[HN Gopher] The Essential Philip K. Dick ___________________________________________________________________ The Essential Philip K. Dick Author : benbreen Score : 115 points Date : 2022-10-27 03:18 UTC (3 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com) | 8bitsrule wrote: | What Phil did before writing (capsule bio) & decent works list. | [http://www.filmreference.com/film/42/Philip-Dick.html] | | 1958 Exploring Tomorrow (Campbell's Mutual show) episode (#11 | Made in Avack) [https://archive.org/details/ExploringTomorrow/] | Jtsummers wrote: | Archive link: | https://web.archive.org/web/20221029011427/https://www.nytim... | w1nst0nsm1th wrote: | I read all of them, at least the ones published in French... | | "A Scanner Darkly" is by far the most polished, and also the most | twisted. | alex_suzuki wrote: | I also enjoyed the movie adaption of it, especially the weird | psychedelic visuals, but I'm glad I read the book first. | Jtsummers wrote: | It was also one of his last novels and most personal, both | factors probably influencing its quality. The Linklater | adaptation is particularly good and faithful, nearly every | scene is close to verbatim from the book. And most of its | omissions and changes are reasonable ones for an adaptation | into a movie. | dllthomas wrote: | I keep saying it's the only Phillip K. Dick adaptation that | feels like Phillip K. Dick. | w1nst0nsm1th wrote: | It's on Apple TV on location. I will watch it some day. Thank | for the recommandation. | wiredfool wrote: | The afterward of a Scanner Darkly is a gut punch. | | My recollection is that it's a list of friends who had lost | their lives to drugs of one form or another. | Jtsummers wrote: | Lives and health, he's also included in the list. | nonrandomstring wrote: | There's a bit in Ubik that stays in my mind. Joe Chip gets into | an argument with his apartment door that refuses to open for him | because he owes it money. I kinda got that the door was an | autonomous money-making agent that held him hostage - a | conversation reminiscent of that between Doolittle and the Bomb | in Dark Star. It made me see the ridiculous side and ultimate | absurdity of micropayments leading to world where a dollar value | is put on everything so that every silly little thing becomes a | coin operated nuisance whose actual function is replaced by | squeezing a few more micro-credits out of you. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | He tries to bypass the thing by unscrewing the fixture and it | says, "I'll sue you." | anothermoron wrote: | I love that line: | | "I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out. | Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I | can live through it." | 2Gkashmiri wrote: | Years ago I read about cloud computing as getting a free | vacation but being charged for each sand particle you touch, | small on its own but it gets too ridiculous after some time | Wistar wrote: | That expresses things quite evocatively. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | There was an episode of Rocko's Modern Life where they go to | a ski resort where everything is $5. What a deal! It turns | out it applies to literally everything. | black_13 wrote: | While living Boston the walkup replaced the keyed doors with | electronic locks. They never worked. I kept my key to the | cellar and would come through the laundry room and occasionally | fall in snow and pee myself. That is dystopia. Dick understood | what the future would be lots of dangerous gadgets. The | gestaltmacher in the novel the penultimate truth. | pavlov wrote: | They call that "web3" nowadays, but you're supposed to enjoy it | because you can buy shares in the specific door that won't open | for you and they might triple in value while you're locked in. | keiferski wrote: | PKD is one of my favorite sci-fi writers and I recommend _Ubik_ | if you 're a new reader, although like the article mentions, you | definitely need to be in a certain mindset to "get it." _The Man | in the High Castle_ has an interesting concept but I don 't think | it's particularly well-written. | | One thing that I think goes unnoticed about PKD is how some of | his earlier short stories are undeniably, unquestionably _bad._ | _Fair Game_ , for instance. He wrote it in 1953, a decade+ before | his work started to get really good: _The Three Stigmata of | Palmer Eldritch_ was written in 1964, _Do Androids Dream of | Electric Sheep?