I want science fiction!

Let's try Lovelace. Wrong, he's weird fiction.
How about Hearn. No, I'll save his ghost stories for later.
Where are Azimov and Vonnegut?

Alright, let's try Dick.
Wrong, the first book ('The Man in the High Castle') is alternate history.
So, on to the second book ('The Three Stigmata of Palmer Ekdritch'). Wow! By page 3, I am really interested. Let's go back and try 'High Castle' again (with a more open mind).

'The Man in the High Castle' was worth it. Alternate history is not my bag, but I found the book to be very enjoyable. Except for the ending, Dick handled the alternate stuff very well.

More to follow. ( )

The Man in the High Castle:
When I first heard that Library of America had added Philip Dick, I was quite surprised. Dick before Hemingway? And then after reading The Man in the High Castle and I felt completely justified with my initial skepticism. This is certainly not literature worth preserving. It was interesting - the premise being that Germany and Japan had won WWII and were now occupying America. There were many small brilliances such as the Americans adopting the speaking of broken English in the same way their Japanese overlords spoke it, but on the whole this was not a good novel. It was not well written. Dick's prose is quite unremarkable here and at times even amateurish, and what is unpardonable, the story ultimately disappoints.
2 stars.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch:
And then I continued reading and realized I was mistaken. This novel is nothing short of brilliant. The story, in what I have since discovered is typical Dick fashion, blurs the line between reality and imagination. For most of this novel, one is never quite certain whether what is happening is real or imagined. In the context of the drug addled decade in which this was written and what has since followed, this was prophetic. The story ultimately confronts the very real and troubling questions of what is life and how it should be lived.
4 ½ stars.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
This novel is every bit as good as The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It deals with a similar theme of the question of life, and would artificial life be as meaningful. The answer is clearly no and Dick handles this perfectly with a wonderful story.
This is the novel that was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. I had seen Blade Runner several years before reading this and I have since seen it once more. The movie is a complete disappointment when compared to this supreme work of fiction, but not for the usual reasons. I tend to find movies based on novels I have read disappointing because they lack the nuance and fail to convey significant insights of the original form. This is not the case here. The problem with Blade Runner is that the novel upon which it is based reads like a movie, but the screen writer decided to change the plot in such ways that it no longer holds the same meaning. Dick’s story is compelling and would have made a much better movie had it been utilized more.
4 ½ stars.

Ubik
By the time I arrived at Ubik, I thought I was prepared for Dick’s blurring of reality, but he took it to a new level with this story. I had no idea what was actually happening in this novel until the very end. Ubik tells a great story, although it is a bit sloppy at times.
4 stars. ( )

PKD Would Be Proud: This handsome volume of four of PKD's most acclaimed science-fiction novels from the '60s is a pure delight. To be included in the company of John Steinbeck and Saul Bellow (two other authors graced with 2007 Library of America releases) doubtlessly would make PKD smile: finally vindicated! I'm not sure that his days of horsemeat-eating and penny-ante royalty checks are truly assuaged by this posthumous honor--but better late than never. The chronology of Dick's life and works at the volume's close is detailed and heartwrenching. Hopefully Dick's inclusion in the Library of America series will further increase his worldwide status as a major American talent who transcended the limitations of his genre, creating dystopian visions of lasting significance for humanity.

I hope we soon will be feted with a companion volume of four of Dick's mainstream novels--perhaps [...]
Wherever you are, PKD--hat's off! It's not just kibble anymore.

"Mindbending" is a frequent adjective used to apply to Philip K. Dick's works; after reading through all of the Library of America's first Philip K. Dick volume ("Four Novels of the 1960s), it seems entirely appropriate. The man can make my brain hurt, in a good way. The four novels included here are "The Man In The High Castle", an early alt-history where Germany and Japan won WWII; "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch", where a hallucinogenic virtual reality tycoon is threatened by sudden competition; "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", the basis for the movie Bladerunner, where a bounty hunter has to track down escaped, almost human androids; and "Ubik", which follows a group of anti-psychics after a disastrous mission.

