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"Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful." http://www.radiofreealbemuth.com/ After spending approximately Forever (3 years) in post-production Hell, and a successful Kickstarter, the latest film adaptation of a PKD novel is finally appearing in US theaters, with a DVD release to follow immediately after. I've heard mixed but mostly positive reviews; yes, it's low budget, but it's also as close to the source material as A Scanner Darkly was, and PKD's daughter is very, very happy with how it turned out. That's a good enough endorsement for me. This is also the general PKD thread. I'll be boring and say my favorite of his is Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, but I also have to give props to usually underrated titles like Dr. Bloodmoney, The Game-Players of Titan, and Clans of the Alphane Moon. Whatever you're interested in (as long as it's weird) there is bound to be a PKD novel that's up your alley. I wouldn't say there is any definitive one place to start with his work; opinions on his best and worst novels are extremely varied. Much of his early work was written in a state of amphetamine psychosis while he was living on dog food (literally), and it shows. Much of his later work was written after converting to Gnosticism because a pink laser beam from a space-God enlightened him and told him his son had a potentially fatal hernia (which turned out to be actually true and saved his son's life). More about this in his famous speech: http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm 
precision fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 18:23
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quote:[Stanislaw] Lem singled out only one American SF writer for praise, Philip K. Dick—see the 1986 English-language anthology of his critical essays, Microworlds. Dick, however, perhaps due to his mental illness, believed that Stanisław Lem was a false name used by a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party to gain control over public opinion, and wrote a letter to the FBI to that effect.[19] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem
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Jun 12, 2014 19:47
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The art direction on the trailer for that movie is shockingly bad and i'm pretty sure is going to render the film unwatchable for me. it makes it look so cheap, and it's not a budget thing - it's a making bad decisions thing. e: holy poo poo, the budget was 3.5million. haha. I was expecting 50 grand or something based on the post production. cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Jun 13, 2014 |
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Jun 13, 2014 20:37
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I freakin' love PKD. My latest username in a lot of games and places is VALIS. It is a beautiful word. My favourite PKD stories are definitely The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, VALIS, Man in the High Castle, The Divine Invasion, and his numerous short stories, especially Rautavaara's Case (http://worldtracker.org/media/libra...%27s%20Case.pdf) <-- you can read the whole thing here, it is hilarious. I recently read a great short story of his called The Father Thing, which is like a Stephen King horror story. It's about a kid who sees his dad in an argument with a complete duplicate of himself, and then later his real dad is gone and the duplicate is there in his place and the mom doesn't notice a thing. The kid enlists the help of two other neighbourhood kids and they hunt down the alien creature responsible. Also, I don't think I've ever seen anyone else mention Vulcan's Hammer. It is essentially the plot for Terminator without the time travel; a massive worldwide AI goes out of control and starts wiping out humanity with tactical nukes being fired by drones. The resistance has to fight back against all odds before the AI can evolve itself to the point of invincibility. The heart of the AI spits out wave after wave of drones as the resistance fighters crash-land their troops and use awesome automated borers to dig into the heart of the cement AI fortress. The main dude manages to lob a nuclear grenade into the heart of the mainframe at the last second, blowing himself apart in the process, but his buddies save him with a portable heart-lung machine which I think was awesome because I have had a double-lung transplant and that technology is brand new like THIS year. Here's a snap shot of my collection, I *love* the Pocket Philip K Dick I put on top, it totally owns. 
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Jun 14, 2014 21:39
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Also, holy poo poo, Alanis Morissette is in that movie.
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Jun 14, 2014 21:44
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One of my favorite short story collections of his is I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, which has "Rautavaara's Case" and some excellent atypical stories of his, like "What'll We Do With Ragland Park?", "Strange Memories of Death", and "The Exit Door Leads In".
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Jun 15, 2014 00:11
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I've got to second (or third) the VALIS Trilogy. VALIS is arguably the most insane detective story ever written (how can you not love a protagonist named Horselover Fat?), and PKD's prose has a wonderfully wry sensibility throughout. It's interesting how he was completely aware that he had lost his mind by that point, but was still determined to explore it for its own sake through prose. I can't remember much of The Divine Invasion, but it was really enjoyable. Also, PKD pulls off writing a (three-dimensional) female protagonist in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. If I remember correctly, the title character (and his "quest") was based off of someone he knew.
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Jun 30, 2014 20:55
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All his female characters are based off women he knew, it's just that the vast majority of them are his ex-wife or some girl he used to score drugs from that broke his heart. Has anyone actually seen Radio Free Albemuth? It's not playing anywhere within 6 hours of me.
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Jun 30, 2014 21:42
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precision posted:All his female characters are based off women he knew, it's just that the vast majority of them are his ex-wife or some girl he used to score drugs from that broke his heart. Interesting, I always had the thought that a lot of them were a sort of... idealized imagining of what his twin sister would have been like, in a way. There's obviously something very primal about the twin he lost that seems to run through a lot of his writing. I really need to go back and read some of those earlier novels he wrote that I haven't touched since I first ran through most of his stuff 10 years ago, or so.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:36
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gently caress off to CD with your awful film adaptations. Has anyone rigged up a chart of PKD books like that Louis Wain dissolving cat montage showing the effect of menta illness and rampant drug abuse on an author?
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Jul 12, 2014 14:06
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I just finished The Man In The High Castle last night. Didn't really care for it. The dialogue was awkward, and he didn't do a good job of making it easy to remember all the secret identities.
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Jul 13, 2014 18:34
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Oh good god is that a terrible trailer. The acting seems high-school level. Like, it reminds me of those new Ayn Rand movies in badness.
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Jul 13, 2014 20:06
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CountFosco posted:Oh good god is that a terrible trailer. The acting seems high-school level. Like, it reminds me of those new Ayn Rand movies in badness. There were enough good reviews that I paid for the "digital rental" and... uh... yikes. Some of the movie is quite watchable (and strangely better than the scenes they chose for the trailer). The guy who plays Nicholas has a bizarrely smug look on his face all the time and it's just weird. The guy who plays Phil does pretty well though. But every now and then there will be just a completely terrible scene. Alanis Morrisette is introduced by the film literally just coming to a complete halt while she sings a song (a really, astoundingly terrible song performed terribly) and the main characters literally sit on a couch in a dream and listen to her and say things like "there's something subversive about her music". It's faithful to the book, but in a way that skips large chunks; the entire first half of the novel takes maybe 20 minutes of screen time, if even that. I think there's one shot of Nick at the record store and then minutes later he's rich in LA already. And sometimes the way they adapted everything to modern technology works. I got a chuckle out of the CD thing in the beginning. Yet they left in things that read fine but sound stupid onscreen, such as the FAP girl referring to weed as "grass" constantly in this really stilted way. Her and the woman that play Rachel are just awful. I don't know if Dick's daughter and all the investors just have Stockholm Syndrome or wanted to salvage a disaster but it seriously sometimes is like watching The Room: Sci Fi Edition. What a story!
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Aug 9, 2014 19:04
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