_ in 1968, and _Ubik_ in 1969. | | I personally find this a bit reassuring. It's nice to know that | even someone as influential as PKD took a long time to develop. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | >The Man in the High Castle has an interesting concept but I | don't think it's particularly well-written. | | It should be noted that Ursula K. Le Guin disagreed with your | assessment in her famous essay Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown, | in which she felt that The Man in the High Castle was one of | the only science fiction novels that had a human character - a | Mrs Brown. | alex_suzuki wrote: | Did you give the TV adaption of The Man in the High Castle a | try? It's on Prime, I found it quite enjoyable. | keiferski wrote: | No, it seemed a bit generic to me, but maybe I'll take a | second look. | mmarq wrote: | The first season was good, then it quickly degenerates into | nazi porn and finally into a bad version of Rick&Morty | ndsipa_pomu wrote: | I haven't read The Man in the High Castle for a long time, but | I thought that it was a rarity amongst PKD's output in that he | edited it rather than just writing and selling it. It's also | notable for winning a Hugo. | yarg wrote: | He also had a problem with women (to be fair, he was a | professional writer - and apparently his wife wouldn't let him | use the house). | | I don't think I've read a single well-meaning intelligent woman | in a PKD story. | | I remember being surprised at the start of one of his books, | that the female character introduced at the beginning was | clearly competent - turned out she was evil. | atombender wrote: | I would argue that Juliana Frink in The Man in the High | Castle is certainly a "well-meaning intelligent woman". His | strongest female character is probably Angel Archer, who | narrates The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, his last | novel. | yarg wrote: | You've got me there. | skmurphy wrote: | Off the top of my head: Juliana Frink, a central character in | "Man in the High Castle," is well-meaning and intelligent. | leephillips wrote: | I found _Ubik_ somewhat intriguing. I'm about 60 pages unto | _Valis_ , and so far it's mostly bad philosophy and theology, | thankfully saved by occasional flashes of humor, and the | almost-interesting fracturing of the main character into at | least two people. Does it get any better? | abruzzi wrote: | I don't reccomend Valis for anyone but the most diehard Dick | fans. Its an attempt to fictionalize an experience Dick had | and spent the rest of his life trying to understand. It has | some great moments, but it doesn't hold together terribly | well as a story. I much prefer more focused stories like | Scanner Darkly, Flow My Tears, or even Divine Invasion. | | Supposedly Dick's experience conceived three published novels | --Valis, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, and Divine | invasion. There is a fourth, unpublished novel--Radio Free | Albemuth that came from it as well. Valis seem to be the most | personal since it someone named Philip Dick (or Horselover | Fat) having the exact same experience then trying to make | sense of it. Divine Invasion has more of the feel of a | traditional Dick novel with someone forced to live in a hovel | on an alien planet. Timothy Archer is borderline non-SciFi, | with only a tiny influence of SciFi, IIRC. And Radio Free | Albemuth felt a bit like a cross between Scanner Darkly and | Valis--i.e. the Valis story in a dystopian future surveilance | state. | ndsipa_pomu wrote: | There's a film version of Radio Free Albemuth | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1129396/ | | It's watchable, but my experience is soured by the terrible | experience of contributing to the KickStarter and then not | being able to get my reward for years due to living in the | UK rather than the US (licensing issues). | cturner wrote: | I have read a fair bit of pkd and found Valis an unsatisfying | struggle. Radio Free Albemuth is an earlier attempt at | similar ideas and is accessible. | pmoriarty wrote: | I consider _Ubik_ to be Dick 's best work... so if you found | it only "somewhat intriguing", I doubt you'll be any more | pleased with anything else he wrote. | | That said, if you are interested in reading more by him, of | his books I can recommend: | | - _The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_ | | - _Martian Time-Slip_ | | - _Galactic Pot Healer_ | | - _Eye in the Sky_ | | - the middle part of _Lies, Inc_ | | Some of his short stories: | | - _Beyond Lies the Wub_ | | - _Faith of Our Fathers_ | jrumbut wrote: | It's funny, I'm a big PKD fan and I didn't care for _Ubik_. | I enjoyed the first half or so of _VALIS_ immensely but my | favorite of his is _A Scanner Darkly_. | | I think, in 2022, people will understand _Scanner_ better | than they used to or maybe it is on the verge of being | outdated? | pmoriarty wrote: | I didn't like _A Scanner Darkly_. I thought it was | mediocre. _VALIS_ was better, but not in the top tier of | PKD 's books, IMO. | cgh wrote: | I'd like to add Dr. Bloodmoney and A Scanner Darkly to your | recommended list. | xhevahir wrote: | Ubik is the only PKD novel I've read and man did I struggle to | finish it. Once in a while a passage caught my interest and | then I would realize that I was reading was basically a summary | of some myth from Gnostic scripture. A real slog, on the whole. | x86x87 wrote: | PKD is my favorite writer of all times. I believe that even for | his greatest works the writing could have been more polished, | way better. The thing is PKD does not get you with the form of | the writing but with the ideas that he captures. Truly | visionary. | moris_borris wrote: | That last bit could be said of any of my favorite sci fi | thinkers. I love Asimov and Frank Herbert but not because I | think they were great writers. | Barrin92 wrote: | it's funny because for me the prose of a lot of science | fiction writers was always what turned me away from the | genre. I could barely make it through Dune and gave the | Foundation up. A lot of science fiction authors which I | came to love a lot like Gibson or Le Guin I think I mostly | got into because of their sense of style. | | Stephenson for me is probably the worst offender for this. | I've met so many people both online and offline, | particularly other programmers who always told me to read | his stuff but he's straight up pasting pages of Wikipedia | into his books, I felt like I was being trolled. | x86x87 wrote: | Stephenson is a bit more polished than PKD but your point | still stands. | pmoriarty wrote: | I had high expectations from a bunch of friends | recommending _Snowcrash_ , but when I read it I found it | to be so awful I couldn't even finish it. It was just so | childish and stupid. I don't get why people like it. | cableshaft wrote: | Of his books that I read, it is definitely the one that | comes across as the most childish and stupid (with a few | good ideas). His other books aren't like that. | | I had trouble getting through them as well, but for other | reasons. For _Cryptonomicon_ it was his "let me prove | how smart I am" diversions off the main story for dozens | of pages at a time, and for _Anathem_ it was an | interesting idea told in a boring yet difficult-to-parse | way, at least as far as I got. | | The quality of the prose in those other two books seemed | better, at least. | | Big fan of PKD books, btw, although I think his writing | style and characters are pretty plain and not that | compelling on their own (but they are quick to read as a | result, I could knock one out in about 4-6 hours, | usually). The ideas, dialogue, and often the endings make | them all worth reading, though. | pmoriarty wrote: | _" his writing style and characters are pretty plain and | not that compelling on their own"_ | | Dick is a champion of the underdog everyman. His | protagonists tend to be humble repairmen and other | "losers" in the lower stratum of society... I find those | characters very human and relatable. | | The other type of Dick protagonists are those who think | they're on top of the world, until their world turns | upside-down and so they get to experience being dragged | through the mud.... usually finding out that what they | thought was a perfect world was broken, hostile, and | sometimes even evil. | | His writing style is direct and economical. I really | don't have a problem with it. | Jtsummers wrote: | _Snow Crash_ is either an accidental or deliberate parody | of cyberpunk. The main character is Hiro Protagonist. | When he goes into a VR world and is "fighting" with a | sword he's swinging a sword around wildly in the real | world too, while around other people. And then in | _Diamond Age_ Stephenson [rot13]xvyyf gur zbfg plorechax | punenpgre va gur svefg be frpbaq puncgre[ /rot13]. | | When I read _Snow Crash_ the first time it was back when | cyberpunk was still a pretty hot style, and I was also | reading a lot of Gibson and others. It fit well within | that context. Then later I reread it and realized what I | wrote above, it was parodying