P.K. Dick Ubik

[Craig Herbertson]

I know some people think that SF is some kind of misbegotten monster best buried in the cellar but if you want chilling horror and a sense of dread you really ought to read this classic.

The basic premise is that in a future world there are precognitive humans with various talents. They threaten companies with these talents and other humans are hired defend the companies by using a talent is to nullify their talent. (If they can see a short distance into the future your nullifer blocks their ability to do so)

One group sent to Mars to counter a large group of precogs is attacked. The results are utterly horrific.

And I have to say, tired and weary after a gig I wouldn't buy the book after writing that incomprehensible drivel but just trust me its an amazing book.

[Craig Herbertson]

P. K Dick (not thingy) Now how did that happen?

[Craig Herbertson]

Stop that you bad censor its D"CK really! Its his bloody name

[Calenture]

I've read a few of his books, Craig. A Maze of Death and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch come to mind - oh, and The World Jones Made. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was a ghastly title for Bladerunner's written source. A while back I tried reading Dr Futurity, but that was a disappointment - not much of the brain-twisting subjective reallity stuff that typified the others.

Cronenberg's eXistenZ seemed based on Dick's work, though I can't find any reference to it at www.philipkdick.com/...

Total Recall was quite successful - from a short story, I think - We Can Remember it For You Wholesale.

I quite liked Minority Report.

Haven't read Ubik... yet.

[Craig Herbertson]

Well Rog,

for the first time I find myself in disagreement with you. I loved the title Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

I've read almost all that Dick wrote. He had to write a lot to pay the bills so sometimes got a bit scrappy. Ubik is absolutely claustrophobic though and has some of the most scary scenes imaginable - I don't often get the shivers up the spine but a couple of times Ubik got me. Its the absurd mix of comedy and horror. The protagonists being from the future wear ridiculously mixed clothes. Ski suits and Bermuda shorts with a sari etc. Dressed like idiots but behaving in a very human way they end up being hunted down by a terrible evil. Told with an absolutely dry humour. Its a must,

Craig

[junkmonkey]

Oct 24, 2007 22:20:29 GMT Calenture said:

Cronenberg's eXistenZ seemed based on Dick's work, though I can't find any reference to it at www.philipkdick.com/...

It's not based on any of his books but it's clearly influenced. There is one explicit reference to PKD's work in the film. Take-away food containers the fugitives eat from are from an establishment called Perky Pat's. Perky Pat Dolls were a central theme in PKD's novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

[Knygathin]

When I have finished Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, I plan to read Ubik. I hope it will be satisfying.

But the older I get, the less satisfied I find myself with reading. It is the same old things repeated over and over, the same old stories, the same old places and rooms, only twisting the words slightly different. It's the same human perspectives, the same issues, the same conflicts. I want to read remarkable things! But even fantasy authors are, after all, humans, and can only build creations from the stuff of their lifelong collected sensory impressions, which is limited to the same things everyone else sees. There is nothing really new in any books. Or is there? Maybe I missed them.

I think I best appreciate authors who paint with words; rich colors, forms, dynamic compositions of visual contrasts. Vivid expressions. Bizarre formations. Authors with an aesthetic sense. Authors like Jack Vance and Clark Ashton Smith. To receive an aesthetic pleasure while reading is probably the most I can ask for. Like food, visual aesthetics is something I always hunger for. Some of the best authors, like Lovecraft, are also able to compose intellectual ideas into subtly and sometimes colossal impressions of weird constellations that is akin to aesthetics.

I often think of the following line from Clark Ashton Smith's prose poem "To the Daemon":

"Tell me many tales, O benign maleficent daemon, but tell me none that I have ever heard or have even dreamt of otherwise than obscurely or infrequently. Nay, tell me not of anything that lies between the bourns of time or the limits of space: for I am a little weary of all recorded years and charted lands; ..."

[andydecker]

You mirror my thoughts. I can admire the craft of a novel, but it has become hard to surprise me. I want something new, the slick, writer's workshop plotted thrillers of today bore me. I like your description of writers who paint with words. It is one of the reasons why CAS is still entertaining. Not for the plots in the first place, but for the sheer inventiveness.

Of course this is also depending on mood. This week for instance I bought one of the Warhammer Horror novellas. The Colonel's Monograph by Graham McNeill. I like McNeill as a writer, have read a few of his Warhammer and the first of his Lovecraft trilogy. I like Warhammer since I translated some of the early Warhammer Fantasy books by C.L.Werner.

Of course this novella is a typical product of the assembly line, and I didn't expect something new. Just a good hamburger. And while the basic idea is surely nothing new - an eldery and widowed bibliothecary has to catalogue the book collection of a famous and dead female colonel in her castle like home and is confronted with horrific things - it is fun and a nice diversion 

from the usual overblown war stories.

