[HN Gopher] The Essential Philip K. Dick
___________________________________________________________________
The Essential Philip K. Dick
Author : benbreen
Score : 115 points
Date : 2022-10-27 03:18 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| What Phil did before writing (capsule bio) & decent works list.
| [http://www.filmreference.com/film/42/Philip-Dick.html]
|
| 1958 Exploring Tomorrow (Campbell's Mutual show) episode (#11
| Made in Avack) [https://archive.org/details/ExploringTomorrow/]
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Archive link:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221029011427/https://www.nytim...
| w1nst0nsm1th wrote:
| I read all of them, at least the ones published in French...
|
| "A Scanner Darkly" is by far the most polished, and also the most
| twisted.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| I also enjoyed the movie adaption of it, especially the weird
| psychedelic visuals, but I'm glad I read the book first.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It was also one of his last novels and most personal, both
| factors probably influencing its quality. The Linklater
| adaptation is particularly good and faithful, nearly every
| scene is close to verbatim from the book. And most of its
| omissions and changes are reasonable ones for an adaptation
| into a movie.
| dllthomas wrote:
| I keep saying it's the only Phillip K. Dick adaptation that
| feels like Phillip K. Dick.
| w1nst0nsm1th wrote:
| It's on Apple TV on location. I will watch it some day. Thank
| for the recommandation.
| wiredfool wrote:
| The afterward of a Scanner Darkly is a gut punch.
|
| My recollection is that it's a list of friends who had lost
| their lives to drugs of one form or another.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Lives and health, he's also included in the list.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| There's a bit in Ubik that stays in my mind. Joe Chip gets into
| an argument with his apartment door that refuses to open for him
| because he owes it money. I kinda got that the door was an
| autonomous money-making agent that held him hostage - a
| conversation reminiscent of that between Doolittle and the Bomb
| in Dark Star. It made me see the ridiculous side and ultimate
| absurdity of micropayments leading to world where a dollar value
| is put on everything so that every silly little thing becomes a
| coin operated nuisance whose actual function is replaced by
| squeezing a few more micro-credits out of you.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| He tries to bypass the thing by unscrewing the fixture and it
| says, "I'll sue you."
| anothermoron wrote:
| I love that line:
|
| "I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.
| Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I
| can live through it."
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Years ago I read about cloud computing as getting a free
| vacation but being charged for each sand particle you touch,
| small on its own but it gets too ridiculous after some time
| Wistar wrote:
| That expresses things quite evocatively.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| There was an episode of Rocko's Modern Life where they go to
| a ski resort where everything is $5. What a deal! It turns
| out it applies to literally everything.
| black_13 wrote:
| While living Boston the walkup replaced the keyed doors with
| electronic locks. They never worked. I kept my key to the
| cellar and would come through the laundry room and occasionally
| fall in snow and pee myself. That is dystopia. Dick understood
| what the future would be lots of dangerous gadgets. The
| gestaltmacher in the novel the penultimate truth.
| pavlov wrote:
| They call that "web3" nowadays, but you're supposed to enjoy it
| because you can buy shares in the specific door that won't open
| for you and they might triple in value while you're locked in.
| keiferski wrote:
| PKD is one of my favorite sci-fi writers and I recommend _Ubik_
| if you 're a new reader, although like the article mentions, you
| definitely need to be in a certain mindset to "get it." _The Man
| in the High Castle_ has an interesting concept but I don 't think
| it's particularly well-written.
|
| One thing that I think goes unnoticed about PKD is how some of
| his earlier short stories are undeniably, unquestionably _bad._
| _Fair Game_ , for instance. He wrote it in 1953, a decade+ before
| his work started to get really good: _The Three Stigmata of
| Palmer Eldritch_ was written in 1964, _Do Androids Dream of
| Electric Sheep?_ in 1968, and _Ubik_ in 1969.
|
| I personally find this a bit reassuring. It's nice to know that
| even someone as influential as PKD took a long time to develop.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >The Man in the High Castle has an interesting concept but I
| don't think it's particularly well-written.
