Just finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

Nonsense

VALIS would hit pretty hard if you were in a midlife crisis.

I feel like it's such an asinine question to ask but "where do you start" with PKD? I know nothing about any of his works but have selected Ubik, Valis and Sleeping Androids as my options but have no reason to go after one or the other.

>Science fiction

AKA worthwhile fantasy

Try some of his pre-1974 published books first. 1974 was a pivotal moment in his life that change everything about him, including his writing.

i didn't enjoy this, or man in the high castle, and almost wrote him off
but then i read ubik and loved it and have loved everything else i've read *especially three stigmata). i should go back and read those first two again, maybe i just wasn't in the right mood.
you should save VALIS for a bit later, seeing as how it refers to his other works and it's more satisfying if you're already familiar with him

You're not paying enough attention. The parts about Mercerism are the most interesting because Dick is making a point about how even palpably sham religions can be valid. They promote feelings of community and empathy, which are critical components of being human. The robots seek to discredit it because they don't understand it.

Empathy and communal experiences are a big deal to PKD. Even when they are constructed and illusory they are valid.

You may think he is a bad writer, but what he is writing about is interesting, about what it means to be human, about how perception becomes reality by constructs of religion, authority, psychology, media, technology, drugs.

Do Androids Dream is a good place to start. Flow My Tears is along similar themes and is funnier. He is quite a funny writer.

The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch is his LSD novel, well regarded but chaotic.

Honestly the rumors about drug experimentation with the guy is what I know of most (and still, very little) that attracts me to his science fiction. It sounds like it could result in some interesting, non-standard scifi stories.

I finished The Three Stigmata recently, which is an interesting portrayal of two fictional drugs, one of which is obviously comparable to LSD. This suspicion was confirmed in an interview where he said as much, as well as how he was extremely wary of the drug. So if you want to read his treatment of drugs and how they can be good and bad, and why, then there is that book, and UBIK (haven't read.)

As an aside, I'm quite sure The Matrix cribbed some images from it.

I just finished it too. You're not alone. Philip K. Dick has a handful of good ideas he gathered from researching his stony experiences in his teens and twenties and finding out that all his mysticism was actually old hat and a bunch of other guys had wasted their lives on the same ideas too. So he wrote it (very badly) into a bunch of shitty novels with a few good ideas in them.

god damn that kampff test was retarded.

thanks m8. sounds like I know where to go.

Ubik is the pkd novel where i said 'actually, hes alright'

I agree with you that ". . . Electric Sheep" is dull. It might just be the prime example of a movie being better than the book. In this case, it was so much better it salvaged what would otherwise have been a forgettable pulp novel.

I've also read "The Man in the High Castle", "Ubik" and "A Scanner Darkly".

"Ubik" barely registers in my memory, other than the protagonist seeming identical to Deckard: detached, disaffected, apathetic, just along for the ride.

I found "The Man in the High Castle" to be surprisingly dull, given its premise of "what if the bad guys won". There were probably some underlying scathing critiques of the democratic West that I would be considered too dense to detect but taken at face value, the book was a series of pointless escapades by paperthin characters.

"A Scanner Darkly": this book answers the question of, "how would a houseful of addicts function". I liked this book as it felt honest; most drug use in science fiction of the period is depicted as mind-expanding and creative, while this work describes a scenario that more closely corresponds to what heavy drug use actually appears to do to the user.

Can we agree that late Dick > early Dick?
He really changed the paradigm of literature after introducing those fucking alien government pink lasers

>reading do androids dream first

did you come from /tv/?

His short story bibliography is extremely underrated.
I'd actually recommend checking them out first before diving into the more meatier, but not always coherently put together or edited novels.
That way you get used to his somewhat dry, mundane in the face of the extraordinary contrast without it overbearing you, and get familiar with his motifs.
Though if you're expecting pulp or Blade Runner, you're either going to be disappointed or pleasantly surprised, depending on your tastes.

UBIK

Hah, I wouldn't recommend The Three Stigmata as an entry point. It's best appreciated after you've gotten used to the Dick and can put aside the amphetamine mania and the non existent editing that went into it.
One of his best, but only if you're already familiar.

'The Eyes Have It' made me kek but I was in a silly mood when I read it. Good stuff though.