elements of the genre while | creating almost a quintessentially action-adventure | cyberpunk story with a programmer /pizza delivery driver | hero. And then it had the typical Stephenson ending, | which is to say | pmoriarty wrote: | Yeah, I got that it was a parody. It just wasn't funny. | FPGAhacker wrote: | > And then it had the typical Stephenson ending, which is | to say | | that made me laugh out loud | flybrand wrote: | Thank you for commenting on Stephenson's plot | resolutions. I love his writing and his stories, but the | end of his books are just so unfulfilling. Especially | Anathem! | skyechurch wrote: | Dick can be really rewarding, although he's definitely not to | everyone's taste, or a particularly good stylist. This is | true of other great writers who deal in extreme psychological | states - Dostoyevsky for example. The extreme state for PKD | was a metaphysical paranoia (probably augmented by | amphetamine abuse), which many people can relate to, although | it's usually not as intense or as intricate as in his novels. | Dick was often writing autobiographical science fiction, | which is an absolutely unique vision, though not one I'd like | to experience first hand. | xhevahir wrote: | I'm no authority on Russian literature but I've never | agreed with this criticism of Dostoevsky. His writing is of | a different kind, one that has its own logic. This article | does a good job of explaining it I think: | https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/the-master-of- | peter... | x86x87 wrote: | Yup. Sort of upset as I think with better form/style more | people would have been exposed to his idea. | trash3 wrote: | bryanrasmussen wrote: | So for everyone here who has declared that Phil Dick wasn't a | very polished writer - who is your example of a polished writer | that you are comparing him to his detriment with? | orthoxerox wrote: | Douglas Coupland is super polished, the lines just slide | straight into your eyes. | atombender wrote: | I wouldn't call it unpolished at all. I would characterise | PKD's prose as workmanlike. It's very effective, just not what | anyone would ever call lyrical or stylish. Stephen King once | described his own writing as "the literary equivalent of a Big | Mac and fries", and there's some of that in PKD, at least on | the surface level. | | I do think PKD improved as a writer in the 1970s, once he | kicked his drug habit and slowed down his hyperactive output; | from this era, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, A Scanner | Darkly, and the VALIS trilogy all has some beautiful writing | and show Dick as a deeper and more mature writer. | | As for the rest of the sci-fi genre, there's a lot of talent | among his contemporaries. I would especially suggest: | | * John Crowley. Widely recognized as actual an Author of real | Literature, though only his earliest works could be called | science fiction. Start with The Deep and Engine Summer. | | * Harlan Ellison. Some of his stories ("I Have No Mouth and I | Must Scream", "Jeffty Is Five", etc.) are simply masterfully | written. | | * Samuel Delaney. He's an acquired taste and certainly gets a | bit self-indulgent, but novels like Babel 17 are often | beautifully written. | | * Ursula LeGuin, e.g. The Left Hand of Darkness. | | * Gene Wolfe. Increasingly also recognized as a genius, I also | particularly like his short stories. Start with The Fifth Head | of Cerberus; graduate with the monumental The Book of the New | Sun, which has no equal in or out of the genre. | | * J. G. Ballard. A consummate stylist, he eventually drifted | away from SF, but his earlic works are fantastic. My favourite | is The Crystal World, as well as his numerious short stories, | including one of my favourite stories ever [1]). | | Of later writers, William Gibson, China Mieville and Iain M. | Banks come to mind. | | [1] "Report on an Unidentified Space Station": | http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/roauss.htm | sbf501 wrote: | > I would characterise PKD's prose as workmanlike. | | That's a good way of putting it. I think a lot of his stuff | was just published in a time when editors didn't do much, but | also he was picked up by publishers who were pushing pulp, so | there's a lot writing that feels "in progress". | e12e wrote: | Perhaps Bruce Sterling and Frank Herbert (in particular | "Dune"). Absolutely Samuel Delaney IMO. | | For something similar to pkd, but perhaps more refined(?) | Alfred Beater, "The Stars my Destination". | atombender