> Is [Ubik] a symbol, and, if so, of just what? This is not easy to answer.
I thought Ubik was the in-breaking of the divine Logos ("I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.") Ubik is thus the only force capable of rolling back entropy and rescuing man from death.
The subtle thing about the book is its gnostic philosophy, and the implication that "the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it." Which is the point of Ubik's appearance in canned aerosol form: the divine force permeates the world and takes presence even in the detritus of the sort of mass consumerism that the novel shows subverting man's relationship with the divine.
All his novels that I’ve read are boring, weird, and mystical without seeming to have a big point to them. I’d avoid them.
I would, however, recommend his short stories highly. There’s a five-volume collection of all of them, which I recommend. (Most people don’t seem to realize that the movies based on his writing was almost all of them based on his short stories, not his novels.)
I couldn't disagree more. A large proportion of his stories were pulp that he churned out at a high rate to avoid starving, and it shows in many of them
While I have his collected short stories, and have been reading through them chronologically, because it is fascinating to see his development as a writer, I much prefer his novels.
I tried to read "a scanner darkly" however I really didn't get on with it. Its a shame because it has an excellent story, but I couldn't cope with the dialogue.
Much like oscar wilde, great in tiny chunks but really hard going in the long run
I've found the vast majority of his stories to be pretty bad compared to his best books. Then again, the vast majority of his books are also pretty bad compared to his best books.
Hollywood has made some great movies out of his short stories (the original Blade Runner, the original Total Recall, The Terminator). But you have to realize that these movies usually have little to do with the short stories. The movies are more inspired by them than faithful adaptations of them.
This is for two reasons:
First, the stories have too little in them to make a movie out of if Hollywood was set on making a faithful adaptation of them. But this is how they like it, and why they choose the short stories rather than the books. The diretors and writers want to use a lot of creative license to fill in the gaps and flesh out some core idea that they might find interesting.
Second, Hollywood still isn't ready to make a faithful adaptation of a Philip K Dick work, because his works rarely fit the Hollywood scifi formula. They are usually too dark, too depressing, and are rarely full of action, have too much dialogue, and require too much thought on the part of the audience. Scifi blockbuster material this is not. Not unless it's heavily altered from the originals, like most of the movies based on his stories are.
Blade Runner is a notable exception. But even it is pretty superficial and action-packed compared to the book. It's still a great movie, and (in my opinion) far better than the book. But it's not as faithful as it could be.
Regarding your disdain for his books, I can understand it. They're not for everyone. I happen to like weird books, and I think Dick has points he wants to make when writing them, but you obviously missed them. And since you missed them, I don't blame you for not liking them. I wouldn't have liked them myself if I thought that they were pointless. But they're not. I could write long essays on the points of each of my favorite PKD books, but I'll spare you.
I'll just say that they are great for people who enjoy reading and thinking about the following themes:
- what is reality?
- what is the purpose of life?
- what does it mean to be human?
- is the world as it appears to be?
- what, if anything, lies beyond the appearance of the world?
- are non-human or "subhuman" lifeforms less worthy than the fully human or "superior" human beings?
- what is the role of the mass media in our world?
Dick is also a great champion of the underdog and has a very strong sense of justice. In many ways, he is a very moralistic writer, who was deeply influenced by the Holocaust and the Civil Rights struggle in the US. His works reflect that.
He was also deeply interested in mysticism, gnosticism, and philosophy, and is one of the more philosophical science fiction authors I've ever read (as you can probably tell by the many of the themes listed above). If you are interested in any of those, you'll probably like Dick's best books.
Those themes you listed are all covered well (and clearly so) in his many short stories. The novels, on the other hand, are obscure and meandering with often too many characters who are lacking obvious relevance or role. Also, too many themes are often intermingled and often not expressed very clearly and only obscurely alluded to.
I am certainly not a critic of PKD’s themes – he is perhaps my favorite science fiction (depending on how you define it) author when it comes to short stories. I’m just saying his short stories works much, much better than what resulted when he tried to write longer works.
(This is unfortunate, since many people, when they hear about PKD, think “I’ll pick up one of his novels” and immediately get something like “Radio Free Albemuth”… and then never read something by him again. My aim with my comment was to get those people to try his short stories instead. PKD, unlike most authors, should not be considered a writer of novels, but of short stories.)
Radio Free Albemuth. Not exactly his best novel. Yes, if someone picks some random Dick novel, he's likely to be disappointed and your criticism of such a random Dick novel stands a good chance of being correct. I think the same could be said of random Dick short stories as well.
Setting those aside, I think your argument is harder to make where his best novels are concerned.
That said, I'd be interested to hear what you consider Dick's best short stories. Most of the ones I've read have been pretty disappointing (with the exception of a couple I cited elsewhere in this thread).
The source of this essay is as interesting as the subject; it is known as part of Stanislaw Lem's notoriously dim view of the majority of American Sci-Fi.
I've been on a PKD kick recently, because I had read some of his short stories as a teenager and seen movies based on his work, and kept hearing how much of a genius he was. In the past month or so I've been going through his body of work, and my mind is getting blown at every turn. My goal is to read all that he's ever written over 2015.
Here's a rough progression I recommend for those who want to delve into one of the best writers who has ever lived (of course hardcore PKD fans might disagree with the following, and I'd be happy to debate with them :-):
STARTING POINT:
- Ubik, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, The Man In The High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - those are his most famous novels, self contained, and the most accessible. They're fantastic, and a great entry point into PKD's mind. Most of these are from the later years of his life, when he had developed a pretty consistent, high quality style. You just can't go wrong with these, and if you don't like them you probably shouldn't bother with the rest of his work.
