Recommend me some Philip K Dick

[Sam]

I like a lot of the movies based off his books (Minority Report, Total Recall etc) and I keep hearing how the original stories are much better and how the Hollywood machine ruins them etc.

So where do I start?

[terminallyrelaxed]

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? - Blade Runner. Actually in this insatnce the film becomes something greater than the book, if the mediums can really be compared.
The Man In The High Castle - Japan and Germany won the war, and have divvied up the states bewteen them. Not a long read but I still found it hard going and am left with little idea about what went on a few years after reading it.

[terminallyrelaxed]

Maybe get a collection of short stories first? All the sci-fi classic authors are heavily represented in this genre, I've got Beyond Lies The Wub which is quite a good mix.

[Lu tze]

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

[Cheese Arse H Christ]

Recommend me some Philip K Dick

First recommend me some Malcolm X, Twat

[Papercut]

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Absolutely superb book, back in print recently too. Read this and The Man in the High Castle.

[Rats]

Yeah, like tr said, get beyond lies the wub and second variety, they're the two short stories collections. A good starting point.

[Kingboy_D]

Another vote for The Man in the High Castle, a frighteningly realistic portrayal of a world dominated by a hi-tech Nazi superpower.

[Rats]

Download these cos they won't be up forever, he's dead, he won't need the money. Don't say I never give you anything.

Divine Invasion
Do Androids Dream of Electric Boogaloo
We Can Build You
The Man in The High Castle
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

[12 Storey Crisis]

You can't go too far wrong with A Scanner Darkly. Apparently Chris Cunnigham and David Cronenberg both considered turning it into a movie at different points; now those would have been adaptations I'd have paid to have seen (obviously, how else was I gonna see them?)

Also, great in-depth article on Dick:

http://www.themodernworld.com/scriptorium/dick.html

[Dangermouse]

Cheers for those Rats.

[joe_totale]

We Can Build You is full of great ideas but I found it very hard going, especially towards the end of the book. There is a good plot reason for this however, which I'm not going to spoil, but by the end I wasn't sure if the effort had been worth it. This was years ago...

I never investigated his other stuff after that first taste, so I would probably suggest you went for any of the others that these gents have recommended. Short stories are always a good starting point.

[Capuchin]

I'd also recommend short story comps, Beyond Lies the Wub, Second Variety and The Father Thing are all great.
I've just bought Paycheck cheap, shame it has the film-related cover.
Ah well, it's what's inside that counts.

[morgs]

Counterclock World is another interesting concept... time begins moving backwards, and, as a result, there is the dead are re-born.One of these is a religious leader who has amassed a sizable number of followers since his demise. Back above ground, he finds himself worshipped by millions who will do anything he says, making him quite dangerous.

Apart from that I'd agree with the majority of the above suggestions.

[Regular John]

Thanks Rats!

Recommend me some Philip K Dick

First recommend me some Malcolm X, Twat

genius!

EDITED to add a recommendation for the Hyperion cantos by Dan Simmons. They have got me right back into sci-fi books.

[Brigadier Pompous]

You can't go too far wrong with any of his stuff that is in print.

A Scanner Darkly  and Ubik are my top recommendations though.

[Ambient Sheep]

I'm very fond of A Maze of Death, partly because it was the first PKD I ever read, but it doesn't seem to be rated by hardcore Dick fans.  They tend to rate High Castle, Ubik, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and especially The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch but I've read none of those for various boring reasons.  Do intend to though.  The only other novel I've read is Time Out of Joint which I quite liked too, again it's not rated I don't think.

However I *have* read most of his short stories and nearly all of them are very readable and some of them are mind-blowing.  The sort of thing that you have to stop reading after a while because - to paraphrase Douglas Adams - you feel that your head's come undone.

I originally had the I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon and The Preserving Machine short-story collections and I can recommend them...however since then they've released a five-volume set of ALL his short stories in chronological order.  These too are great fun, but annoyingly most of them seem to change title with every reprinting, and not only that, but the same titles move between different volumes(!!), so make sure you buy on volume number not name.  As far as I can ascertain from personal experience and the links below they go like this:

V1 -

Beyond Lies the Wub
V2 - Second Variety a.k.a. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
V3 - The Father-Thing a.k.a. Second Variety
V4 - The Days of Perky Pat a.k.a. The Minority Report (you can guess why THAT changed!)
V5 - We Can Remember It For You Wholesale a.k.a. The Eye of the Sybil a.k.a. The Little Black Box[/list]This title-mangling is obviously some cruel Dick-ian jest by his publishers to make us question reality even further.  :-)  Since in one or two cases the stories shift about as well, it seems advisable to try and get the whole set from a single reprint.  Googling for Philip K Dick bibliography gives this and this, which both seem excellent resources and helped me sort out the above (especially the former, the latter seems almost as confused as I was, however even the former lists one of the title variations as being in hardback only when I have a paperback with that title...).