wrote: | For those who have read Dick's "standards", I recommend one of | his novels that _never_ appears in these lists, and probably | never will: Galactic Pot-Healer (1968). | | PKD later said he couldn't call writing it, this being the period | where he consumed copious amounts of amphetamines, and produced a | ridiculous number of novels and short stories. I still think it's | one of his most enjoyable books. | | The plot is a ramshackle Vonnegutian comic fantasy featuring a | totalitarian dystopia, an alien demigod, a man who "heals" broken | ceramic pottery, and an early version of the old Internet | pasttime where you use machine translation tools to translate | English into other languages and then back again in order to | produce humorously mangled sentences. It's a weird, fun, sad | book. | | Also worth mentioning is A Maze of Death (1970), which is a | creepy alien planet exploration story that becomes something else | and unexpected, and probably the closest Dick came to writing a | Harlan Ellison story. | fluxinflex wrote: | Is SciFi a genre that reflects societal health? I have the | feeling that SciFi is a phenomenon that appears and disappears in | waves depending on how well a society is function. | | There was SciFi coming out of the communist block (Lem, | Strugatsky brothers, Zamyatin) which was a comment on the system, | there was SciFi from England in early 1900s (Wells) - comment on | industrial revolution - and later Orwell - post war, societal | controls - and Adams - the world should be more worried about | external forces. In the US the genre appears to be a constant | starting with Poe[1] followed by Huxley, Dick, Clarke, Asimov, | Gibson, Bradbury, Heinlein commenting on all sorts of societal | issues. And recently China with The Three Body Problem by Liu. | France had Jules Verne but that was more for profit than comment | on societal issues. | | Coming back to the question, is the popularity of SciFi an | indicator for potential fears within society? I know that my | favourite bookstore recently had a run on PKD, the bookstore | happens to be in mainland Europe. | | And what is the relationship between SciFi and philosophy? | Philosophy being one of those sciences whose purpose is to | question societal forms, constructs and norms. | | [1]=https://psyche.co/ideas/are-successful-authors-creative- | geni... | x86x87 wrote: | The empire never ended | Trasmatta wrote: | Perhaps one day we'll all escape the Black Iron Prison... | Trasmatta wrote: | VALIS is the most bizarre but fascinating book I've ever read. I | recommend going into it only after reading a number of his other | books, and then reading a synopsis of his own life. It's fiction | but also psuedo-autobiographical, and a deeply personal story to | PKD. | ericmcer wrote: | That book made me aware of how your brains internal dialogue | can be influenced by the media you are consuming. I read it in | a day or so and really felt it altered my "internal voice", | which was a bit unnerving. | sbf501 wrote: | I've read 45 of all 49 PKD novels on the Wikipedia page. It was a | goal I set about 7 years ago. I tried to read the books in order, | but had trouble finding some. His style goes from Twilight Zone / | Amazing Stories, do thought-provoking alternate reality, to | alternate people, to alternate "reality" which is different than | what I said earlier. There is "alternate reality" where we are in | a different timeline, or aliens, or different technology, and | then there is reality that is just bent and distorted | psychologically (VALIS, Palmer Eldritch, Martian Time Slip, ...). | There's a big blob of boring books in the middle, in my opinion, | like "We Can Build You", "The Crack in Space", and "Now Wait for | Last Year". But what I've found most fascinating is watching his | progression (descent) into darker and darker work. It was also a | weird experience reading so much from one author, because after 5 | books you start to see significant similarity and I wonder if | that is why the middle part got so boring to me. | js2 wrote: | Any favorites you'd like to call out and why those were your | favorite? | | Did you also read his short story collections? | Eisenstein wrote: | Which are your favorites? Do you have one that you would | consider to be the magnum opus? If I had to pick one of them I | would pick Ubik. | theptip wrote: | For anyone that liked "Blade Runner", it's fascinating to go back | and read PKD's "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep", which Blade | Runner was based on. You can see the threads of similarity but | it's a way more surreal paranoid bad-acid-trip vibe. | | Can't remember another adaptation with such a striking difference | from the original. | OscarCunningham wrote: | > Can't remember another adaptation with such a striking | difference from the original. | | How about 'Total Recall' as an adaption of 'We Can Remember It | for You Wholesale'? | dllthomas wrote: | 'Minority Report', in addition to throwing in a whole bunch | of filler, flips the whole point of the thing into something | deeply Hollywood. | Jtsummers wrote: | Part of the problem with that adaptation is that _We can | Remember It for You Wholesale_ would be best adapted into an | almost comedic Outer Limits episode, as written. _Total | Recall_ at least manages to keep a lot of PKD 's general | themes intact despite seriously diverging from the story, and | brings in ideas from his other stories to an extent. | pmoriarty wrote: | _Blade Runner_ is way better than _DADOES_ , which is a minor | Dick work. He's written much better books. | WA wrote: | Exactly the other way around for me. I never liked Blade | Runner, especially the last 20 minutes or so. I enjoyed the | book. I like Blade Runner 2049 though. | cmsefton wrote: | Ridley Scott famously claimed that he "found the novel too | difficult to read". Dick was infuriated with the first draft of | the film, and absolutely hated it, writing very sarcastic | comments about it. | | However, after the script was reworked, and Dick read it, he | said "you read the screenplay and then you go to the novel, and | it's like they're two halves to one meta-artwork, one meta- | artifact." | | This makes for some great reading delving into what Dick | thought of the film. https://soothfairy.com/2022/09/16/what- | did-philip-k-dick-thi... | | I especially like Special Effects Chief David Dryer's | recollection of what Dick said after watching the first reels: | | > Dick looks me straight in the eye and says, 'How is this | possible? How can this be? Those are not the exact images, but | the texture and tone of the images I saw in my head when I was | writing the original book! The environment is exactly as how | I'd imagined it! How'd you guys do that? How did you know what | I was feeling and thinking?' | | > "Let me tell you, that was one of the most successful moments | of my career," Dryer concludes. "Dick went away dazed." | | I also particularly liked Dick's comments about what the film | meant to him: | | > I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a | set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning | dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and | completed by Blade Runer. Thank you ... It will prove | invincible. | olivermarks wrote: | I'm a big PKD fan - I also recommend reading the 1909 short story | 'the machine stops' by em Forster which was incredibly prescient | and I suspect informed some of PKD's thinking. | | People have often pointed out this piece 'predicted the internet | age' while ignoring the dystopian collapse at the end of Forsters | pice, which is alarmingly similar to the current collapse of some | aspects of western civilization IMO... | | https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/... | | I have PKD's 'the Defenders' mapped to 'the machine stops' in my | mind | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Defenders_(short_story) | wiredfool wrote: | I find his short stories to be quite good -- if not a bit | repetitive if read in bulk. His paranoia and the bleakness of | post nuclear war are overwhelming after a while. | | Quite a lot of his stories have been made into movies, for | better or worse. They seem to be enough of a chunk to hang a | story on, without getting too much in the way of telling a good | story. | | Minority Report -- much better in the story. We Can Remember it | for You Wholesale -- both worked. | olivermarks wrote: | Amazing the standard of pulp fiction in that era - we need a | big dose of dystopian 'nuclear war will be an apocalypse that | will end our lives' right now given how amazingly unaware | people appear to be to the grave danger of nuclear war threat | we are facing right now | stevenwoo wrote: | The writer talks about Ubik but does not mention the | pervasiveness of corporate power/role in the daily life described | (at least from my interpretation), this is well portrayed in | Total Recall, also based on a Philip K. Dick story which varies | enough from the movie to be read as separate work. | | Short story not mentioned but is worth reading if one has not, | Second Variety. | prpl wrote: | Three Stigmata... is also very corporate. Like if Comcast and | Space-X merged to form a venture to mars | x86x87 wrote: | The 3 Stigmata is my favourite PKD book. Apart from some of | his obscure stuff I've read everything he wrote | pmoriarty wrote: | _" Short story not mentioned but is worth reading if one has | not, Second Variety."