Any PKD fans out there? I must have read about 20 of his novels over the years, as well as many short stories. Hadn't read any for quite a few years, and then recently i picked up a 2nd hand copy of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?', on which the film 'Bladerunner' is loosely based. 'Total Recall' was also based on a PKD story, as was 'Minority Report'. My favourite PKD novels haven't, as far as i know, been made into films: VALIS, Ubik, A Maze of Death, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and Galactic Pot-Healer. I think he is the greatest SF writer ever, and yet that he is much more than simply a 'genre' writer. Sure his actual prose was often a bit corny, especially in the novels he pushed out in two weeks, but it is always the ideas that shine through: ideas about madness, death, god, reality, subjectivity, decay, truth. I think 'Androids' is up there among the best of his novels. VALIS is my all-time favourite though.
I enjoyed quite a few of them for their plots and great sci-fi ideas. But I find his writing (at a micro level, so to speak) poor - weak characterization, clunky dialogue, a schoolboy's outlook on sexuality, incompetent grammar even. Quite hard to read sometimes - I really struggled with 'The Man in the High Castle'.
I have to say I have never ventured down that path, though I have a copy of The Man in the High Castle. Maybe that's a very representative work ?
On a related note, I am about a dozen pages into Andrew Morgan's book Woken Furies, and I wonder if anyone has read anything by him and if they liked it? He won the Philip K. Dick award in 2004 (something i put a lot of respect in). But reading this new book is like reading some trashy, overly showey, populist take on cyberpunk - a bit of a let down! Anyone had the same experience?
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