philip k dick - fractured manna

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is 'a scanner darkly' the first book to explore the dimensions between dick's prodigious drugs intake and his eventual schizophenia. i am thinking with regards to the post script wherein he announced all of his dead friends and writes a small passage about how they were children in the garden of eden who were eventually driven out or driven mad or some such nonsense.

what do you think?

is it the first book to reasonably explore schizophrenic and paranoiac traits occuring during dick's writing career or is there an earlier book?

― griffin doom, Sunday, 21 December 2003 22:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Also, since I've somehow avoided Dick for the most part (started Valis and lost it), can we turn this into an S/D? What's best to start with?

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 22 December 2003 04:31 (twenty-one years ago)

I think there are threads of schizophrenia and paranoia in all of Dick's work. Even as early as "Eye in the Sky", which is from 1955 (I think), the main characters inner mental outlook forms the world in which they find themselves. This kind of theme is also used in "A Maze of Death". "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich" is about this human who returns from an alien system that has a drug not unlike LSD that allows people to live out their memories.

There are also strange allusions to his marital problems all over his novels; especially "Clans of the Alphane Moon", "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep" & "A Maze of Death". Pretty much every novels central character is either in a troubled marriage, a broken marriage or has some strange relationship with their ex-wife.

Like many, I think Dick's drug use and it's problems got much more serious in the 60s/70s, but I think he was living a hard life much before that time, which may or may not have included some serious chemical influences. Dick was in a pretty wild area in a pretty wild time (SF/Berkeley) in the 50s/60s.

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" may be as good a place to start as anything, as you can usually find a cheapy, used paperback of it more often than any of Dick's other novels. It is a good one.

"The Man in the High Castle" is another one of his best and may be a good place to check out Dick's writing as doesn't get into the confusing mental states of many of his other novels. It is als

If you want to dive into the weird, go for "The Three Stigmata...", "The Divine Invasion", "A Scanner Darkly", or "Flow My Tears the Policemen Said". Check out "The Divine Invasion" before "Valis" or "Radio Free Albemuth".

― earlnash, Monday, 22 December 2003 07:14 (twenty-one years ago)

arent valis, a scanner darkly and three stigmata of palmer eldritch meant to be read as a trilogy?

― griffin doome, Monday, 22 December 2003 09:21 (twenty-one years ago)

no, but valis, the divine invasion and the transmigration of timothy archer are.

Time Out of Joint has some mental breakdown stuff in it and that was published in 1959.

― fcussen (Burger), Monday, 22 December 2003 10:04 (twenty-one years ago)

cheers on that - someone told me that there was a trilogy happening with dick but forgot what three books made the trilogy.

valis is bizarre. i read it many years ago but it presents itself as some sort paranoid schizophrenic philosophy and from what i remember it gave insight into that particular world. the world was hard to comprehend after reading valis. which was ace, by the way.

― griffin doome, Monday, 22 December 2003 10:16 (twenty-one years ago)

jordan- valis can be 'difficult' for a first PKD novel. this is from the phase when he was preoccupied with theological issues.

start with 'a scanner darkly' or 'maze of death'.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 22 December 2003 10:29 (twenty-one years ago)

start with 'a scanner darkly' or short stories - skip 'maze of death'!!!

― griffin doome, Monday, 22 December 2003 10:30 (twenty-one years ago)

read Valis at the start of the year myself and it nearly put me off the guy forever. Plan on re-reading it now that I have read more of his stuff as well as started working on a philosophy degree.

― fcussen (Burger), Monday, 22 December 2003 10:33 (twenty-one years ago)

and also coz a friend gave me a lecture on Wagner.

― fcussen (Burger), Monday, 22 December 2003 10:36 (twenty-one years ago)

i admit valis is a hard book to read. but once you are in the flow of the dick mindset its o.k.

re: maze of death - dick was v. prolific and some of the books are sheer garbage!! so beware!

― griffin doome, Monday, 22 December 2003 10:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Radio Free Albemuth was written and rejected by the publisher, so Dick then when back and wrote Valis, which is different but the same themes show up again.