_ | | The movie _The Terminator_ has some similarities to _Second | Variety_ , and I wouldn't be surprised if the movie was | somewhat influenced by the story. | robocat wrote: | Second Variety: | https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32032/32032-h/32032-h.htm | Schiphol wrote: | Has any of you read/skimmed the Exegesis? Is it any good? | pmoriarty wrote: | No. It's awful... unless you like disconnected ramblings. | armitron wrote: | If you've had mystical experiences and trying to make sense of | them, PKD's Exegesis is required reading. If you haven't had | any experiences of this sort, then it'll probably come across | as disconnected ramblings indicative of serious mental illness. | | After spending decades reading everything I could on the | subject of mystical experiences, from Crowley (the English | libertine) to Timothy Leary and Mckenna, the only other writers | I'd put on the same "absolutely essential reading" list as PKD, | worthy of intense study, are Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner. | | That a pulp scifi author made this list is, to me, supremely | fascinating. | Trasmatta wrote: | I don't know if it's the type of thing that can be classified | as "good" or "bad". It's a stream of consciousness from a | brilliant man suffering from immense personal pain and some | form of undiagnosed mental illness, that I'm sure he never | intended anyone to read. It's bizarre and fascinating, | especially if you've read VALIS. It shows how his internal | world was becoming molded with his own books, his life becoming | one of his own stories, struggling with the flimsy nature of | reality. | | It's so long that it feels kind of futile to read it end to | end, but I jump to a random page sometimes and read for awhile. | There's a lot of repetition, but is fascinating. | jimmygrapes wrote: | It took me several years and as many attempts to get into it | and commit, but once I committed and got past the (awful) | forward, I went front to back over the course of a month or | two. As sibling comment says, it's very repetitive, but it's | also iterative; PKD is trying to make sense of a lot of things | at once, over and over again with slight tweaks. Each time he | gets closer and closer to essentially rewriting Christian | Gnosticism (imo) from the ground up. | | It honestly changed my life. There were times when I would have | dreams and thoughts along similar lines and then end up reading | them in the pages that night. It is worth a read if you're in a | dark place, because it might give you the same sense of "I'm | not alone" that it did to me. | | Certainly ain't for everyone, but the reward is great. | btbuildem wrote: | Paywalled article | [deleted] | Jtsummers wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20221029011427/https://www.nytim... | - I also posted this here in the discussion over an hour ago. | Problem solved. | utopcell wrote: | Thank you posting the archive link, but the problem is that | if the article is not accessible, this becomes an ad posting | for the site. | Jtsummers wrote: | Check the HN FAQ. Paywalled sites are fine for submissions | as long as there's a workaround (and there is here), and | whining about it (as the person I responded to did) is | considered off-topic. It takes about 10 seconds to pull up | an archive link and maybe 5-10 seconds more to submit it, | only slightly longer than it takes to write and submit a | useless comment about how it is paywalled. | qull wrote: | 1. There was no workaround published when he commented. | 2. Why not just use the working workaround link in the | first place? | Jtsummers wrote: | > There was no workaround published when he commented. | | There was, I'd posted it an hour earlier than their | comment. | | > Why not just use the working workaround link in the | first place? | | Who knows, who cares. It takes < 20 seconds to get an | archive.org copy and post it yourself. Only a few seconds | more than it takes to whine, and a lot more productive. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-30 23:00 UTC)