I have not read much Dick in my youth. But Ubik is one which left an impression. I thought that the end truly delivered.

[Knygathin]

I have only read one Dick book before, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It was quite good. Especially the early part, that man Palmer Eldritch was weirdly fascinating. But disappointing towards the end; I had hoped to see more weirdness about Palmer, letting me stumble deep down the rabbit hole, and perhaps a visit to the distant star and planet where he lived for ten years and became disturbingly altered. Nothing was really said about that planet, but the author still convinced me, making it seem like a remote concealed legend, really existing somewhere out there.
The conversations feel very realistic, and you can tell that Philip K. Dick was a chatty guy.

I also later plan to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, plus a few more.

Warhammer Horror, is that some board game or role-playing game related spin-off? I never read generic stuff like that. I have always been very careful in selecting particular authors. Well, I did read a Star Wars serial novel in my teens, but that one was after all by Alan Dean Foster.

Well anyway, sometimes a talented author can outmaneuver my dissatisfaction, and dribble circles past and around my ennui. But it is rare, and usually only happens at short moments through a book. But then, as you say, the right mood is important too, reading-experience is really a cooperation between the author and the reader. To fully appreciate something worthwhile, demands a certain mental effort and dedication. It's not as easy as watching a movie.

[andydecker]

Apr 4, 2020 20:38:35 GMT Knygathin said:

Warhammer Horror, is that some board game or role-playing game related spin-off? I never read generic stuff like that. I have always been very careful in selecting particular authors. Well, I did read a Star Wars series novel in my teens, but that one was after all by Alan Dean Foster.

Warhammer 40 K started as a tabletop game, is now a franchise with international shops from Games Workshop. It is on the stock echange.

The concept is rather complicated and well documented. Basically it is never-ending war in the far future, OTT grim&gritty and ultra-violent, Warhammer Fantasy was some parts of the setting only in a typical fantasy setting with dwarfs and elves and orcs. This so-called Old World was destroyed a few years ago to make room for something new, i.e. new tabletops and figurines to sell.

At first there were a few novelisations, from writers like Kim Newman or SF writer Ian Watson, now there are more then a hundred novels and I guess hundreds of short-stories in all forms, print, ebooks, audio-books.

In the never-ending battle to expand the lines Warhammer Horror is a new imprint of novels and ebook only novellas which put the horror elements of the concept more into the foreground, written by the current writer's stable.

As ridiculous the concepts are, if you like a mixture of Gothic and Military SF, this in small doses can be entertaining. There are both series and stand-alone novels. Personally I prefer the fantasy or at least the old fantasy setting. The Gotrek&Felix novels by William King are well done, the old ones by Kim Newman like Drachenfels or The Vampire Genevieve are still entertaining.

[Dr Strange]

I've read Do Androids Dream..., A Scanner Darkly, and Man In The High Castle and would recommend them all. I'd also recommend Lawrence Sutin's 2005 biography of PKD, Divine Invasions.

[Knygathin]

There are some wonderful audio-books available of Dick's novels. Especially Valis (narrated by James de Votel) www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qSdDAY5W60, and A Scanner Darkly (narrated by Gary Telles, very similar to the other narrator. But unfortunately seems to have been removed from Youtube.)

[Knygathin]

Thanks andydecker for the explanation. I remember seeing Warhammer in the 1980s, and then it grew, and it grew, and grew. DOMINATING the United Kingdom, and spreading. I was not attracted to the aesthetics of that army tabletop game, with its fat miniatures (in fact, I don't think it had any aesthetics at all. It was all about Size and Power.). But with all respect, I have not played it, only watched it from a stance. I preferred the early beginnings of D&D and Ral Partha figures and Judges Guild.

It sounds like a fulltime hobby! If I get rid of everything else I have, wipe off my tables, clean out my bookshelves, throw all my Lovecraft books in the garbage bin, I might start a new life and take a dedicated interest in Warhammer instead.

[andydecker]

Apr 5, 2020 9:40:25 GMT Knygathin said:

It sounds like a fulltime hobby! If I get rid of everything else I have, wipe off my tables, clean out my bookshelves, throw all my Lovecraft books in the garbage bin, I might start a new life and take a dedicated interest in Warhammer instead.

Now that is really a horrific idea. To replace Lovecraft with Warhammer. *Shudder.

[Knygathin]

Struggling with the first page of Ubik, trying to visualize what I am reading, but find it incomprehensible. Words that don't mean a thing to me. Very different writing style from Bradbury. Not sure I am going to be able to handle this book.