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sjstuart 's review for:
Philip K. Dick: Four novels of the 1960s
by Philip K. Dick
Bladerunner is one of my favorite movies of all time, but somehow I have never managed to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, or very much [a:Philip K Dick|7183829|Philip K Dick|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66-251a730d696018971ef4a443cdeaae05.jpg] at all other than a few (quite good) short stories. So I figured this handsomely bound volume of four novels in one would be a great way to get up to speed on an important author. I should have just stuck with Androids, which I quite enjoyed. The other three weren't really my thing, unfortunately.
The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history (never my favorite sub-genre) in which the US, which lost WW II, is ruled from afar by the Germans and Japanese. Despite some interesting twists (like a recursive, fictional book-within-the-book in which the US did win the war) and a few interesting characters, nothing really grabbed me in this story.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is more standard sci-fi at some level, with spaceships, colonies on Mars, and menacing aliens. But these are only background. The principal action revolves around the confused mental states of various people, some of them telepathic in various ways, and most of whom are addicted to a drug that causes them to have communal hallucinations. Very trippy and "far out" in a 60's kind of way.
My favorite among the four was definitely Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the novel that the movie Bladerunner was based on. Although I did enjoy this story, it's one of the few cases where the movie is better than the book. The film kept all the best parts of the book, and even stayed remarkably close to it in many by reproducing dialogue, character descriptions and scene details essentially exactly. Then it layered on the fabulously dark, detailed visual atmosphere that Bladerunner is famously known for. And best of all, it ditched several of the plot features that I disliked most -- again including psychic powers, metaphysical pseudo-religion, and communal hallucinations. These are apparently some of Dick's favorite themes, but I don't think they translate well now that the 60s are over.
Ubik was again a little heavy on the metaphysical and paranormal. A key feature of the plot, and indeed the entire imagined future economy, is the existence of people with various flavors of psi powers, and others with the ability to inhibit them. Additionally, communication can be maintained with individuals after their death via a a pseudo-scientific version of psychic mediums, using "protophasons". The underlying concept -- an existential thriller in which you're never sure what is the "real" universe -- has some promise. But again the topics haven't aged well in the nearly five decades since they were published.
I have enjoyed much of the short fiction of Dick's that I have read, but I don't think I'll be seeking out any more of his novels. Browsing his biography, I see that he struggled in later years with his own hallucinations and confusions over alternate realities. Although those episodes occurred years after these four novels were written, he was clearly obsessed with such topics much earlier.
The fiction itself is reasonably well constructed and passably written, but I had to read it through a very thick filter to see past all of the 60's-flavored metaphysics and obsession with psychedelic and paranormal phenomena. It's sort of like having a discussion of serious topics with someone whose opinion you think you probably respect, except that they have dramatically different political or religious opinions from yours, and can't help focusing their arguments through those lenses: it's usually just not worth the trouble.
The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history (never my favorite sub-genre) in which the US, which lost WW II, is ruled from afar by the Germans and Japanese. Despite some interesting twists (like a recursive, fictional book-within-the-book in which the US did win the war) and a few interesting characters, nothing really grabbed me in this story.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is more standard sci-fi at some level, with spaceships, colonies on Mars, and menacing aliens. But these are only background. The principal action revolves around the confused mental states of various people, some of them telepathic in various ways, and most of whom are addicted to a drug that causes them to have communal hallucinations. Very trippy and "far out" in a 60's kind of way.
My favorite among the four was definitely Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the novel that the movie Bladerunner was based on. Although I did enjoy this story, it's one of the few cases where the movie is better than the book. The film kept all the best parts of the book, and even stayed remarkably close to it in many by reproducing dialogue, character descriptions and scene details essentially exactly. Then it layered on the fabulously dark, detailed visual atmosphere that Bladerunner is famously known for. And best of all, it ditched several of the plot features that I disliked most -- again including psychic powers, metaphysical pseudo-religion, and communal hallucinations. These are apparently some of Dick's favorite themes, but I don't think they translate well now that the 60s are over.
Ubik was again a little heavy on the metaphysical and paranormal. A key feature of the plot, and indeed the entire imagined future economy, is the existence of people with various flavors of psi powers, and others with the ability to inhibit them. Additionally, communication can be maintained with individuals after their death via a a pseudo-scientific version of psychic mediums, using "protophasons". The underlying concept -- an existential thriller in which you're never sure what is the "real" universe -- has some promise. But again the topics haven't aged well in the nearly five decades since they were published.
I have enjoyed much of the short fiction of Dick's that I have read, but I don't think I'll be seeking out any more of his novels. Browsing his biography, I see that he struggled in later years with his own hallucinations and confusions over alternate realities. Although those episodes occurred years after these four novels were written, he was clearly obsessed with such topics much earlier.
The fiction itself is reasonably well constructed and passably written, but I had to read it through a very thick filter to see past all of the 60's-flavored metaphysics and obsession with psychedelic and paranormal phenomena. It's sort of like having a discussion of serious topics with someone whose opinion you think you probably respect, except that they have dramatically different political or religious opinions from yours, and can't help focusing their arguments through those lenses: it's usually just not worth the trouble.