What did I just read?

galactic pot-healer by philip k. dick

nice genre trash

What are your favourite PKD works, /lit/?

>>8368218
Valis, because I've eaten too many psychedelics

>>8367904
did you think it was going to be about weed too?

File: 1464492081865.jpg (7KB, 379x356px) Image search: [Google]

7KB, 379x356px

>>8367937
>pkd
>genre trash

>>8368285
>I've never laid an eye on 95% of pkd's output
>I will still post about pkd

>>8368218
I enjoyed Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. A later novel, It doesn't get mentioned as much as Man In the High Castle, or Do Androids Dream. It has the standard PKD tropes (strong assertion changes perceptions, changing reality) but it seems to be mainly about people dealing with loss. It is also quite entertaining with the way the narrator keeps meeting neurotic women.

I have Maze Of Death on my to-read pile.

>>8367937
le genre novels are inherently bad meme
>who is Chandler

File: FlowMyTearsThePolicemanSaid.jpg (14KB, 231x350px) Image search: [Google]

14KB, 231x350px

>>8369455
correction, i mean main character, not narrator

>>8369455
Maze of Death is fun, a whodunnit with strong religious and spiritual undertones. Ending twist is shite though

>>8369466
A genrepleb.

>>8369478
But even people like Pynchon use elements of genre in their fiction, look at Inherent Vice for example

>>8368218
The exegesis is a fucking rollercoaster.

Do you think Philip K. Dick ever reflected upon his dick?

File: pkd.jpg (33KB, 256x256px) Image search: [Google]

33KB, 256x256px

>>8369471
His later preoccupation with what seems to be Gnostic Christianity is fascinating. Either he was mentally ill, or a genuine Christian mystic in the tradition of Hildegard and Julian of Norwich.

>>8369556
He wasn't a stable person, but I think it's been too easy for people to dismiss him as 'crazy', he was obviously capable of rationalizing his thoughts.

>>8369563
In one interview he claimed to have a previous life as a monk during Roman times, and that he had been fighting them for hundreds of years, and that the Roman empire had now taken the form of the U.S. government. This was shortly before he died, the interview was based around the Blade Runner film

>Throughout February and March 1974, Dick experienced a series of hallucinations, which he referred to as "2-3-74", shorthand for February–March 1974. Aside from the "pink beam", Dick described the initial hallucinations as geometric patterns, and, occasionally, brief pictures of Jesus and ancient Rome. As the hallucinations increased in length and frequency, Dick claimed he began to live two parallel lives, one as himself, "Philip K. Dick", and one as "Thomas", a Christian persecuted by Romans in the first century AD. He referred to the "transcendentally rational mind" as "Zebra", "God" and "VALIS". Dick wrote about the experiences, first in the semi-autobiographical novel Radio Free Albemuth and then in VALIS, The Divine Invasion and the unfinished The Owl in Daylight (the VALIS trilogy).

The absolute madman

>>8369580
I'm actually reading VALIS and he explains this concept through the Black Iron Prison. The Romans being 'The Empire never dies' or whatever it was. Worth a read. It's all heavy Gnosticism.

>>8368295
I think you meant to reply to this post >>8367937

An anon posted a while back about how he had an .epup with all of PKD's short stories, 117 or somewhere or around there, but the asshole never shared it, and I can't find it anywhere.

Anyone happen to know about it or have it?

>>8367904
That one I haven't read

>>8368218
Dr. Bloodmoney
A Scanner Darkly
Exegesis

>>8369485
Using elements of a thing isn't the same as doing it.

Oh man, I love Dick!!

File: ubik_dick.jpg (53KB, 333x500px) Image search: [Google]

53KB, 333x500px

>>8368218
Ubik. I think that throughout his life he tried to write one book which would best express his thoughts and paradoxically it's Ubik not Valis.

>>8369592
No, the majority of PKD's books is genre trash. PKD fans who actually have read beyond his later and most popular titles acknowledge this.

>>8370587
I feel like Ubik didn't have too much going on compared to the rest of his work. Certainly not less but nothing really struck me about it.

I suppose that what made Ubik seem unique to me was that rather than one bizarre revelation cracking the whole thing open it was just a never-ending procession of the things right up until the last page. Was that Dick's life? Some new world-shattering revelation every hour which might not even matter because the world as he knows it might not even be real?

That sounds pretty shitty. I'm never touching LSD.

>>8371075
>I'm never touching LSD.

pleb

>>8367937
You are now aware that if you are living in any kind of story it is a science fiction story. You're entire life is genre trash, kill yourself.

>>8370749
I've read ubik, man in the high castle, and a scanner darkly and none of them are genre fiction

>>8371358

That's fine but it doesn't refute what anon said. PKD wrote some amazing stuff but he also wrote a lot of potboilers to make money. Vulcan's Hammer, for example.

>>8367904
DUDE
WEED
LMAO

File: iu[1].1&f=1.jpg (11KB, 300x281px) Image search: [Google]

11KB, 300x281px

Yo nigga black haired girls, space Gnosticism all these here drugs, what's real? idk, do u? John Dowland can fuck my wife any time. Too much bureaucracy in these whack ass totalitarian systems.

>>8367904
Anyone read Eye in the Sky?

I just finished that one. Pretty good PKD that is not often discussed. Liked the characters moved from one world to the next.

>>8372679
>>8370749
>>8368295

So you've read a lot of his stuff then? Which are the essential ones in your view? VALIS, High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, what else?

>>8367904
I love Dick

I liked this one a lot. Lots of fun and neat imagery.

>>8373370
His main works are the ones most talked about, there isn't really any hidden gem that has been ignored among the rest.

That isn't to say there is nothing to consider in his potboiler stuff at all, though; someone with an interest in him as a writer will see his main ideas and themes poking up in early form through his sloppy short stories (rarely recommended since they develop these themes too little to be worthwhile on their own yet enough to make his better works repetitive),
and even as firmly genre a novel as OP's book begins with a funny and somewhat /lit/-related intro (the language game; the common readers out there would likely think of that whole office-life sequence as imitation-kafkaesque).

>>8373782
Did you forgot a pic or are you talking about Pot-Healer?

>>8367904
meditation about the nature of God

>>8367904
This has got to be one of the worst titles for a book ever. What was he thinking?

>>8373028
no wonder Terence McKenna was obsessed with him—they look exactly the same

>>8374648
It made me read it...