What is your favorite Philip K Dick story?

[blankg]

Name your fav PKD story (short or long).

 

[gigantes]

tough question... as just about everything i've read of his has been wonderful.

"second variety" and "paycheck" were a couple favorite short stories (out of dozens), notwithstanding the fact that the films were kind of weak.

"clans of the alphane moon" and "do androids dream of electric sheep" were a couple favorite novels. the 'problem' is i've never read a bad or disappointing novel by him.

 

[HardScienceFan]

As I admitted elsewhere on this forum,I now realize my knowledge of SF is very deficient indeed.Haven't read 'Flow my Tears,Scanner Darkly,Valis,Clans..,Martian Timeslip...
I do have Variable Man,The Golden Man,The book of..,the Preserving Machine.
So...,as far as my rusty memory allows:
War Veteran,Minority Report,Variable Man,The Man in..,Second Variety,the Penultimate Truth,Solar Lottery,*blast it man,this is very hard*

 

[The Wanderer]

UBIK

 

[Stenevor]

Its been years since I read any of his short stories and memories of them are very hazy but I recently reread A Scanner Darkly and Ubik and enjoyed them. I also reread The Man in the High Castle( I may be thick but I just cant get my head around the ending) and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep(Brilliant apart from the Mercer bit near the end which I just dont get).

 

[Ragnar]

Personal favourite is probably Flow My Tears...

 

[Michael01]

Wow. My knowledge of SF must be quite deficient as well. Are Minority Report and Paycheck based on PKD stories? If so, no wonder I thought they were so interesting.

Still, since I've I read only one of his stories, I'm not really qualified to pick a fav. I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and loved it.

 

[manephelien]

I love Do Androids Dream... Minority Report is a pretty good yarn too. I liked the story better than the movie.

 

[HardScienceFan]

Wow. My knowledge of SF must be quite deficient as well. Are Minority Report and Paycheck based on PKD stories? If so, no wonder I thought they were so interesting.

Minority Report *novelette*as I remember it was more hallucigenic and disturbing than the movie,Spielberg somewhat 'normalized',if U get my drift.
Warning: 'Total recall' is said to be based on 'We Can Remember it for you wholesale'.Well.......

 

[j d worthington]

Warning: 'Total recall' is said to be based on 'We Can Remember it for you wholesale'.Well.......

That's the theory, anyway... Taken as a film of its own, I found it good fun the first time around, but with only very tiny bit of Dick's ideas left intact...

 

[The Wanderer]

That's the theory, anyway... Taken as a film of its own, I found it good fun the first time around, but with only very tiny bit of Dick's ideas left intact...

it's about 98% Verhoeven, 2% Dick

Still if you can enjoy his Shlock-horror humour employed in the film it will be found to be enjoyable, it's not what you would call an intelligent Adaptation of Science Fiction, then again, Robocop and Starship Troopers were good fun too

 

[The Wanderer]

Minority Report *novelette*as I remember it was more hallucigenic and disturbing than the movie,Spielberg somewhat 'normalized',if U get my drift.
Warning: 'Total recall' is said to be based on 'We Can Remember it for you wholesale'.Well.......

Minority Report had it's Spiebergian Problems, but his films are always well crafted and engaging despite being generally a Confectioner

 

[HardScienceFan]

it's about 98% Verhoeven, 2% Dick

Still if you can enjoy his Shlock-horror humour employed in the film it will be found to be enjoyable, it's not what you would call an intelligent Adaptation of Science Fiction, then again, Robocop and Starship Troopers were good fun too

UUHMMM
Faith of our fathers
If there were no Benny Cemoli
Foster you're dead
A present for Pat
Let's force*sorry,persuade* David Lynch to cinematofy Dick,most SF gets severely messed up by Lollywood

 

[The Wanderer]

UUHMMM
Faith of our fathers
If there were no Benny Cemoli
Foster you're dead
A present for Pat
Let's force*sorry,persuade* David Lynch to cinematofy Dick,most SF gets severely messed up by Lollywood

True, though some would argue that Lynch didn't do such a great job on Dune, I'd have to say my feelings are mixed on the film, I thought some of hits the bullseye, some of it fails, and then I feel some of it is lost in the compression of the story, some of the special effects hold up well these days though

 

[The Wanderer]

Any Opinions on 'Paycheck' by John Woo?

just another excuse for an action vehicle and explosions etc, with a baffled lead character with a mistaken identity

 

[HardScienceFan]

Any Opinions on 'Paycheck' by John Woo?

just another excuse for an action vehicle and explosions etc, with a baffled lead character with a mistaken identity

Missed it,a while back.Ben Affleck,innit??
Most Dullywood directors should visit demolition sites,if they dig explosions.
Think what Hollyw.would do with the Big Bang!
Methinks Keanu Reeves should play the Cosmic Background Radiation.

