Philip K Dick favourites?

[Radix]

I love (pretty much) everything PKD,
but if I were to list my 'top 5',
I'd go with-

UBIK
Time Out Of Joint
Flow My Tears...
A Scanner Darkly &
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

my favorite of his mainstream novels is
"Puttering About In A Small Land"

(But I still have yet to read "Mary & the Giant" & "The Broken Bubble")

[J-WO]

I really like 'Crap artist out of his mainstream stuff.

[hormone]

I read Ubik last month and I am reading Valis currently. I have never read anything else by Dick. Any recommendations? I really enjoyed Ubik and I am sort of enjoying Valis.

[J-WO]

If you liked Ubik, maybe try The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or Martian Time Slip. He wrote them during the sameish period of his writing career and, like Ubik, are very idea-driven, eventful, eye-ball kicking novels.

If your more into Valis, then A Scanner Darkly is not a bad way to go: very near-futurey, thoughtful SF.

[slack]

Finished Flow My Tears ..., the other night. First PKD book. Pretty good story, and I love his writing style (some say it is pedestrian?), but I have to admit the adverbs got a little out of control, and the way he broke up his dialogue with tags was kind of irritating.

Going to read UBIK next.

[PrinceAshitaka]

VALIS is my favourite, it is just crazy, mindblowing stuff.. It's on a different level to anything else.
But having said that, Martian Time-Slip, A Scanner Darkly, and Time out of Joint are all really damn good as well. Rediculously good.
UBIK and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch are also good, but not as good as anything previously mentioned, IMHO.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Has got to get a mention as well.. I really think the whole 'doomed planet / post apocalyptic Earth' the novel was set in, and the whole 'robotic animal' thing was something special, however the way that tied in with the extinction / endangerment of so many of Earths animals was really well done.

[Hober Mallow]

I have read Man in the High Castle, Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Ubik. My favorite so far is Scanner Darkly. I just started reading Flow My Tears.

[johnnyjet]

New member here just looking around.

I thought I'd check this discussion thread out since Philip K. Dick is my favorite author. I've read a lot of his works over the years, but I haven't read anything lately. (There's some novels and shorter works that I missed that I hope to catch up on someday.)

Off the top of my head, some of my favorite novels:

Man in the High Castle
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Martian Time-Slip
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Galactic Pot Healer
The Zap Gun
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
... Some more will come to mind I'm sure
Oh yeah: Dr. Bloodmoney

I also loved a lot of his shorter works, like Second Variety, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, The Prepersons, The Electric Ant, The Father-Thing, etc etc etc.

Something about his quirky spin on things really appealed to me. In general, his writing style was simple, but also it was quite powerful at times.

Other writers I like: Ursula LeGuin, Gene Wolfe, Cordwainer Smith, J. G. Ballard, Samuel Delany, Roger Zelazny, Bruce Sterling ... many older writers, but also many newer ones like Paolo Bacigalupi and others.

John

[PartMetalAlchemist83]

So someone not familiar with any of his work, just his notoriety, what book would be the starting point? Novels? Short Stories? Any recommendations would be great.

[AE35Unit]

Originally Posted by PartMetalAlchemist83

So someone not familiar with any of his work, just his notoriety, what book would be the starting point? Novels? Short Stories? Any recommendations would be great.

I would have to recommend Flow My Tears the Policeman Said. A very readable PKD novel for once!

[J-Sun]

Originally Posted by PartMetalAlchemist83

So someone not familiar with any of his work, just his notoriety, what book would be the starting point? Novels? Short Stories? Any recommendations would be great.

This is a FAQ and poking around the threads here may turn up many useful posts but I'll give it another try.

Most people pay more attention to his novels (which is usually the case with everyone anyway) but starting with a collection, such as The Best of Philip K. Dick would give you a good variety (including "Second Variety"). If that works, there's the five volume Collected Stories.

If you wanted to start where history starts, there's Solar Lottery which is a minor, but enjoyable, novel showing van Vogtian influence.

If you want the award winner, there's the somewhat atypical The Man in the High Castle.

If you want the famous only-thematically-like-the-movie novel, there's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. (Blade Runner, in film.)

If you want, IMO, the full acid meltdown of totally Dickian Dick, there's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch but I think I've been told it's cruel to recommend that to someone as their first PKD. People may need to build up a tolerance.

So, short of that, I particularly liked Ubik and Martian Time-slip.

Basically, if you can find it at a library or otherwise cheaply, you shouldn't go wrong with the Four Novels of the 1960s omnibus to start with the novels.

-- Oh, and none of the above is saying anything against Flow My Tears the Policeman Said as an option - I just haven't read that one. And, incidentally, that's in the Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s omnibus, which is the second in the LoA series.

[Abernovo]

Originally Posted by J-Sun

If you want, IMO, the full acid meltdown of totally Dickian Dick, there's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch but I think I've been told it's cruel to recommend that to someone as their first PKD. People may need to build up a tolerance.

You reckon? My first PKD book was The Man in the High Castle, one I still like a lot, partly because it was my first. So, I thought I'd try another from the library and took out The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

I remember my sixteen year-old self wondering if it was the same author, or if my brain had just fried. It set me reading more of his work, though.

[luci2also]

My vote is for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. not like the movie at all.
Then UBIK
But I liked the World that Jones Made and The Man Who Japed.
Which have not been mentioned.
Minority Report -short story
We Can Remember it For You- aka Total Recall again not like the movie

[PartMetalAlchemist83]

Just started Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, great premise so far. I love that there isn't a detailed explanation of students/teachers being kept apart from the general population. I like that the details of this dystopian future are described sort of organically as the narrative develops. The idea of a sterilization program after the Watts riots is horrifying. All and all very excited about this author. Thank you for the recommendations, the others mentioned will soon follow. Laundry is going to have to wait until tomorrow.

[TedKeller]

For some reason Time Out of Joint is my favorite sci-fi book of his. It's got intense literary realism bursts, cause it's written at the end of the 50's, before he gave up being a high lit author. His failed attempt at high lit - Confessions of a Crap Artist - is one of my favorite books ever.