Hi,

If you enjoy Sci-Fi I can only recommand you all the books from Philip K Dick,
they are all so POWERFULL, I can really think of no other word.

I think his best books are "Ubik", "The man in the high castle" and
"Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said".

You can find them here :
http://www.ebookmall.com/ebooks-authors/philip-k-dick-ebooks.htm

Good read ;)

Many books from Philip K. Dick are still in copyright, but a good chunk of his stories might not. It is currently under investigation. It will probably take a year or two to complete though.
Checking the copyright costs money. If anyone wants to donate then contact Greg Weeks. He has already freed H. Beam Piper for us.

Many books from Philip K. Dick are still in copyright, but a good chunk of his stories might not. It is currently under investigation. It will probably take a year or two to complete though.
Checking the copyright costs money. If anyone wants to donate then contact Greg Weeks. He has already freed H. Beam Piper for us.

That's a very interesting information. I've read most of his novels but just a few short stories.

You'd be surprised by how many movies you have seen based on his work.

Blade Runner
A.I.
Minority Report
Total Recall

There are more, but that's all I can recall off the top of my head.

You'd be surprised by how many movies you have seen based on his work.

Blade Runner
A.I.
Minority Report
Total Recall

There are more, but that's all I can recall off the top of my head.

But don't let that keep you from reading them. For the most part, the movies are based quite loosely on his stories. Total Recall was barely related to We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, Paycheck seriously mangled Paycheck, and Imposter took liberties with The Imposter.

Read the originals. They're much, much better.

You'd be surprised by how many movies you have seen based on his work.

Blade Runner
A.I.
Minority Report
Total Recall

There are more, but that's all I can recall off the top of my head.

Most of the movies are crap compared to his books. Blade Runner was a great movie, but completely different from Why do androids dream of electic sheep.

Most of the movies are crap compared to his books. Blade Runner was a great movie, but completely different from Why do androids dream of electic sheep.
Well I beg to differ! Maybe the movies are not like the books but for someone interested in near view futurology like me, Minority report was Great. The detailing in that movies is exquisite. Designers really outdid themselves.

I agree that the movie version of Minority Report was excellent (in spite of really not liking the actor in the lead role), but I have no trouble believing that the 'book' might still be better than the movie. :grin:

I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list of things to do.

"A scanner darkly" is probably one of the best movie adapted from
one of Dick's books.

"A scanner darkly" is probably one of the best movie adapted from
one of Dick's books.

True. It's very close to the book unlike most of these other adaptations too.

A Minority Report had a few nice design element, and nice special effects but the story and the character are nothing compared to a book from K Dick. It's way too "hollywood-like", lacking the kind of craziness and dark corners of K Dick's mind.

I agree with that 'craziness' of his as a feature of his writings.

The only one I've read so far was 'Ubik' and frankly it felt like it was written through a series of alcohol binges. It steered me away from further readings of his works.
I will give him an other try but if I feel that mid night depressive alcohol buzz again, he's out.

If only I could find his novel "Our Friends from Frolix 8" somewhere.

I think I'll check his books out...I'm looking for something new to read at the moment anyway... ;)

I think I'll check his books out...I'm looking for something new to read at the moment anyway... ;)

If you enjoyed the movie "The Truman Show," it's pretty much an uncredited adaptation of Dick's Time Out of Joint (my personal favorite of his works).

Last year's film "Next" was also based on a PKD story ("The Golden Man").

Oh, and one correction from above: A.I. isn't based on Dick. It's from Brian Aldiss' Supertoys Last All Summer Long.

I haven't watched the movie, so I'll just choose a book that has a nice-sounding title for a starter...if I enjoy that one I'll probably start reading everything he ever wrote, I usually do it that way... ;)

I haven't watched the movie, so I'll just choose a book that has a nice-sounding title for a starter...if I enjoy that one I'll probably start reading everything he ever wrote, I usually do it that way... ;)Dick was an interesting writer. All of his books are concerned with the question "How do you tell the difference between reality and fantasy?" Dick suffered from bouts of mental illness, and wasn't always sure where the line was himself, which lent power to his work.

I'd start with "The Man In the High Castle", a "What if the Axis had won WWII?" novel, and go on through "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", and "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch".
______
Dennis

I got the new Blade Runner DVD at Xmas, and just re-read Androids on my PRS-500. There are actually more common elements to the two stories than I remembered, and both of them are brilliant fiction in their own way. Scanner Darkly remains the most faithful PKD movie adaptation though. I defy anyone not to shed a tear reading the postscript to that book.

I've loved PKD's books since high school - he's the great unsung genius of American speculative fiction. I'm slogging through Valis at the moment which is pretty tough. It's basically a semi-autobiographical account of PKD's mystic revelations/mental breakdown.

PKD fans might like the following Red Meat cartoon:

(Note, it contains some "religious" reference, so if you're as easily offended as an 80-year-old nun at a Rocky Mountain Oyster Festival, you'll probably want to pass it by...)

http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/2007-11-13/index.html

Cheers,
Marc (I would have thought She was a Tepper fan, myself)

That cartoon is cool... ;)

Man in the High Castle is a delight, but I have also greatly enjoyed Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Dick in his decline was still head and shoulders above most so-called "Genre" writers...

And I have watched A Scanner Darkly repeatedly - it does a very very good job capturing the paranoid essence of the story.

Many books from Philip K. Dick are still in copyright, but a good chunk of his stories might not. It is currently under investigation. It will probably take a year or two to complete though.
Checking the copyright costs money. If anyone wants to donate then contact Greg Weeks. He has already freed H. Beam Piper for us.

Good luck, but I'm not too optimistic. I remember that shortly after his death, his short stories were collected in a block of hard cover books (5-7 volumes, if my memory serves me) with cut out signatures from his cancelled checks. What text they used I don't know, but that probably reset a lot of copyrights (to life + 95). If they didn't use the magazine text versions, those might be expired. RSE

Ahhh, PKD! Does he really need a recommendation though? That's like saying "Hey guys, someone told me this guy Henline, Hindline, something like that, is supposedly a good writer. I should check his stuff out. Oh, and I heard some good stuff about some guy named, what was it... Clerk, Clarke maybe?"

One of the true masters of writing, let alone just sci-fi. He was one of the original visionaries who really shaped what readers think of as "the future", however nebulous the concept may be. Interesting as time goes by though, many of his amazing theories and inventions from "the future" are now becoming science fact of the present.

Which story inspired Minority Report?

That would be his short story... "The Minority Report".

Go figure. ;)

LOL. That's pretty obvious. I didn't have a chance to look it up. Thanks.