Philip K Dick @ The Open Critic.

[Mike Philbin]

My lengthy (and gushing) appreciation of the career of writer Philip K Dick has materialised at The Open Critic forum. The article has been totally overhauled to reflect The Open Critic's house style and separated into several parts.

The first three parts are up already:
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, The Cosmic Puppets and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. There are several more parts to this in-depth appreciation of the genreclectic work of Philip K Dick and undoubtedly these will appear in varying forms over the next week or so. You can leave comments and discuss issues brought up in all The Open Critic articles.

Thanks to Trevor Paetkau for his sterling editorial effort.

[Rob]

One of my favourite authors.

Cheers,
Rob

[Cuchulain]

I loved Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I should probably read the rest because they all seem very interesting.

[Rob]

The last PKD novel I read was A Maze of Death, last summer, and I thought it was an excellent read.

Cheers,
Rob

[doddles]

Reading Dick makes me very sad nowadays.

When I was a kid, his writing was 'cool' because it had these unexpected ideas - eg narrator doesn't know he is a robot, etc. As I got older, I saw that he was one of the fathers of modern anime/ 21st century sci-fi. His influence is everywhere. Including The Matrix/ Minority Report.

Then I got intersted in reading about the man himself. But when I read that he had to eat animal feed to survive and died poor, it just didn't seem fair.

I personally liked the majority of his stories.

[starrwriter]

Originally Posted by doddles

But when I read that he had to eat animal feed to survive and died poor, it just didn't seem fair.

Never heard it got as bad as animal feed, but Dick never had much money. In those days publishers paid jack for sci-fi novels and Dick had to write two or three a year (and get them published) to make a barebones living.

[Mike Philbin]

well, well, well... seems my Philip K Dick @ The Open Critic appreciation has made the news @ The Philip K Dick Bookshelf.

I did find another of my The Open Critic reviews, Whitley Strieber's LILITH'S DREAM, as an external link on Whitley's very own wikipedia page just a couple days ago, too.

Anyway, Dick and poverty. He did have to buy all those drugs all the time, and they're not cheap. I think, at his prime, he could toss off a book a week. Unfortunately, in his very latest books he went all religious on the reader's ass, projecting his (generally inaccurate) linear projection onto his belief system/flashback from all the drugs. I mean, talking colours. Sheesh...

[doddles]

I never read Dick until after Minority Report came out as a movie.

Then I was intrigued to follow up... and as you said, I was totally shocked to find that he is one of the biggest contributors to modern sci-fi. Yet his vision was treated like shit and he got almost nothing when he was alive - wompared to the $2-3 billions Wachowski brothers made from The Matrix(es).

I'm afraid that like most true Sci-Fi writers, Dick's vision is so far-ahead of his times that he could never have been appreciated in his lifetime.

Originally Posted by doddles

Reading Dick makes me very sad nowadays.

When I was a kid, his writing was 'cool' because it had these unexpected ideas - eg narrator doesn't know he is a robot, etc. As I got older, I saw that he was one of the fathers of modern anime/ 21st century sci-fi. His influence is everywhere. Including The Matrix/ Minority Report.

Then I got intersted in reading about the man himself. But when I read that he had to eat animal feed to survive and died poor, it just didn't seem fair.

I personally liked the majority of his stories.