What is your favorite Philip K Dick story?

[Connavar]

My favorites are currently in this order after another PKD book.

Now Wait For Last Year 5/5
The Three Stigmate of Dr Palmer Eldritch 4/5
Do Androids dream of Electric sheep ? 4/5
Maze of Death 2.5/5

Funny how taste goes. Maze of Death is jojajihisc favorite and my least favorite.

 

[D_Davis]

Funny how taste goes. Maze of Death is jojajihisc favorite and my least favorite.

Yeah - me too.

It's one of the only PKD books I couldn't finish, and one of my least favorite things I've spent time reading.

My top 5 usually look something like this:

Three Stigmata...
A Scanner Darkly
Martian Time Slip
UBIK
Divine Invasion

There are so many I like.

 

[Connavar]

Three Stigmata was close topping my list too but characterwise Now Wait for last year kills it big time. They touched my heartstrings. Feel many feelings for the them. Pity,admiration,hate,love etc

I liked Three Stigmata for the alternate reality,religion,drugs and the alien angles.

Leo Bulero was the only memorable character. The guy that worked for him Barney something i already have hard to remember who he was

 

[D_Davis]

I can't argue with that. I don't recall many of the characters in The Three Stigmata....but those ideas are so grand!

 

[Connavar]

I can't argue with that. I don't recall many of the characters in The Three Stigmata....but those ideas are so grand!

Ideas are grand which is why i rate it highly.

Still his ideas are usually made great by how he does his characters,dialouges,emotions.

Allthough its perfectly fine when it still as good as Thre Stigmata and not Maze of Death. In that book i was thinking when will PKD start driving in next gear. When will he hit you with something special and usually so far its something really bleak and depressing but still a good story.

 

[D_Davis]

I am not a fan of misanthropy, and Maze of Death is misanthropic to its very core. Which is really odd, because usually PKD offers up a glimpse of hope, even if many of his stories are bleak. It was written during an especially difficult time during his life, a life comprised of difficult times, and so I think that, perhaps, I just don't get on with PKD in that frame of mind.

 

[jojajihisc]

^It was bleak and I suppose misanthropic and that is why I liked it. They are less conventional, or at least less common themes that I see in the sci-fi I read. Dick's uncompromising dark side is what made him special.

 

[Connavar]

^It was bleak and I suppose misanthropic and that is why I liked it. They are less conventional, or at least less common themes that I see in the sci-fi I read. Dick's uncompromising dark side is what made him special.

Dick's uncompromising dark side well put ! Thats how i feel about most of his books or short short stories i have read. Some depress me that i try to think away the dark feeling even many minutes after i finish the books. Few authors get stuck in my head when i finish their books. In PKD really dark ones i feel like watching something sappy or disney like to get back to neutral.

There are several PKD stories that does similar ideas as Maze alot better. There must be many more in the stories i havent read. In wiki there is a page that link similar ideas in his books if you want something similar to Maze of death.

 

[D_Davis]

Dick's uncompromising dark side is what made him special.

I disagree. It was his ability to show light and hope through immense darkness that really made him special. He was rarely misanthropic - one gets the sense that PKD really loved humanity and life, and even though his vision of it all was somewhat tainted by darkness and confusion, he didn't hate on things or people. His mission was one of showing how people cope with extremely messed up situations.

 

[Connavar]

His mission was one of showing how people cope with extremely messed up situations.

Thats how you can sum every book and short story of his i have read.

Despite his everything characters go through there is hope in there somwhere.

Only Second Variety and Maze of Death was bleak and no hope for anything. I even read a short story where people overcome and came a way to live with the fact machines had taken over their society and decided to live with it.

I dont want seem like thinking PKD is only about darkness. He is just very good at using it in his stories.

 

[D_Davis]

I dont want seem like thinking PKD is only about darkness. He is just very good at using it in his stories.

He is good at using it, and he doesn't use it simply to manipulate his readers into feeling sympathy towards his characters.

 

[Connavar]

He is good at using it, and he doesn't use it simply to manipulate his readers into feeling sympathy towards his characters.

Yeah thats true but he is great at it that when you feel for a character you will really feel it. You go through different emotions and thanks to his to me almost always Pyrrhic victory endings you feel bad for the characters.

Maybe its me thats emotional or i have read a certain type of PKD stories.

Like my favorite fantasy author Gemmell you know PKD main characters wont have a happy ending. They might beat off machines,androids,alien invasion but they still lose in some way.

 

[jojajihisc]

I disagree. It was his ability to show light and hope through immense darkness that really made him special.

Like I said.

Dick's uncompromising dark side is what made him special.

But how is that "light and hope" message so powerful in his books? Is it not because of the darkness or dark side that we both speak of that makes that message all the stronger?

 

[Grimward]

Hmmm, I don't have a favorite (yet!), but A Scanner Darkly is on my must read list, and I probably should include Do Androids...there, too.

I suffered (and I mean suffered!) through his ENTIRE 6-Book Dungeon series, which soured me greatly on him for the past decade or so; I guess you can put me down for the Dungeon series as my least favorite. Don't know why I kept reading, but I did the same thing with Dennis McKiernan's Iron Tower.

Must clarify that while I grew to dislike Dungeon greatly, I am NOT attempting to cast it in the same light as McKiernan's theft (regardless of who asked him to do what, theft is theft!!!).

 

[D_Davis]

I suffered (and I mean suffered!) through his ENTIRE 6-Book Dungeon series, which soured me greatly on him for the past decade or so; I guess you can put me down for the Dungeon series as my least favorite. Don't know why I kept reading, but I did the same thing with Dennis McKiernan's Iron Tower.

What?

 

[Fried Egg]

I think that Grimward is referring in fact to this series? Certainly not writen by PKD.

 

[D_Davis]

Avoiding the wrong author for ten years!



You owe PKD an apology Grim.

 

[Grimward]

I certainly do, Double D. Thanks for catching my rather egregious oversight, Fried! Apparently, while I can distinguish between characters whose names begin with the same letter (see other current thread for reference), I seem to be incapable of doing so when it's authors sharing the letter.....

And, regarding the avoiding, it's Farmer that I've been avoiding (or, at least, intended to avoid).

 

[D_Davis]

I certainly do, Double D. Thanks for catching my rather egregious oversight, Fried! Apparently, while I can distinguish between characters whose names begin with the same letter (see other current thread for reference), I seem to be incapable of doing so when it's authors sharing the letter.....

And, regarding the avoiding, it's Farmer that I've been avoiding (or, at least, intended to avoid).

Heh, heh.



I've done similar things before...

 

[Grimward]

We should trade stories sometime.

In the meanwhile, if I start mistaking PKD for Patricia McKillip or Poul Anderson, you all have permission to put me away!

I do need to get to A Scanner Darkly and Do Androids..., though...