Who was the greatest American writer of the twentieth century and why was it Philip Kindred Dick?

>raises sci-fi from the mud and writes the only books worth reading in the genre
fixd

>>raises sci-fi from the mud and makes it a force in modern literature

oh, yeah. raise it, baby.

More fully articulated, it would read, ‘The male spore, my dears, is as we well know tireless in its half-crazed struggle—against all sanity and moral restraint— to reach the female egg. That’s the way men are. Right? We all realize it. Give a male (sic) spore half an inch and he’ll take seventy-two-and-a-sixth miles. BE PREPARED! ALWAYS READY! A HUGE, SLIMY, SLANT-EYED YELLOW-SKINNED MALE SPORE MAY BE WATCHING YOU THIS VERY MINUTE! And, considering his almost demonic ability to wiggle for miles upon miles, you may at this moment be in dire, severe danger! To quote Dry-den: ‘The trumpet’s loud clamor doth call us to arms,’ etc. (And don’t forget, ladies, the handsome prize awarded yearly by Zoobko Products, Incorporated for the greatest number of dead male (sic) spores mailed (pun) to our Callisto factory in an old Irish linen pillow case, attesting to (one) your tenacity in balking the evil damned things and (two) the fact that you’re buying our lather-like goo in one-hundred-pound squirt cans. Also remember: if you are unable to adequately prepare yourself with a generous, expensive portion of Zoobko patented goo in the proper place, ahem, in advance of marital lawful pawing, then merely squirt the spray can with nozzle directed directly into the grimacing fungiform’s ugly face as it hovers six feet high in the air above you. Best range—”
“Best range,” Gregory Gloch said aloud, against the din of the obsessive noise in his ears, “approximately two inches.”
“—‘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."

He wasn't even the best genre fiction writer- that would be Raymond Chandler. The problem with Dick is that he too often failed to finish off even his better books, as if he continuously lost interest on whatever he was working on halfway through. Few began books as well as he did however.

Why is there always this same douche who points out "zoob of endko end of zoobko is bad!??!!". We don't judge an author on their worst or less well-known books but on their best works. Why not choose passages from A Scanner Darkly, VALIS, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, etc?

you will never get a large breasted 17 year old mystic to heal you

why live?

Dick is the poor man's J. G. Ballard.

PKD's one shining moment was the time he man-handled Harlan Ellison in a bookstore.

Care to explain?? I didnt know this.

I don't like the fact that he's even too adapted to film and tv. Makes him less culty.

Best post in the thread
Dick was very good but he was on the same level as others so you can't really call him the 'best'

Me neither. That's why I avoid him. Not because I'm opposes to everything popular. But genre fiction getting major adaptations brings a particularly unsavory fandom to him that I want nothing to do with. That and the fact that I think I'll probably be a science fiction writer myself someday and I don't want any influence from him rubbing off on me. He seems like such a distinct voice and such a recognizable one, that it would be like a singer songwriter listening to Dylan. Guys like that are their own world. They're not the kind to take influence from- unless you're mediocre, they're the kind to take influence from a seemingly never ending list of sources.

i could pull wads of speed-freak gibberish from all of those works. i happened to have "lies, inc." to hand.

punched him out, or groped his bits?

funny how Ellison never brags about this one.

It's tough, because on one hand the adaptations of his work are pretty much all shit and in-name-only ( A Scanner Darkly made an
earnest attempt but the rotoscoping animation was gimmicky as fuck and probably alienated people from watching it so it didn't do so hot ) But without them he'd never be in print nowadays as is the fate of so many SF writers. So they end up being a necessary evil.

PKD was one of the 20th century writers with the most distinct and defined visions, and a formidable skill for translating that vision into various story forms, but his achievement is ultimately limited by the relative narrowness of that vision (it is almost entirely concerned with philosophy) and hamstrung by the technical mediocrity of his prose and his over-production.

He's roughly on the level of somebody like Kingsley Amis, who had an impact on the writing world around them, are easily identifiable, but are ultimately just not great (because frankly they both abused their gifts more than they nurtured them) even if they are worthy of your esteem and even love.