What's your favorite Philip K. Dick story?

What's your favorite Philip K. Dick story?
Mine is probably Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

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A Scanner Darkly or Ubik

while they weren't my 'favorites', reading VALIS and his two other stories in the same vein had a profound effect on me.

I would say my favorite novel was Three Stigmata or Ubik

Three stigmata. It's the dickiest of the Dick novels.

Ubik. Even tho it gives me panic attacks and kinda reads like Dick started a novel, scrapped it, but retained the first couple of chapters.

UBIK was decent, but I have to agree with you. FMTTPS has to be my favorite.

You know what? You might be right.

I've read all of his best-known books and then some, and I'd have to say I thoroughly enjoyed them all with the exception of The Man in the High Castle, which bored me to tears. My favourite so far probably has to be Dr. Bloodmoney.

Exegesis all the way

Three Stigmata is my favorite. VALIS is probably the next of his I will read.

My sister bought me 'Policeman' for my birthday.
I don't think she's read it.

It's good. I hope you enjoy it, I just read it myself and liked it a lot.

I read it and enjoyed it, just a little creepy to receive the book from my sister.
Not nearly as awkward as the time I took her to see 'Crimson Peak', though.

I havent read all of it yet but my favourites so far are the three stigmata and do androids dream of electric sheep. Gold.

I wouldn't give either much thought, desu.

Yo, anyone with a familial history of schizophrenia/ frequent contact with schizophrenics read through 'Valis'? I'd really like to hear your thoughts.

What is awkward about Crimson Peak, never seen it

If I remember, there is sibling incest.

martian time slip

idk why i like this one so much. i like the main guy and his autistic kid and his relationship with his boss

in general in pkd books i really like people's relationships with their employers. it's a really interesting dynamic that not that many authors explore well that dick gets really into

and i really fucking like when the chapters start repeating only with differences. that worked so well

and i like that it's a big immersive weird sci fi book about a banal real estate scam

A scanner darkly.
I just realized that it's probably the least scifi of all his work, which may play a part (the few techno gimmicks about electronic surveillance are very secondary and are in fact inferior to what we could do today).

Bladerunner

don't be gay like that man

Second Variety, which was later made into a sub-par movie called "Screamers"

Rather enjoyed this, the audio book was good too.

I just read A Scanner Darkly, which was a great book. The end, especially the Author's Note, was quite a suprise to me.

I read Do Androids... twice, long after watching Blade Runner. I then saw Blade Runner on a plane last month and have to say that the book was much, much better than the movie. Blade Runner as of course visually stunning etc., but the story was stripped away too much.

I will have to read more of Philip K. Dick, because A Scanner Darkly was very impressive.

the one where he ran off at the mouth like a methamphetamine freak.

oh, wait, that was ALL OF THEM.

“—‘two inches,’ ” the tinny, mechanical racket reeled off, accompanying him, “ ‘from his eyes. Zoobko’s patented goo is not only—’ ”
“—‘a top-drawer killer of male spores,’ ” Gloch murmured, “ ‘but it also blasts the tear-ducts out of existence. Too bad, fella.’ ” End brochure, he thought. End monolog. End sex. End of Zoobko, or zoob of Endko. Is this an ad or a contemplation of a squandered life? Check one. I know this discourse, he thought. By heart. Why? How? It’s as if, he thought, I said it; as if it’s happening inside my brain—not coming to me from the outside. What does this mean? I have to know.
“Always bear in mind,” the inexorable din continued, “that male spores have an almost appalling capacity to progress under their own power. If, ladies, you constantly ponder that—”
“Appalling, yes,” Gloch said, “But FIVE MILES?” I said all that, he realized. A long time ago. When I was a child. But no, he thought; I didn’t say all that—I thought it, worked it out in my mind, a prank, a lampoon, when I was a kid in school. What’s being piped to me now here in this goddamn chamber, what’s supposed to be rephased sensory-data from the outside world—it’s my own goddamn former thoughts returning to me, a loop from my brain to my brain, with a ten-year lag.
“Splub gnog furb SQUAZ,” the aud input circuit rattled away, into his passive ears. Relentlessly.
My counter-weapon, Gloch thought. They’ve blocked my counter-weapon with a counter-weapon, their own. Who—
“Yes sir, gnog furb,” the aud input circuit declared in a hearty but garbled voice, “this is good ol’ Charley Falks’ little boy Martha signing off for now, but I’ll be back with you soon and with me a few more chuckles to lighten the day and make things SQUAZ! cheery and bright. Toodeloo!” The voice, then, ceased. There was only distant background static, not even a carrier wave.
I don’t know any little boy named Martha, Gloch thought. And, he realized, there’s more wrong; the a-ending is out of the first Latin declension, so “Martha” can’t be a boy’s name. Logically, it would have to be Marthus. Or maybe they didn’t know that; Charley Falks didn’t know that. Probably not well-read. As I recall, from what I saw of Charley he was one of those self-educated simps ignorant as hell on the inside but lathered over on the outside with a thin layer of bits of cultural, scientific, odd, dubious half-facts which he always liked to drone out for hours on end to whoever was listening or if not listening then anyhow in the vicinity and so at least potentially within earshot. And then when he got older you could practically walk off and he’d still be talking, to no one.