Oh, and one thing, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon also has a non-fiction essay ("How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later") that isn't in the other collections, so still might be worth getting.

[elderford]

Ubik
A Scanner Darkly

Are fairly paranoid. To dip a toe into his madness about his real life experience with the higher being pink light warning of his child's serious illness, you will need:

Valis

The Three Stigmata..., isn't that his final novel?

His none sci-fi novels are exceedingly smalltown depressing, but worth a look in, as it was what he really wanted to do rather than the speed fueled sci-fi for cash that he is better known for:

Puttering about in a Small Land (or Country, can't remember which)
The Man Whose Teeth were all Exactly Alike
In Milton Lumpky Territory
The Girl in the Broken Bubble

Ubik has the lass with the Caveat Emptor tattoo, which I have always found rather sexy.

A Scanner Darkly is paranoia par excellence.

Most of the films tend to be taken from his short stories which are available in collections (see the recent Minority Report book as an example).

Great fun.

The Man in the High Castle, is good for a giggle if you fancy one of those "and what if the Nazis had won stories.

Counter Clock World, is like here, but time runs backwards.

The World Jones Made, is one of those multi-universe jobbies if memory serves me correctly.

Valis, is for the hardcore fan only.

The Simulcra, is interesting as one of the main characters is a machine copy of Abe Lincoln, complete with depression.

There is a book by one of his mates (KW Jetter?) in which Dick is a fictional character along with Richard M Nixon, sci-fi of course, can't remember the title.

[Geej]

Yup,

I am a bit of a Philip K Dick addict. Go for the short story collections first - all of them are top notch and as for:

You can't go too far wrong with A Scanner Darkly. Apparently Chris Cunnigham and David Cronenberg both considered turning it into a movie at different points; now those would have been adaptations I'd have paid to have seen (obviously, how else was I gonna see them?)

Too true, and the great thing is that Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malchovich, eternal sunshine of the spotless maind etc) wrote a script for it, you can find it here - http://www.beingcharliekaufman.com/index.htm?scripts.htm&2

super

[Sherringford Hovis]

Valis

This book changed my life - the writing is fairly disconnected, the characters unsympathetic and the story somewhat self-indulgent, but the philosophy and ideas that I encountered on a first reading when I was 14 rationalised and summarised so many points of view about human nature and the universe in general that I was forming at the time, it gave me the confidence to strt writing myself...

Cheers, Horselover Fat!

[jimbobsyouruncle]

Been read PKD since my mid teens. Its great to see nowadays him getting the respect he deserved, but sad that really apart from Blade Runner the movies have been crap... and Blade Runner is only barely an adaption of Do Androids..

The script for A Scanner Darkly looks good though, and from memory pretty close to the book.

They've already been mentioned, but my favs are :

Ubik
A Scanner Darkly
The Man in the High Castle
Three Stigmata

[elderford]

Something for nothing offer

Infront of me I have:

Philip K Dick Society:

A comparison of Solar Lottery and world of Chance
Naziism and the High Castle
take them to the garden by John Dowie pamphlet
PKDS Pamphlet No 1
15 PKDS newsletters.

First person to ask for them can have them, but you'll need to PM me your postal address.

Offer closed, someone's asked for them

[Gamma Ray]

Something for nothing offer

Some stuff

First person to ask for them can have them, but you'll need to PM me your postal address.

Ok that'll be me. I didn't know he had his own society, the amphetamine crazed lunatic.

I'd like to add another vote for The Man In The High Castle, just because.

[Silver SurferGhost]

Beyond Lies The Wub is as many before me have said, an excellent introduction.
And if you don't fancy forking out for it, it's quite easily found at many local libraries.

Allegedly Dick and his mate Philip Jose Farmer once had a competition to see who could write the filthiest novel,
which Dick won.
True or apocryphical?
.

[Rats]

You've spelt `false` wrong.

[Silver SurferGhost]

And now i cant corect it without everyone nowing

[king mob]

Beyond Lies The Wub is as many before me have said, an excellent introduction.
And if you don't fancy forking out for it, it's quite easily found at many local libraries.

Allegedly Dick and his mate Philip Jose Farmer once had a competition to see who could write the filthiest novel,
which Dick won.
True or apocryphical?
.

True


its down to you to find out who won;)

The answer is Brian Aldiss by the way;)

[thatmuch]

'A Scanner Darkly' is a brilliant book, one of his best written,  which it would take a genius to film adequately. Please read that first. Then UBIK.

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

(spam)

[Poobum]

Agreeing with A Scanner Darkly, one of my top three books of all time. I think it's the book where he nailed the stories concept the best. Feels more complete and whole than some of his other work, it's more than "well the idea's interesting but..."

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is fine, and that's the problem, it's far less than film, but then Blade Runner is the most important film in my little life.

The last PKD book I read was Controllers of Ganymede, which was perfectly fine pulpy sci-fi to pass a couple of hours with.