- Movies based on his work, notably Blade Runner (which he himself expressed appreciation for, although he never saw it fully), and A Scanner Darkly, the first Total Recall + the adaptation of Confessions of a Crap Artist. While they're not strictly PKDian, they're a good way to get immersed in his way of thinking as the directors did a pretty good job of conveying his themes. The more recent ones (Adjustment Bureau, Total Recall remake, Minority Report, etc.) are fun as well but uneven in quality - but they can be a completely fine introduction to his mind bending ideas, especially if you want to convince friends who aren't into reading to try out his books.
INTERMEDIATE:
- Stuff from his mid-years: Galactic Pot Healer, Time Out Of Joint, Martian Time Slip, Confessions of a Crap Artist, The Crack In Space. Still very good stuff, but I think you need to be already well acquainted with PKD to fully appreciate them and see how his style and ideas were developing.
- The Valis Tri/Tetralogy (Valis/Divine Invasion/Radio Free Albemuth/The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). That's where you start to get deep into PKD lore, and you should read about his life to get the context in which they were written.
- Most of the short stories from ~1960 and onwards. Some are great, some less so, but they're short so you can easily get through the ones you like less.
FOR THE HARDCORE FAN ONLY:
- all the obscure short stories and remaining novels not mentioned above - they're not necessarily harder to get into, but they're from his earlier years and thus don't have the same level of craftsmanship (a few are not even really sci-fi). Also he wrote so much stuff that you should only spend time with those dozens of works if you're really, really into him.
- The Exegesis of PKD: a selection of about 10% of his personal notes, written towards the end of his life when he was completely {drugged out | schizophrenic | a religious nutjob} (pick one or more, or invent your own). It's basically his interpretations of life, the universe, and everything else, based on (somewhat sound) insights from philosophy, physics, biology, etc. This is an insane book that you can only appreciate (and have the strength to go through) if you already have a solid understanding of his world views and ideas.
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Someone recently wrote on reddit "Nobody writes like Feynman; but luckily he wrote a lot.", which is a quote that I love and would apply equally well to PKD.
I've read a lot of PKD, though not everything. My top three picks would be:
1 - Ubik
2 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
3 - Martian Time Slip
Honorable mentions:
4 - A Maze of Death
5 - Divine Invasion (the 2nd of the VALIS trilogy)
6 - Eye in the Sky
Of his short stories, I'd recommend "Beyond Lies the Wub" and "Roog".
Regarding movies influenced by his work:
The original "Blade Runner" movie is far better than "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". The original "Total Recall" movie is far better than "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". "The Terminator" is far better than "Second Variety". "The Truman Show" is better in some ways than "Time Out of Joint" (though this is a closer call, and as usual Dick's vision is a lot darker than Hollywood's take on it). "A Scanner Darkly" and "Minority Report" are also minor works, which you would lose nothing by skipping.
I would also avoid prety much all of his later work and his so-called "Exegisis". For me, Philip K Dick was best when he was writing straight scifi (or at least as straight as he could write it).
Later he tried to write more "literary fiction", or things that had little if any scifi in them, and failed utterly. His navel gazing and endless obsessing about a minor mystical experience in the Exegesis could also not be any more dull. Avoid.
Some of his early and mid-career work is fantastic, though. He is definitely one of my top three favorite scifi authors, if not the very top for his best work.
He wrote A LOT, however, mostly due to being incredibly poor and yet insisting on supporting himself and his family exclusively by publishing work that was appreciated by very few people throughout almost all of his lifetime. So overall his work is of very uneven quality, and can be very hit or miss if you insist on reading through much of it.
I can't agree with you regarding the movie adaptations. They are different. Some are very good movies, but they are "inspired by" PKD's stories rather than straight adaptations.
I can get why you prefer the movies, given that you write that you prefer PKD's "straight scifi", but to me his "straight scifi" is the most boring part of his output.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is not Blade Runner. Blade Runner is a single story-strand from Androids, re-imagined. It's a better movie for it, probably, but what makes PKD's stories to me is the density, with multiple intertwined stories.
As for Exegesis, it's for the specially interested. Of course it is navel gazing - it was his attempt at making sense of his mind after a psychotic breakdown. It was never written for publication.
Interesting that you consider A Scanner Darkly minor. I'm guessing you're referring to the book, not the movie. Why's that? I found it to be really good- it'd probably be in my top 5 (Ubik being #1 so far).
Sorry, but it's probably been about 20 years since I read it (and most of his other work). So I couldn't give you any kind of detailed critique on it, except to say that it didn't leave much an impression on me, unlike top picks or honorable mentions.
I finished his collected works a few years ago, well worth the effort. I wish I knew a successor to the PKD mindfuck. I need to invest the time researching Japanese SF, as that seems to hold some promise. anyone know of other authors mixing philosophy and drugs and religion and politics well? (already finished Pynchon, and Burgess; Verne has some great political philosophy too. But PKD's harsh take just feels so visceral, I need more.
Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Lord of Light, Shockwave Rider. Not exactly what you're looking for but I would be remiss not to mention Book of the New Sun.
Hugely influential to these types of works is Starmaker.
I'm not sure if PKD was a visionary or just a whacked-out drug addict, but he was something. VALIS is still one of the most mind-bending books I've ever read. I'm really looking forward to digging into more of his works one of these days...
I thought Ubik was the in-breaking of the divine Logos ("I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.") Ubik is thus the only force capable of rolling back entropy and rescuing man from death.
The subtle thing about the book is its gnostic philosophy, and the implication that "the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it." Which is the point of Ubik's appearance in canned aerosol form: the divine force permeates the world and takes presence even in the detritus of the sort of mass consumerism that the novel shows subverting man's relationship with the divine.