The Second Apocalypse
Miscellaneous Chatter => Literature => Topic started by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 09:52:42 pm
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Thanks Soterion for bringing it to mind :D.
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Thanks for making the thread!
My favorites are VALIS, A Scanner Darkly (if you've only seen the film, read the novel; it's fantastic), Ubik, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? During my time completing my Master's at the University of Chicago, I was fortunate to take a class entirely on Philip K. Dick, taught by Bill Brown. We read a bunch of short stories and several novels. I still have a ton to read by Dick, but I own all the American Library collections of his material and an anthology of his short stories.
For starters, I'll just say that Ubik is one of the strangest and best works of speculative fiction I've ever read. If you want to read a weird but entirely engaging and mind-bending novel, check out that one. The way Dick treats objects and begins to warp their phenomenology is spectacular, and it really forces its readers to reevaluate the way they relate to the world, and how they constitute themselves within it.
I'd have to say that VALIS is my number one though. That book is just fantastic.
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Scanner Darkly was a great adaption for the feel of the thing, that and Blade Runner are the only two adaptions worthy of the association in my mind.
Fucking love Ubik. Spray on sanity.
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Lol, the number of movies inspired by Phillip K. Dick... he's like the Nicholas Sparks of SF.
I feel like all PKD is classic so I'll list some favorite later. However, out of curiosity, has anyone picked up Exegesis?
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Michael Gondry is doing a film of Ubik.
I suggest reading one of the biogs on Phil, you read about LSD first timers in his drugs hovel falling out of his closet having cut their own arms then you remember the woman found in the closet in Ubik and you just go - oh.
It's disturbing to read how the details of his life, marriages, divorces, business, friends etc. are all replicated in his novels. He was a great writer but a real paranoid asshole due to his almost life long narcosis. He certainly wasn't the kind of guy you'd want dating your daughter.
He also ended his life predicting the second coming of Christ, who was called Tagore and born in Malaysia and going to teach us how to save the biosphere. I'm not making this up. He genuinely backed this theory, saying it had came to him in a vision, and then wrote letters to zines under a different name calling himself crazy.
The moment he really lost it was during the writing of Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. You can almost feel the lsd percolate through your synapses when you read that book. He later denounced it as evil and refused to reread it, and I can see why.
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The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is so strange. I've often been fascinated by Dick's appropriation of religio-spiritual material. Even if the drugs led him to reify (in some sense) an alternative reality that subsists beyond the one we see, his speculative exploration of such a possibility opened up so many opportunities for his work. His writings, fictional and non-, on memory are as worthy as anything Marcel Proust wrote, in my opinion.
Lol, the number of movies inspired by Phillip K. Dick... he's like the Nicholas Sparks of SF.
I feel like all PKD is classic so I'll list some favorite later. However, out of curiosity, has anyone picked up Exegesis?
Not the entire thing, but I have a copy of his Selected Writings, which features portions of Exegesis. It has some really incredible stuff.
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There are also plenty of writings considering his turns for degenerative or dysfunctional brain damage. Schizophrenia is a big hit, allegedly.
Welcome to the Second Apocalypse, jamesAO1. I wish we could strike an analogous summoning chord within everyone watching ;).
Regardless of why, PKD started believing the worlds he was seeing and describing were real and that he was communicating transcendent knowledge to the world. As far as I know, he thought by writing those letters decrying himself he could manage criticisms by directing their themes but ultimately, people weren't paying the kind of attention he thought they were. Or they got to him...
There are thin lines between Madness and Genius, neh ;)?
Thanks, Soterion. Yeah, I'm very interested in grabbing it but its a big purchase - though, I think I just convinced myself to do so.
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An interesting thread.
Just recently, when I was lying in ill in my bed, I have heard a few audio stories on youtube and one story, "The Colony" was quite good. Ok, it wasn't THAT good, but, the other stories were horrible, boring trash ;)
I didn't knew Philip K. Dick before, but it seems, he has written a few interesting things.
Oh, and I didn't knew, that the movie Blade Runner was based on one of his stories.
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Thanks for the kind welcome Madness.
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So a number of years ago I was apart of the Evolver Network and attended some of their first Evolver Intensives. Some of the people involved in this have since changed tact, it seems, and are working to develop a new nexus called SynchCast (http://www.synchcast.net/) and I'm attending one of their online workshop collaborations with Penn State called: Radio Free VALIS (http://www.synchcast.net/#!radio-free-valis/c1xa7) hosted by Dr. Richard Doyle, who is heavily involved with transcribing the Exegesis.
It's free to partake (they operate off a 'gift economy' being long-time collaborators and good friends of Charles Eisenstein) and since I know there are a number of PKD fans here I thought I would extend the invitation.
The Introductory Session kicked off to a fantastic start (I don't know what attendee numbers were to the live Introductory Session but there were a number of people participating by cam, mic, and chat). Next session is January 9th/14 and apparently we're discussing Ubik. And at some point, we're able to participate in viewing/transcribing the digitized entirety of PKD's 9000+ notes, some of which were distilled into The Exegesis (non-disclosure agreements forthcoming).
Cheers.
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So I am going to read Valis, The divine invasion and The transmigration of Timothy Archer pretty soon.
I will be back.
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Anyone here read The Exegesis?
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Screw Exegesis - Get involved with Zebrapedia (http://zebrapedia.psu.edu/#!/).
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Interesting.
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I liked this quote: "What kind of minds would create a Chinese finger-trap for themselves?" That would be the blind brain right? :)
Great book by the way(VALIS that is).
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Lol - well, I don't think greater brain has a mind, I think it generates BB as mind. But it's relative.
Dropping this here in the hopes that sci reads it, if he hasn't already: Erik Davis on VALIS, P.K.D. and High Weirdness (http://realitysandwich.com/218370/erik-davis-on-valis-p-k-d-and-high-weirdness/)
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http://radiofreealbemuth.com/
I havent read this book, but the movie might be good.
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So I have read a couple of Dick books lately, including "VALIS", "Divine Invasion" and "UBIK". I also have "The man in the high castle" ,"The transmigration of Timothy Archer", and two collections of short stories.
Just wondering if there are other novels which are as good as these?
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A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale... Hmm...
There are probably others.