|
| It should be noted that Ursula K. Le Guin disagreed with your
| assessment in her famous essay Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown,
| in which she felt that The Man in the High Castle was one of
| the only science fiction novels that had a human character - a
| Mrs Brown.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Did you give the TV adaption of The Man in the High Castle a
| try? It's on Prime, I found it quite enjoyable.
| keiferski wrote:
| No, it seemed a bit generic to me, but maybe I'll take a
| second look.
| mmarq wrote:
| The first season was good, then it quickly degenerates into
| nazi porn and finally into a bad version of Rick&Morty
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I haven't read The Man in the High Castle for a long time, but
| I thought that it was a rarity amongst PKD's output in that he
| edited it rather than just writing and selling it. It's also
| notable for winning a Hugo.
| yarg wrote:
| He also had a problem with women (to be fair, he was a
| professional writer - and apparently his wife wouldn't let him
| use the house).
|
| I don't think I've read a single well-meaning intelligent woman
| in a PKD story.
|
| I remember being surprised at the start of one of his books,
| that the female character introduced at the beginning was
| clearly competent - turned out she was evil.
| atombender wrote:
| I would argue that Juliana Frink in The Man in the High
| Castle is certainly a "well-meaning intelligent woman". His
| strongest female character is probably Angel Archer, who
| narrates The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, his last
| novel.
| yarg wrote:
| You've got me there.
| skmurphy wrote:
| Off the top of my head: Juliana Frink, a central character in
| "Man in the High Castle," is well-meaning and intelligent.
| leephillips wrote:
| I found _Ubik_ somewhat intriguing. I'm about 60 pages unto
| _Valis_ , and so far it's mostly bad philosophy and theology,
| thankfully saved by occasional flashes of humor, and the
| almost-interesting fracturing of the main character into at
| least two people. Does it get any better?
| abruzzi wrote:
| I don't reccomend Valis for anyone but the most diehard Dick
| fans. Its an attempt to fictionalize an experience Dick had
| and spent the rest of his life trying to understand. It has
| some great moments, but it doesn't hold together terribly
| well as a story. I much prefer more focused stories like
| Scanner Darkly, Flow My Tears, or even Divine Invasion.
|
| Supposedly Dick's experience conceived three published novels
| --Valis, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, and Divine
| invasion. There is a fourth, unpublished novel--Radio Free
| Albemuth that came from it as well. Valis seem to be the most
| personal since it someone named Philip Dick (or Horselover
| Fat) having the exact same experience then trying to make
| sense of it. Divine Invasion has more of the feel of a
| traditional Dick novel with someone forced to live in a hovel
| on an alien planet. Timothy Archer is borderline non-SciFi,
| with only a tiny influence of SciFi, IIRC. And Radio Free
| Albemuth felt a bit like a cross between Scanner Darkly and
| Valis--i.e. the Valis story in a dystopian future surveilance
| state.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| There's a film version of Radio Free Albemuth
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1129396/
|
| It's watchable, but my experience is soured by the terrible
| experience of contributing to the KickStarter and then not
| being able to get my reward for years due to living in the
| UK rather than the US (licensing issues).
| cturner wrote:
| I have read a fair bit of pkd and found Valis an unsatisfying
| struggle. Radio Free Albemuth is an earlier attempt at
| similar ideas and is accessible.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I consider _Ubik_ to be Dick 's best work... so if you found
| it only "somewhat intriguing", I doubt you'll be any more
| pleased with anything else he wrote.
|
| That said, if you are interested in reading more by him, of
| his books I can recommend:
|
| - _The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_
|
| - _Martian Time-Slip_
|
| - _Galactic Pot Healer_
|
| - _Eye in the Sky_
|
| - the middle part of _Lies, Inc_
|
| Some of his short stories:
|
| - _Beyond Lies the Wub_
|
| - _Faith of Our Fathers_
| jrumbut wrote:
| It's funny, I'm a big PKD fan and I didn't care for _Ubik_.