The movie had the exact opposite point of the book. The movie seems to say that the androids are just as human as we whereas the book implies that there is something essential and important about being a real human. Of course the movie was infused with zeitgeist guilt over chattel slavery so I guess they couldn’t have made a movie that denied the importance of an oppressed “people”.

You all have to read Clans of the Alphane Moon. It contains maximun keks.

I'd like to see a straight adaptation of the book, by an Asian crew for release in an Asian market. Has the potential to be pretty inflammatory desu

My mum and her sister are schizophrenic. I'm not sure why this makes my opinion any more valuable. The stuff in that book did not very closely match the schizophrenia I saw in real life.

PKD is my favourite author of all time, and VALIS was my least favourite of his books

the ones he claimed were ghost written by an immortal time travelling alien-demon from an alternate timeline projecting itself directly into his head and taking control of his body.

VALIS all the way.

Any advice before delving into this one? A friend of mine read 2/3 of it and took notes the whole time. From what he told me, Dick reworks a lot of ideas a lot so it's hard to keep all of it straight.

hot

Where do I start with him?

Am I alone in thinking Ubik is trash?

Maybe. What did you think of the beginning, prior to the part where everyone got blown up?
Would'a made a nice (remarkably prescient) light, comedic sci-fi novel IMO.

I completely agree. It felt like a Bester novel or maybe some of the better parts of Heinlen. The rest felt like a tryhard trying to weird you out while none of it was very weird.

Ubik. And I find A Maze of Death is very enjoyable too

Of what I've read, how I rank them:
1. Three Stigmata
2. Man in the High Castle
3. Radio Free Albemuth
4. Ubik
5. Do Androids...

I liked 4 and 5 a lot but nothing really grabbed me or stuck with me like the others. 1-3 touched on a lot of significant things in my life during the time I was reading them and really made me think of Dick as a prophet. 1 and 3 are really consistent with the evils and propaganda of contemporary politics. A human, democratic, patriotic face given to a fascistic, hypocritical, body. 2 took my mind to a lot of the effects of technology, especially the internet, on our ability to distinguish fact from fiction, reality from illusion, etc.

>Do Androids...
I'll do gynoids, fag.

In all seriousness though, I've noticed a lot of people suggesting that 'Stigmata' is the most Dickian of Dick's novels. Haven't read it yet, so I'm not really in a position to judge (not really sure what 'Dickian' even means).

Nobody likes Dr. Futurity but me?

Yeah, I don't really know or care what people mean by Dickian. I just know I liked it. It's worth reading if you like sci-fi and don't mind loose ends and lack of logic in a story.

I actually thought 2047 got it more in-line with that way of thinking, despite the story being different, as through the whole thing the divide between androids and humans is pushed immensely, eventually lending credence to that idea that there's a certain wall an android can never break through. In a way it's a shame Blade Runner did as much as it did right as any attempt to adapt Do Androids again will be forever in its shadow.

Lol

1. Faith of our Fathers
2. Ubik
3. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Let me preface this with saying PKD is my favorite author, not due to the quality of his work per se, but due to how deeply I identified with the themes of his writing and how closely I felt like I created similar ideas conceptually as him in my formative years.

As a whole, I would say that the majority of PKDs work was in the effort of expressing one story allegorically, the story of his own life and mental experiences, which is told most directly in VALIS, which I personally hold as his best work.

In regards to my personal ranking of his work, my top five are

VALIS
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Flow My Tears, The Police Man Said
Martian Time Skip
Ubik

Can you expound what you mean his "story"? I guess I could go read the VALIS trilogy, but until I do it may put the books I have read that you listed into some cool context.

There is an extreme degree of reoccurring themes in all opf PKDs work, primarily the act of discovering God in the dredges of society, in the gutters where nobody is looking and learning what it is to be a human through the uniquely human act of empathy. There are also many reoccurring archetypes of characters that appear in his stories to varying degrees based upon real people that existed in his life. Usually you'll find the protagonist of his stories to be a middle aged out of shape bourgeois type of person who is lazy and unorganized living within an oppressive bureaucratic system of life who meets a young physically fit dark haired woman who becomes his foil and antagonist within the story,and also has a meek yet artistic ex partner who usually is involved in pottery who suffers from some form of dementia who represents an aspect of life that the protagonist has given up on in pursuit of his corporate career.