The underlying theme of almost all of his novels boils down to shit ain't what it appears to be, whether the state of mind is caused by some intelligent alien life form (or god), drugs, a situation or combination thereof.

PK Dick wrote so much, mostly because he really needed the cash, many themes, settings and concepts appear over and over again.

It is truly sad that PK Dick died broke, when movies have made millions from his short stories and novels after he was gone, a situation not unlike one of his characters.

― earlnash, Monday, 22 December 2003 11:27 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/pkdick1.html

an interesting dick link. did anybody read the biography of dick? it was published ten years or so ago? worth picking up?

― griffin doome, Monday, 22 December 2003 11:57 (twenty-one years ago)

'A maze of death' is really good read (not among his very best). I have read some bad ones where you think he is on autopilot but this is not one of them.

'radio free albermuth' was rejected by its publisher?! quite amazing as this is one of his greatest.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 22 December 2003 13:15 (twenty-one years ago)

i'd second 'man in the high castle', 'dr. bloodmoney' is a good place to start if you like kurt vonnegut & 'now wait for last year' is good if you want to start at the crazier end of things

― zappi (joni), Monday, 22 December 2003 13:23 (twenty-one years ago)

they interviewed his daughter on the radio this weekend and she said that do androids dream of electric sheep was written in long sleepless amphetamine-fueled stretches and when he did go to bed he would only talk in character.

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 22 December 2003 14:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Fascinating. Thanks for all the recs, I think I'll probably start with A Scanner Darkly.

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 22 December 2003 15:25 (twenty-one years ago)

The Dick bio (Divine Invasions by Lawrence Sutin) is excellent, he puts a lot of the writing into the context of Dick's life. You can see how the books were basically set in places he was living, even if they were set on Mars or whatever he was really talking about California (as seen through the eyes of a paranoid amphetamine abusing intellectual, i.e. him). The background to Valis is incredible - he actually had a series of visions beamed into his brain in 1974, during which he came to the realisation that the present day is co-existing in time with ancient Rome, all of which made its way into Valis. This was probably due to frontal lobe epilepsy to be honest but you've gotta say it happened to the person that would come out of it with the best conclusions. Is the bio still in print? Sutin edited a collection of his proto-religious ramblings too (Excerpts From The Exigesis?) but I've never been able to face it.

The short story collections are a bit hit and miss but there's some of his best writing hidden away in there, especially some of the later stories. Also the non SF books are worth seeking out (The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, In Milton Lumky Territory and a few more).

I'd say maybe Ubik is a good place to start with, or A Scanner Darkly if you're not put off by paranoid dystopian nightmares. Books to avoid include Vulcan's Hammer, A Crack In Space and Solar Lottery, which are all pretty generic space opera type stuff.

― udu wudu (udu wudu), Tuesday, 23 December 2003 02:02 (twenty-one years ago)

two years pass...

Dick's stuff is all over the place, yeah - but the ones made into movies of course make good stories (Blade Runner, Total Recall is one of my favorites, Minority Report, and now A Scanner Darkly).

I drive a lot so I listen to the audiobooks - I did all of The Galactic Pot Healer (WEIRD) and I have yet to get to The Man in the High Castle, which I believe I have in mp3s.

What I really want to check out is Radio Free Albermuth, since I heard it's very similar to what's going on in the world today - odd. Good forum.

― horse child breakfast productions, Thursday, 20 April 2006 08:09 (nineteen years ago)

am i the only dick fan who hated man in the high castle?
(favourites: ubiq, palmer..., valis, albermouth, androids--go for ubiq first)

― anthony easton (anthony), Thursday, 20 April 2006 08:46 (nineteen years ago)

I wouldn't say I hated it, anthony, but I definitely thought it wasn't exceptional when compared to his other work. The other less sf work of his I've read, Confessions of a Crap Artist, I found more enjoyable.

Ubiq, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, and a couple others also feature a life that has a level of drug-mediated detachment with shifting realities and unrealiable narrators.

― mike h. (mike h.), Thursday, 20 April 2006 13:11 (nineteen years ago)

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