| I enjoyed the first half or so of _VALIS_ immensely but my
| favorite of his is _A Scanner Darkly_.
|
| I think, in 2022, people will understand _Scanner_ better
| than they used to or maybe it is on the verge of being
| outdated?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I didn't like _A Scanner Darkly_. I thought it was
| mediocre. _VALIS_ was better, but not in the top tier of
| PKD 's books, IMO.
| cgh wrote:
| I'd like to add Dr. Bloodmoney and A Scanner Darkly to your
| recommended list.
| xhevahir wrote:
| Ubik is the only PKD novel I've read and man did I struggle to
| finish it. Once in a while a passage caught my interest and
| then I would realize that I was reading was basically a summary
| of some myth from Gnostic scripture. A real slog, on the whole.
| x86x87 wrote:
| PKD is my favorite writer of all times. I believe that even for
| his greatest works the writing could have been more polished,
| way better. The thing is PKD does not get you with the form of
| the writing but with the ideas that he captures. Truly
| visionary.
| moris_borris wrote:
| That last bit could be said of any of my favorite sci fi
| thinkers. I love Asimov and Frank Herbert but not because I
| think they were great writers.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| it's funny because for me the prose of a lot of science
| fiction writers was always what turned me away from the
| genre. I could barely make it through Dune and gave the
| Foundation up. A lot of science fiction authors which I
| came to love a lot like Gibson or Le Guin I think I mostly
| got into because of their sense of style.
|
| Stephenson for me is probably the worst offender for this.
| I've met so many people both online and offline,
| particularly other programmers who always told me to read
| his stuff but he's straight up pasting pages of Wikipedia
| into his books, I felt like I was being trolled.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Stephenson is a bit more polished than PKD but your point
| still stands.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I had high expectations from a bunch of friends
| recommending _Snowcrash_ , but when I read it I found it
| to be so awful I couldn't even finish it. It was just so
| childish and stupid. I don't get why people like it.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Of his books that I read, it is definitely the one that
| comes across as the most childish and stupid (with a few
| good ideas). His other books aren't like that.
|
| I had trouble getting through them as well, but for other
| reasons. For _Cryptonomicon_ it was his "let me prove
| how smart I am" diversions off the main story for dozens
| of pages at a time, and for _Anathem_ it was an
| interesting idea told in a boring yet difficult-to-parse
| way, at least as far as I got.
|
| The quality of the prose in those other two books seemed
| better, at least.
|
| Big fan of PKD books, btw, although I think his writing
| style and characters are pretty plain and not that
| compelling on their own (but they are quick to read as a
| result, I could knock one out in about 4-6 hours,
| usually). The ideas, dialogue, and often the endings make
| them all worth reading, though.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" his writing style and characters are pretty plain and
| not that compelling on their own"_
|
| Dick is a champion of the underdog everyman. His
| protagonists tend to be humble repairmen and other
| "losers" in the lower stratum of society... I find those
| characters very human and relatable.
|
| The other type of Dick protagonists are those who think
| they're on top of the world, until their world turns
| upside-down and so they get to experience being dragged
| through the mud.... usually finding out that what they
| thought was a perfect world was broken, hostile, and
| sometimes even evil.
|
| His writing style is direct and economical. I really
| don't have a problem with it.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| _Snow Crash_ is either an accidental or deliberate parody
| of cyberpunk. The main character is Hiro Protagonist.
| When he goes into a VR world and is "fighting" with a
| sword he's swinging a sword around wildly in the real
| world too, while around other people. And then in
| _Diamond Age_ Stephenson [rot13]xvyyf gur zbfg plorechax
| punenpgre va gur svefg be frpbaq puncgre[ /rot13].
