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

But, this is of course my unqualified opinion.

"A Scanner Darkly" is really one of his minor books. You should try "Ubik".

Dick considered 'A Scanner Darkly' to be his best work.

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).