In general, all of his stories use science fiction imagery as an allegory to describe the mental illnesses of his own life and the people around him. VALIS is the story that describes this most directly,, which is why I hold it as the ultimate accumulation of his entire catalog of work

To explain further though, what I mean is, is that through so phenomenon or another, Philip K Dick believed that experienced a directed communion with God, and all of his stories are in some way an allegorical story about this experience.

I'd let his own words describe it best

youtu.be/0LDv8fm_R7g

Pkd is one of my favorites

One of the masters of modern paranoia, along with Pynch

Yet VALIS to me was trash. One of the few books ive started and did not end. Others in the thread mentioned it seems to provide a schizophrenic view into Horselovers mind; to me it just seems like Dick left out the part where Horselover became a daily hash eater at 18 and still is during the whole novel, thinking the hash is getting him closer to god. Meanwhile he makes increasingly little sense to friends and to himself

Ubik and Scanner Darkly are best to me

also everytime i see refuse in the street i mutter “kipple”...

They already made that movie. It's called Empire of Dust.

>refuse in the street
See, I've got a bunch of nutters butters kinfolk, all hoarders.
When I think of "kipple", I see the mounds of useless, but theoretically still functional crap that has rendered their homes uninhabitable.
Dick was a hoarder, wasn't he?

I just can't see the parallels.Care to point it out?

>read Man in the High Castle
>Expect future nazis vs future japs
>Get antiquities fraud and boring jap wankery

I might read Dick again one day.

I don't understand why Autofac is never mentioned or included in anthologies, it's an interesting concept.

Right now it's The Hanging Stranger

>And then the gleepglorper police pulled out there transfiximeter guns and fired at the dasfusemalodge. It was a bad day on planet Xolon.

I got 20 pages into pic related and couldn't get past the ugly sci-fi jargon. I really liked Scanner Darkly and I love his short stories but after starting this one I put it down and moved on from him. What should I read to get back into him?

Ubik and get over it.

Fuck off back to planet Xolon

You must be looking to get scripped, little bambi. My influence reaches well beyond Xolon. I'll have you puttering feable quipuses and you'll be asking me for a xent-pack, and I'll tell you: there's no xent when you get my scripping.

All his other books are like this, aren't they.

Usually it's just words for new processes or futuristic inventions that have names like that. Flying cars in FMT,TPMS are called Quibbles.
Other places weird words come up are like verb-hybrids to explain the function and purpose of something, like cops might have some weird new name that describe their futuristic vocation. Other times it's like slang, which I don't think is jarring at all just cool and colorful.

My point, his weird words are often just stand-ins for familiar things, or descriptive. I don't remember anything truly nonsense in all I've read of his. Sci-fi is just going to have this kind of stuff, too. Good luck if you ever try to read Dune.

same here

Several years ago I heard 'Ubik' was getting a film adaptation starring Kevin James (presumably as Joe Chip).
Whatever happened to that project, is the movie still in production?

CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST

Where's the best place to start with PKD?

How did you guys get into Ubik, just finished it and I preferred Galactic Pot Healer and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I've only read those and his short stories. My favorite part of Ubik was the little interaction between Raunciter and his waifu in the beginning, but I didn't enjoy it as much as his other books. Also recommend more!

I liked Jory

I did not

I loved Ubik because it had a residual effect after I finished it. A sense of unreality, and maybe even slight paranoia. It felt like the novel established an emphatic connection to the way Dick was thinking. Now Wait for Last Year, A Maze of Death, and Martian Time-Slip did that to me as well. I also enjoyed the idea of cold-pac combined with the concept of Bardo. But every person has his own taste and preferences and enjoys his own relationship with a novel, de gustibus non est disputandum, as Dick would say.

Be very familiar with biblical and Gnostic texts and the notion of Greek Logos. The Gospel of John, Gospel of Thomas, and Elaine Pagels are good to start. Also you have to read Valis first, it’s basically an autobiography. There are some interviews on YouTube that are a great listen. Also realize a lot of it is self-contradictory, and be careful not to turn into a schizo weirdo with no grounding in this reality.

Maybe first try to enjoy the book before worrying about "getting" all there is to get in it and about it.

Pick the coolest sounding title in this thread and GO.

Am I really the only nigga ITT who's read Dr. Bloodmoney? I'm disappointed.

Three Stigmata if you want a novel, Faith of Our Fathers if you want a short story.

8th post in the thread (I've read it too but it's not my favorite)

Nigga I am the eighth post in this thread.

It's probably my favourite desu

Of the 2 I've read (Timothy Archer, Androids Dream) I like Timothy Archer the most. My uncle gifted me Divine Intervention so I'll read that next. Cool idea