|
| When I read _Snow Crash_ the first time it was back when
| cyberpunk was still a pretty hot style, and I was also
| reading a lot of Gibson and others. It fit well within
| that context. Then later I reread it and realized what I
| wrote above, it was parodying elements of the genre while
| creating almost a quintessentially action-adventure
| cyberpunk story with a programmer /pizza delivery driver
| hero. And then it had the typical Stephenson ending,
| which is to say
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Yeah, I got that it was a parody. It just wasn't funny.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| > And then it had the typical Stephenson ending, which is
| to say
|
| that made me laugh out loud
| flybrand wrote:
| Thank you for commenting on Stephenson's plot
| resolutions. I love his writing and his stories, but the
| end of his books are just so unfulfilling. Especially
| Anathem!
| skyechurch wrote:
| Dick can be really rewarding, although he's definitely not to
| everyone's taste, or a particularly good stylist. This is
| true of other great writers who deal in extreme psychological
| states - Dostoyevsky for example. The extreme state for PKD
| was a metaphysical paranoia (probably augmented by
| amphetamine abuse), which many people can relate to, although
| it's usually not as intense or as intricate as in his novels.
| Dick was often writing autobiographical science fiction,
| which is an absolutely unique vision, though not one I'd like
| to experience first hand.
| xhevahir wrote:
| I'm no authority on Russian literature but I've never
| agreed with this criticism of Dostoevsky. His writing is of
| a different kind, one that has its own logic. This article
| does a good job of explaining it I think:
| https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/the-master-of-
| peter...
| x86x87 wrote:
| Yup. Sort of upset as I think with better form/style more
| people would have been exposed to his idea.
| trash3 wrote:
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| So for everyone here who has declared that Phil Dick wasn't a
| very polished writer - who is your example of a polished writer
| that you are comparing him to his detriment with?
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Douglas Coupland is super polished, the lines just slide
| straight into your eyes.
| atombender wrote:
| I wouldn't call it unpolished at all. I would characterise
| PKD's prose as workmanlike. It's very effective, just not what
| anyone would ever call lyrical or stylish. Stephen King once
| described his own writing as "the literary equivalent of a Big
| Mac and fries", and there's some of that in PKD, at least on
| the surface level.
|
| I do think PKD improved as a writer in the 1970s, once he
| kicked his drug habit and slowed down his hyperactive output;
| from this era, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, A Scanner
| Darkly, and the VALIS trilogy all has some beautiful writing
| and show Dick as a deeper and more mature writer.
|
| As for the rest of the sci-fi genre, there's a lot of talent
| among his contemporaries. I would especially suggest:
|
| * John Crowley. Widely recognized as actual an Author of real
| Literature, though only his earliest works could be called
| science fiction. Start with The Deep and Engine Summer.
|
| * Harlan Ellison. Some of his stories ("I Have No Mouth and I
| Must Scream", "Jeffty Is Five", etc.) are simply masterfully
| written.
|
| * Samuel Delaney. He's an acquired taste and certainly gets a
| bit self-indulgent, but novels like Babel 17 are often
| beautifully written.
|
| * Ursula LeGuin, e.g. The Left Hand of Darkness.
|
| * Gene Wolfe. Increasingly also recognized as a genius, I also
| particularly like his short stories. Start with The Fifth Head
| of Cerberus; graduate with the monumental The Book of the New
| Sun, which has no equal in or out of the genre.
|
| * J. G. Ballard. A consummate stylist, he eventually drifted
| away from SF, but his earlic works are fantastic. My favourite
| is The Crystal World, as well as his numerious short stories,
| including one of my favourite stories ever [1]).
|
| Of later writers, William Gibson, China Mieville and Iain M.
| Banks come to mind.
|
| [1] "Report on an Unidentified Space Station":
| http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/roauss.htm
| sbf501 wrote:
| > I would characterise PKD's prose as workmanlike.
|
| That's a good way of putting it. I think a lot of his stuff
| was just published in a time when editors didn't do much, but
| also he was picked up by publishers who were pushing pulp, so
| there's a lot writing that feels "in progress".
| e12e wrote:
| Perhaps Bruce Sterling and Frank Herbert (in particular
| "Dune"). Absolutely Samuel Delaney IMO.
