that one age of humanity used the left side of the brain, another the right, and the future would combine the two leading to a greater understanding of what is real. Moreover, the use of Dante was to demonstrate how hell, purgatory and heaven can all be experiences of life, showing how the world is experienced according to the left, right and whole of the brain.
― dow, Friday, 2 July 2021 18:27 (two years ago) link
Sorry: The Owl *In* Daylight. There's a lot more in the Wiki---this bit seems promising/a bit 2001, but customized:A scientist creates a theme park that is related to the events of his youth, whereupon a sentient artificial intelligence imprisons him within it, as a youth. He has to travel through Dantean realities (and artist, political activist and gay social networks in the Berkeley of the 1940s and 1950s) to return home and resume his life as an old man.
― dow, Friday, 2 July 2021 18:34 (two years ago) link
One aspect of Dick's earlier work is that he chucked it out at a rate of knots and didn't seem to care much for revision, or maybe just couldn't afford to. The later novels had a lot more care taken over them and it showed. Still a tragedy he died so young, I think he had a few more classics in him.
― maybe you just don't need to comment on that (Matt #2), Friday, 2 July 2021 19:08 (two years ago) link
Lanark and Vali are the only two I've read. Going for the former.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 3 July 2021 11:03 (two years ago) link
Valis
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 3 July 2021 11:04 (two years ago) link
― mookieproof, Sunday, 4 July 2021 00:57 (two years ago) link
Write-in for The Affirmation by Christopher Priest
― Zelda Zonk, Sunday, 4 July 2021 01:05 (two years ago) link
Most of Lanark blew me away. I really got bogged down at the end though. The Owl In Daylight sounds fascinating. I thought PKD was fixed in his belief that we were all perpetually stuck in that one bible verse. I didn’t realize he had developed such complex theories about social evolution. That one really has some merit imo. How about Tar Baby? I haven’t read it but I’d like to.
― recovering internet addict/shitposter (viborg), Sunday, 4 July 2021 01:16 (two years ago) link
― Planck Generation (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 4 July 2021 01:35 (two years ago) link
pvmic!
― mookieproof, Sunday, 4 July 2021 01:38 (two years ago) link
Ha!
― Planck Generation (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 4 July 2021 01:54 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Monday, 5 July 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Tuesday, 6 July 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
contrary to my usual glasgow-jingoism i don't like lanark! and not because the, autobiographical, protagonist is an incel who murders a girl who friendzones him
― 《Myst1kOblivi0n》 (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, 6 July 2021 00:05 (two years ago) link
but that is kinda o_0
I'm almost afraid to ask, but---if *that* didn't make you dislike it, what did?
― dow, Tuesday, 6 July 2021 02:17 (two years ago) link
Oh the content is definitely unpalatable but you can have good books about awful people. Just didn't really thrill me. Last third or so is a big of a slog. Didn't really appreciate the Unthank sections.
― 《Myst1kOblivi0n》 (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, 6 July 2021 03:55 (two years ago) link
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1982
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 6 July 2021 10:45 (two years ago) link