 

[Razorback]

Dick is someone I haven’t gotten around to reading much yet. So far, The Man in the High Castle is it. I’ll probably remedy this over the next year or two, but he is a blind spot at present. As for the Paycheck movie, I thought it worked fine as a futuristic, action thriller. I didn’t find anything lasting or memorable in it, but I thought it had decent entertainment value.

 

[The Wanderer]

Missed it,a while back.Ben Affleck,innit??
Most Dullywood directors should visit demolition sites,if they dig explosions.
Think what Hollyw.would do with the Big Bang!
Methinks Keanu Reeves should play the Cosmic Background Radiation.

There isn't the talent in Hollywood in the Science Fiction field, it's usually demoted to the slam-bang entertainment vehicle section

sadly thete is no Kubrick, & Tarkovsky to make intelligent Science Fiction, and forgewt Ridley Scott, he's not even a tenth of the filmmaker who made 'Blade Runner' & 'Alien'

I would have like to have seen Godard make a Science Fiction film in Hollywood, but he would have made a futuristic film about that adaptation of a great Science Fiction novel with a filmmaker unable to obtain funding unless he takes out some philosphy and puts in some love interest and more explosions and perhaps a cute talking dog

 

[HardScienceFan]

I would have like to have seen Godard make a Science Fiction film in Hollywood, but he would have made a futuristic film about that adaptation of a great Science Fiction novel with a filmmaker unable to obtain funding unless he takes out some philosphy and puts in some love interest and more explosions and perhaps a cute talking dog

Hollywood and slambang entertainment????Are you mad?
H>WOOD would probably make an action film out of Teilhard de Chardin's writings,if given the Chance
Hear Tarantino is filming Das Kapital,again with Uma.
PIXAR is remaking Reservoir Dogs,by the way,with Tom Hanks doing ALL
the voices
George Bush is asking Scorcese to "cinematofy or movielate Dr Seuss

 

[j d worthington]

Well, this has gotten slightly off-topic....

So I may as well put in my 2c worth here... I don't know if we're going to see a new cycle or not. Hollywood has had periods when it has been very innovative and creative, then periods when it becomes so formulaic that it becomes a laughingstock, until independent and foreign films begin raking in the cash and acquiring the critical acclaim... then Hollywood plays catch-up, and then you have a flowering of genuine talent again which go in their own directions, and you end up with a proliferation of good, mature, thought-provoking work coming from Tinseltown... and then the audience seems to lose interest in anything but popcorn films, and so Hollywood (being a business much, much more than a place devoted to art) follows the dollar and makes dross... and we start the cycle all over again. This time, however I'm not sure we'll see that turnaround (at least, not anytime soon). Where, in previous cycles, when there's so much social unrest and uncertainty, when things are tense, tight, and confusing, we've seen a ferment in the arts, a growth of new voices addressing the issues and looking for solutions through the media of their art... we're not really seeing that these days. Instead, we get either bubble-gum crap or pretentious vacuity with no real thought to it... simply flash. Or we get bubble-gum crap wrapped up as meaty, thought-provoking art (Tarantino is one who comes to mind here, I'm afraid, but there are plenty of others. Frankly, I'll take dozens of Godard's, Resnais's, Truffaut's, etc. over just about any of the "arty" directors Hollywood has turned out in the last 3-4 decades.)

I don't think we're lacking in good scenarists per se... but have you taken into account the fact that a writer's fee in Hollywood isn't much over what it was 30 years ago, whereas nearly every other profession has had their pay grow nearly exponentially? Why on earth should they put out their best efforts to a) be given peanuts; b) be treated like chattel; c) get no recognition from filmgoers (with extremely rare exceptions)? Would any of you? As long as formulaic dreck brings in more money, why strain your brain creating genuinely thoughtful, innovative scripts that will be emasculated by rewrites, editing, and hamfisted handling? And you're seeing something of a no-win situation: If people stop going to these gawdawfully disastrous handlings of sff material, then the producers just decide that sff itself is at fault (not the sheer idiocy of the handling); whereas if people continue going to this garbage, there's no incentive to improve its quality. The only thing that will change that is if good, quality films of this nature are brought in from outside, and begin making much, much more money than the Hollywood bilge; then they start to take notice. But as long as a prejudice in favor of the big guys and against smaller budgets, subtitling, and foreign filmmaking is in place... we're not likely to see a renascence of the sff film as a true art form....