|
| For something similar to pkd, but perhaps more refined(?)
| Alfred Beater, "The Stars my Destination".
| atombender wrote:
| For those who have read Dick's "standards", I recommend one of
| his novels that _never_ appears in these lists, and probably
| never will: Galactic Pot-Healer (1968).
|
| PKD later said he couldn't call writing it, this being the period
| where he consumed copious amounts of amphetamines, and produced a
| ridiculous number of novels and short stories. I still think it's
| one of his most enjoyable books.
|
| The plot is a ramshackle Vonnegutian comic fantasy featuring a
| totalitarian dystopia, an alien demigod, a man who "heals" broken
| ceramic pottery, and an early version of the old Internet
| pasttime where you use machine translation tools to translate
| English into other languages and then back again in order to
| produce humorously mangled sentences. It's a weird, fun, sad
| book.
|
| Also worth mentioning is A Maze of Death (1970), which is a
| creepy alien planet exploration story that becomes something else
| and unexpected, and probably the closest Dick came to writing a
| Harlan Ellison story.
| fluxinflex wrote:
| Is SciFi a genre that reflects societal health? I have the
| feeling that SciFi is a phenomenon that appears and disappears in
| waves depending on how well a society is function.
|
| There was SciFi coming out of the communist block (Lem,
| Strugatsky brothers, Zamyatin) which was a comment on the system,
| there was SciFi from England in early 1900s (Wells) - comment on
| industrial revolution - and later Orwell - post war, societal
| controls - and Adams - the world should be more worried about
| external forces. In the US the genre appears to be a constant
| starting with Poe[1] followed by Huxley, Dick, Clarke, Asimov,
| Gibson, Bradbury, Heinlein commenting on all sorts of societal
| issues. And recently China with The Three Body Problem by Liu.
| France had Jules Verne but that was more for profit than comment
| on societal issues.
|
| Coming back to the question, is the popularity of SciFi an
| indicator for potential fears within society? I know that my
| favourite bookstore recently had a run on PKD, the bookstore
| happens to be in mainland Europe.
|
| And what is the relationship between SciFi and philosophy?
| Philosophy being one of those sciences whose purpose is to
| question societal forms, constructs and norms.
|
| [1]=https://psyche.co/ideas/are-successful-authors-creative-
| geni...
| x86x87 wrote:
| The empire never ended
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Perhaps one day we'll all escape the Black Iron Prison...
| Trasmatta wrote:
| VALIS is the most bizarre but fascinating book I've ever read. I
| recommend going into it only after reading a number of his other
| books, and then reading a synopsis of his own life. It's fiction
| but also psuedo-autobiographical, and a deeply personal story to
| PKD.
| ericmcer wrote:
| That book made me aware of how your brains internal dialogue
| can be influenced by the media you are consuming. I read it in
| a day or so and really felt it altered my "internal voice",
| which was a bit unnerving.
| sbf501 wrote:
| I've read 45 of all 49 PKD novels on the Wikipedia page. It was a
| goal I set about 7 years ago. I tried to read the books in order,
| but had trouble finding some. His style goes from Twilight Zone /
| Amazing Stories, do thought-provoking alternate reality, to
| alternate people, to alternate "reality" which is different than
| what I said earlier. There is "alternate reality" where we are in
| a different timeline, or aliens, or different technology, and
| then there is reality that is just bent and distorted
| psychologically (VALIS, Palmer Eldritch, Martian Time Slip, ...).
| There's a big blob of boring books in the middle, in my opinion,
| like "We Can Build You", "The Crack in Space", and "Now Wait for
| Last Year". But what I've found most fascinating is watching his
| progression (descent) into darker and darker work. It was also a
| weird experience reading so much from one author, because after 5
| books you start to see significant similarity and I wonder if
| that is why the middle part got so boring to me.
| js2 wrote:
| Any favorites you'd like to call out and why those were your
| favorite?
