Is he the greatest author of all time, as well as the most salient?

>>24458371 (OP)
Yes. Don't miss out on The Galactic Pot-Healer, one of his best it turns out.

>>24458575
I read most of that, and it had a strong first half, but I put it down right before the planet was going to be destroyed because I had no fucking idea what was going on.

>>24458371 (OP)
What's the appeal?

>>24458581
Repeated mindfvcks.

>>24458579
There is some mystico-religious allegory going on there I think. Actually reminded me of Gene Wolfe, but also seems to prefigure his later Valis novels. Just finished it the other day and I'm still thinking about it.

PKD is, by far, my favorite writer of all time. He presents utterly fantastic ideas with a droll, deadpan style that only seems to cast the weirdness into sharper relief.

>>24458371 (OP)
Yes

>>24458371 (OP)
I've only read Do Androids, it was alright.

>>24458985
VALIS trilogy is his masterpiece

>>24458371 (OP)
He was a great author of his era. No more, no less

he's good at world building but from what I've read (minority report, UBIK) his stories fall apart by the end. both of those had very disappointing twists at the end (with Ubik I'm talking about the evil child ghost thing)

>>24458981
feels like he's being dishonest here desu
blade runner is a great film but it's nothing like his works or what he tried to say.

[Full discosure: I attended Berkeley High for about half a semester.]
Mr. Dick was addicted to amphetamines, and he admitted to domestic violence. He wrote to a friend about "dreadful violent fights...slamming each other around, smashing every object in the house."
I believe Neuromancer by William Gibson is a meta-fictional novel about Mr. Dick. Case, the main character, is an amphetamine user.
It is possible that Mr. Dick work functions as a pseudo-drug, inducing in the reader the same brain wave patterns characteristic of an amphetamine high.
It is possible that OP is responding to the pseudo-drug effects of Mr. Dick's work.
How would Mr. Dick arrive at such a talent? It is possible that his interactions with homosexuals in Berkeley, California informed his writing style.
We can also hypothesize that part of the amphetamine high is a matter of responding to changes in perception of human behavior. Amphetamines are known for making people violent and unpredictable, possibly triggering panic, anxiety, or paranoia.
Mr. Dick work may in fact be able to simulate these emotional and behavioral sensations through fictional storytelling. It is possible that through the use of drama and character development, and empathizing with the characters, that extreme states of consciousness can be generated in the reader's mind.
This would tend to put Mr. Dick in the category of mad literary scientist.
In fact, we may be tempted to refer to science fiction as psychotic fiction on the grounds that science fiction permits that author a much wider range of make-believe than is ordinary for the fiction novel.
How does Mr. Dick do it? That is a great question. I would answer with another question: Does Clarke Ashton Smith's work have the same effect? Or does it conjure up emotions that correspond to some other experience, drug or not?

No, he was a coward. If he had developed his courage, then he would've wrote about freedom fighters stealing or building atomic bombs and using them to achieve political ends. He would've justified mass murder of Chinese on the basis of spreading democracy, manifest destiny, and expansion of the territory of the USA. He would've slammed non-proliferation as an anti-democratic philosophy.
Today, Americans want non-proliferation to fail. They want Iranians to get the atomic bomb and commit mass murder against the Israeli jews. This is a far greater transformation of consciousness than anything found in Mr. Dick's work.
Working within the confines of appeasing Israel has failed. Working within the confines of non-proliferation has failed.
The terror of the mass murderer is preferable to the cowardice of non-proliferation. Cyberpunk and Mr. Dick's literary arc have ended in failure. Their work is a testament to the wretchedness of cowardice, and there is one personage that has become utterly intolerable: the jew that lives in fear of god. To live in fear of god is a sickening poison. To have the courage to commit mass murder with the atomic bomb is the antidote.

>>24458371 (OP)
>salient

>>24459260
This is your brain on judaism

>>24459260
Obvious israeli AI shill bot, need better captchas

>>24458371 (OP)
Not as good as Ellison, not as good as Vance.

I don't know about that but he's the greatest short story writer of the 20th century as well as the best sci-fi writer from the same peridod.
>b-but le south american hack Boreges!
Fuck off
>b-but le sad boy Crapver!
Fuck off
>b-but le hard sci-fi brats
Fuck off

We're living in Dickian world.

>>24459028
>blade runner is a great film but it's nothing like his works or what he tried to say
he didn't say blade runner was a 1 to 1 to his work and themes and "message." only that blade runner would have a profound and lasting positive effect on scifi.

>>24459466

his influence can't be understated

>>24459192
I love it when straight edge dudes talk about drugs. I'm not saying that taking drugs is good or cool or whatever but how about you write about things you have experience with?
"reading this makes the reader feel like he just went on a multi-day meth-binge"
W...what?!?!