A common thread among these 4 of Dick's books is leaning more heavily on plot and setting than on characterization; especially with shorter length the characters tend to lead towards the archetypal over the complex. However, since his plots and setups are unconventional - even a straightforward alt-history uses a slightly unorthodox caste - and the novels brief, this doesn't become a problem. The dizzying world of "Palmer Eldritch" and the empathic, authenticity-obsessed world of "Electric Sheep" don't have stereotypical responses, and are intriguing enough on their own.

The author has admitted that the I Ching was not only on his mind when he wrote "The Man In the High Castle", but was used in plotting the book. Set on the Japan occupied west coast of the US in a world where Germany and Japan won WWII, the book doesn't dwell too much on how the Allies lost the war, but doesn't depend too much on it either. The cast, which includes an antique dealer and a couple forgers, initially seems like an odd mix; but as the novel progresses it becomes clear where Dick is going with everything (for once).

Dick also has the conceit of a alt-history book within his alt-history; a (somewhat suppressed) tale of the Allies winning the war is an important plot thread. There's actually some nice subtleties in the way the inner book is plotted, in it's own way more of a reflection of the world they're in than the world being written about.

"The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" is perhaps the hardest to describe. The initial plot is simple enough - a drug tycoon selling hallucinogenic VR drugs to colonists desperate for escapism is threatened when a famous traveler returns from an alien solar system, hawking a competing drug. But with precognitives that can see the future and the complicated realities of the drugs, you end up dealing with far more than expected.

Dick has long been famed for his drug-infused writing, and "Palmer Eldritch" shows why he became so - reality is undermined without ever losing coherence or stuttering into cliches. And here it moves smoothly, even as Dick needs to reveal a lot of what is going on. The denouement escapes disappointment by leaving enough interesting questions while resolving the plot.

Bladerunner is rather well known as a movie, so it's interesting to see where it diverges from the source text "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". The Voigt-Kampff test, designed to separate humans from androids is a test of empathy, and the idea of empathy - for animals, and for fellow humans - is a foundational religious concept in the culture. It's a more central concept here than in the movie.

But how much of it is a difference in empathy, as opposed to a difference in the targets of empathy? Deckard is increasingly battered and dependent on obscure, sterile tests that lack much of the empathy and emotion they're supposed to test; and the subplot of Mercerism adds in a dimension that the movie couldn't have reasonably had. Much of the themes and basic plot carried over to the movie, but there's still a fair amount that's distinct here.

"Ubik" is another of the more elliptical works; it doesn't work quite as well as "Palmer Eldritch" does and ultimately ends poorly. Still, the tale of dubious realities and sparsely lived half-lives following death is still a reasonably good read. Dick oddly leaves a couple of plot drives largely on the floor as he switches up, but this is as much due to a surfeit of ideas as anything else. The slow deterioration and disappearances that move along with the novel are extremely creepy even without bringing in everything the book was setup with.

The Library of America edition itself is well made; the texts are slightly cleaned up (typos corrected) versions of the first printings, the paper is thin but good, and the binding is very nice. "Four Novels of the 1960s" is well worth the premium price, both in content and in this edition. ( )

The Man in the High Castle
Something I both love and hate about PKD is the banality of so much of his writing. While most other alternative histories about WWII tend to focus on military maneuvers or politicians, The Man in the High Castle is mostly about the everyday lives of various everyday people. This is kind of a genius move, because it allows Dick to create a nightmarishly vivid alternate reality--vivid in its banality. He shows how the Axis hegemony changes American culture and individual America psyches from the inside out. This makes the wham-bam ending all the more potent and unsettling. I've heard complaints about Dick's female characters, but Juliana sticks out as a positive one, in that the entire thing hinges on her, and she is as nuanced as the rest of the dramatis personae.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
David Cronenberg, please make a movie of this. Why are all Dick's books so short? This book is a mindfuck in a way that was probably totally original in the '60s but is sort of old hat now, in that we've all seen Yellow Submarine at this point. ( )