|
| Did you also read his short story collections?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Which are your favorites? Do you have one that you would
| consider to be the magnum opus? If I had to pick one of them I
| would pick Ubik.
| theptip wrote:
| For anyone that liked "Blade Runner", it's fascinating to go back
| and read PKD's "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep", which Blade
| Runner was based on. You can see the threads of similarity but
| it's a way more surreal paranoid bad-acid-trip vibe.
|
| Can't remember another adaptation with such a striking difference
| from the original.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| > Can't remember another adaptation with such a striking
| difference from the original.
|
| How about 'Total Recall' as an adaption of 'We Can Remember It
| for You Wholesale'?
| dllthomas wrote:
| 'Minority Report', in addition to throwing in a whole bunch
| of filler, flips the whole point of the thing into something
| deeply Hollywood.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Part of the problem with that adaptation is that _We can
| Remember It for You Wholesale_ would be best adapted into an
| almost comedic Outer Limits episode, as written. _Total
| Recall_ at least manages to keep a lot of PKD 's general
| themes intact despite seriously diverging from the story, and
| brings in ideas from his other stories to an extent.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _Blade Runner_ is way better than _DADOES_ , which is a minor
| Dick work. He's written much better books.
| WA wrote:
| Exactly the other way around for me. I never liked Blade
| Runner, especially the last 20 minutes or so. I enjoyed the
| book. I like Blade Runner 2049 though.
| cmsefton wrote:
| Ridley Scott famously claimed that he "found the novel too
| difficult to read". Dick was infuriated with the first draft of
| the film, and absolutely hated it, writing very sarcastic
| comments about it.
|
| However, after the script was reworked, and Dick read it, he
| said "you read the screenplay and then you go to the novel, and
| it's like they're two halves to one meta-artwork, one meta-
| artifact."
|
| This makes for some great reading delving into what Dick
| thought of the film. https://soothfairy.com/2022/09/16/what-
| did-philip-k-dick-thi...
|
| I especially like Special Effects Chief David Dryer's
| recollection of what Dick said after watching the first reels:
|
| > Dick looks me straight in the eye and says, 'How is this
| possible? How can this be? Those are not the exact images, but
| the texture and tone of the images I saw in my head when I was
| writing the original book! The environment is exactly as how
| I'd imagined it! How'd you guys do that? How did you know what
| I was feeling and thinking?'
|
| > "Let me tell you, that was one of the most successful moments
| of my career," Dryer concludes. "Dick went away dazed."
|
| I also particularly liked Dick's comments about what the film
| meant to him:
|
| > I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a
| set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning
| dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and
| completed by Blade Runer. Thank you ... It will prove
| invincible.
| olivermarks wrote:
| I'm a big PKD fan - I also recommend reading the 1909 short story
| 'the machine stops' by em Forster which was incredibly prescient
| and I suspect informed some of PKD's thinking.
|
| People have often pointed out this piece 'predicted the internet
| age' while ignoring the dystopian collapse at the end of Forsters
| pice, which is alarmingly similar to the current collapse of some
| aspects of western civilization IMO...
|
| https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/...
|
| I have PKD's 'the Defenders' mapped to 'the machine stops' in my
| mind
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Defenders_(short_story)
| wiredfool wrote:
| I find his short stories to be quite good -- if not a bit
| repetitive if read in bulk. His paranoia and the bleakness of
| post nuclear war are overwhelming after a while.
|
| Quite a lot of his stories have been made into movies, for
| better or worse. They seem to be enough of a chunk to hang a
| story on, without getting too much in the way of telling a good
| story.
|
| Minority Report -- much better in the story. We Can Remember it
| for You Wholesale -- both worked.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Amazing the standard of pulp fiction in that era - we need a
| big dose of dystopian 'nuclear war will be an apocalypse that
| will end our lives' right now given how amazingly unaware
| people appear to be to the grave danger of nuclear war threat
| we are facing right now
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The writer talks about Ubik but does not mention the
| pervasiveness of corporate power/role in the daily life described
| (at least from my interpretation), this is well portrayed in
| Total Recall, also based on a Philip K. Dick story which varies
| enough from the movie to be read as separate work.
