Gaddabout

I've read exactly one Dick book: The Man in the High Castle. I found the level of detail so disturbing that I feared Dick had Nazi/Imperialist fantasies. It was also just a generally disturbing fantasy.

I still thought he was an interesting writer if not a classic wordsmith. I'm going to give him another shot by reading The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep; and Ubik. I'm told it's a decent array of his overall work.

I was thinking about getting VALIS but ... I'm not sure I'm ready for a work from the brain of an obviously delusional man. At least at that stage of his life.

Any other thoughts?

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the desert gadabout

Heucrazy

I have not read any of these. But now I'm going to.

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"I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy".

Gaddabout

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is the novel on which Blade Runner was based on. Some other texts converted to film include Total Recall (based on We Can Remember It For You Wholesale), Minority Report and Paycheck. I liked Total Recall for reasons I can't explain, but I think there's a hit-and-miss quality to these films that reveal how you have to perform exegesis on the text to find the good stuff in Dick's books. If you focus on the plot and not the subtext, you'll end up with a cornball flat-liner (like Paycheck).

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jefftheshark

I read "Ubik" when I was in college, but I didn't particularly care for it. I found it to be full of interesting concepts that lacked any kind of character development. The protagonists were standard stock characters from any one of several Dick books and while the ideas were imaginative, the book itself was ultimately disappointing.

I imagine, however, that I am in the minority on this one.

It's funny though, like many of Dick's novels, many of the ideas from this novel have been borrowed over time in many different movies and episodes of TV shows like Star Trek. But there is a reason why the books do not translate well into movies themselves, and that is because the characters are not very compelling.

JMHO

JTS

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SuperSpck

Like Jeff said, big time influence on creators.

For that very reason I gave him a shot.

Didn't really care for his prose.

At least I tried.

Louis

Divine Invasion is a must read. Great book. One of my all time faves.