|
| Short story not mentioned but is worth reading if one has not,
| Second Variety.
| prpl wrote:
| Three Stigmata... is also very corporate. Like if Comcast and
| Space-X merged to form a venture to mars
| x86x87 wrote:
| The 3 Stigmata is my favourite PKD book. Apart from some of
| his obscure stuff I've read everything he wrote
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Short story not mentioned but is worth reading if one has
| not, Second Variety."_
|
| The movie _The Terminator_ has some similarities to _Second
| Variety_ , and I wouldn't be surprised if the movie was
| somewhat influenced by the story.
| robocat wrote:
| Second Variety:
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32032/32032-h/32032-h.htm
| Schiphol wrote:
| Has any of you read/skimmed the Exegesis? Is it any good?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| No. It's awful... unless you like disconnected ramblings.
| armitron wrote:
| If you've had mystical experiences and trying to make sense of
| them, PKD's Exegesis is required reading. If you haven't had
| any experiences of this sort, then it'll probably come across
| as disconnected ramblings indicative of serious mental illness.
|
| After spending decades reading everything I could on the
| subject of mystical experiences, from Crowley (the English
| libertine) to Timothy Leary and Mckenna, the only other writers
| I'd put on the same "absolutely essential reading" list as PKD,
| worthy of intense study, are Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner.
|
| That a pulp scifi author made this list is, to me, supremely
| fascinating.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I don't know if it's the type of thing that can be classified
| as "good" or "bad". It's a stream of consciousness from a
| brilliant man suffering from immense personal pain and some
| form of undiagnosed mental illness, that I'm sure he never
| intended anyone to read. It's bizarre and fascinating,
| especially if you've read VALIS. It shows how his internal
| world was becoming molded with his own books, his life becoming
| one of his own stories, struggling with the flimsy nature of
| reality.
|
| It's so long that it feels kind of futile to read it end to
| end, but I jump to a random page sometimes and read for awhile.
| There's a lot of repetition, but is fascinating.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| It took me several years and as many attempts to get into it
| and commit, but once I committed and got past the (awful)
| forward, I went front to back over the course of a month or
| two. As sibling comment says, it's very repetitive, but it's
| also iterative; PKD is trying to make sense of a lot of things
| at once, over and over again with slight tweaks. Each time he
| gets closer and closer to essentially rewriting Christian
| Gnosticism (imo) from the ground up.
|
| It honestly changed my life. There were times when I would have
| dreams and thoughts along similar lines and then end up reading
| them in the pages that night. It is worth a read if you're in a
| dark place, because it might give you the same sense of "I'm
| not alone" that it did to me.
|
| Certainly ain't for everyone, but the reward is great.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Paywalled article
| [deleted]
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221029011427/https://www.nytim...
| - I also posted this here in the discussion over an hour ago.
| Problem solved.
| utopcell wrote:
| Thank you posting the archive link, but the problem is that
| if the article is not accessible, this becomes an ad posting
| for the site.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Check the HN FAQ. Paywalled sites are fine for submissions
| as long as there's a workaround (and there is here), and
| whining about it (as the person I responded to did) is
| considered off-topic. It takes about 10 seconds to pull up
| an archive link and maybe 5-10 seconds more to submit it,
| only slightly longer than it takes to write and submit a
| useless comment about how it is paywalled.
| qull wrote:
| 1. There was no workaround published when he commented.
| 2. Why not just use the working workaround link in the
| first place?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > There was no workaround published when he commented.
|
| There was, I'd posted it an hour earlier than their
| comment.
|
| > Why not just use the working workaround link in the
| first place?
|
| Who knows, who cares. It takes < 20 seconds to get an
| archive.org copy and post it yourself. Only a few seconds
| more than it takes to whine, and a lot more productive.
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