>>24459329
>>24459342
Alright, let me state it plainly for all to see: we are ending Faulkner's curse: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1949/faulkner/speech/
Faulkner asks, "When will I be blown up?" and then carries on
>Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
Quite clearly, the excitement of mass political murder overrides the fear, uncertainty, and terror of non-proliferation.
Judaism is a losing battle. If we accept fear of proliferation into our hearts, then we also accept fear of god. Both fear of proliferation and fear of god must be cast out. We have a responsibility to lead, and that means learning how to build atomic bombs and building the strength, courage, and resolve to commit mass political murder.
It is not enough to fear atomic bombs and fear proliferation. We must act as though we controlled the switch that detonates the atomic bomb. We must decide when to use the atomic bomb to achieve and obtain our political objective, outcome, or goal. We must not have the idea that our society is some perfect kindergarten class. Death is all around us, it surrounds us, and so is dystopia and capitalism. Knowing this, we are willing to commit mass murder with the atomic bomb when it serves a political purpose. The excitement of political victory overrides the cowardice of non-proliferation.

>>24458985
I didn’t hate it but it didn’t live up to my expectations.

>>24459728
You don't understand the extent of Mr. Dick's genius, and you don't understand that Mr. Dick didn't have a talent for managing his genius.
The replicant in Blade Runner is actually a human being who uses drugs. Mr. Dick suggests that drug use leads to a mechanical cycle of behavior, changing the way a human being operates. Mr. Dick carefully uses religion, fictional electronic devices, and biblical material to evoke a comfortable world that we think is far outside our ordinary experience. It is through the use of these concepts and the frenetic, apprehensive, and skittish style of transitioning between them that we, the reader, get high. William Gibson reflected Mr. Dick's genius with the character of Case in Neuromancer. Written only two years after Mr. Dick's passing, Mr. Gibson seems to ask us: what links amphetamine use, electricity, and the brain? Why does the cyberpunk landscape seem so politically barren, and so influenced by organized crime? Mr. Dick has discovered certain laws or patterns of mental activity, he has arrived at certain truths regarding thought, but he doesn't perceive them, he only follows them, and in so following them, transmits—by mental induction—a sort of filtered amphetamine high. He's really asking us what happens to power, influence, and the individual when political repression has been taken to the utmost extreme, annihilating freedom. It is by trapping the mind that he is able to create drug-like sensations. It is by asking the question, "what does Mr. Dick eliminate from mental activity?" that we begin to uncover the secret to his craft.

>>24459752
give this a shot

>>24459260
If PKD wrote about that crap, I never would have read it. Seriously, name one writer that writes crap like that. "The Turner Diaries" is shit and therefore doesn't count.

>>24459780
You've never done a drug in your virgin little life, have you.

>>24460117
you should write about it
a mind-control cult gains access to an atomic bomb, and the atomic bomb travels around, carried by drone, and it blows up anyone that knows about it, and then the mind-control cult gets another atomic bomb, and they keep doing it, and sooner or later the entire world is under the control of a totalitarian mind-control cult, but not consciously, it's an entirely subconscious control, but there's a bug in the programming, and the bomb starts acting on its own, and then it travels to the residence of the cult leader and blows up, but the rest of the cult doesn't know, and the bug creates mind-control code that makes the other cult members think the cult leader is alive, so they get another bomb and load it on the drone, supposedly under the control of the cult leader, and the bomb goes off and murders the second in command at the cult, and eventually the atomic bomb drones wind up murdering everyone in the cult, causing untold amounts of damage, scorching the earth, destroying hundreds of city blocks, poisoning the environment with radiation, and leaving humanity utterly defenseless and ignorant of what has happened

>>24460130
thank you for reminding me to smoke a joint
I'm going to go smoke a joint now
if you later ask
>what are you smoking
you will know
even though you meant it rhetorically

i haven't come across an author with worse prose

>>24459782
Ironically, the only reason this overrated crap blew up was because of Blade Runner. And even Gibson himself worried it would make his novel look like hackery, but the film is what generated interest and carried the genre. And Gibson never had a success after it, his work becoming successively less interesting to the point he now writes alt-history democrat fanfic...

>>24458986
valis is undoubtedly fun. i've read it at least 5 times, it never gets old. transmigration is definitely one of his best books (although i think it gains a bit just by being so unusual in terms of the rest of his oeuvre). divine invasion doesn't really stand out. either way, none i think compares to his best 60s output.

>>24460240
he was an idea man. when his prose was interesting, as it frequently was, it was because it was expressing interesting ideas. he wasn't a great stylist though, no.

>>24460219
Your idea is like "The Turner Diaries", but even more unbelievable and lame. Thanks, but I can come up with my own ideas.

>>24460222
Marijuana is not a drug. I used to suck dick for coke. You ever suck dick for some marijuana?

>>24460240
You've completely missed the point. The deadpan delivery was deliberate & cast his fantastic and weird ideas into sharper relief. Talk about being filtered.

>>24460370
also i can go to the store and pick up an oz of dank bud rn with coke u have to order it off the dark web and then die because the courier gave u fentanyl instead

>>24460370
>I used to suck dick for coke

>>24460379
>he doesn't have a reliable dealer who comes to his door

>>24460382

>>24459782
Garbage.

>>24460240
I hear this all the time and I couldn't agree less.
>>24460376
This nigga knows what he's talking about. Irony suffuses nearly every one of Dick's books. The audience is meant to think, "WTF lol?"
>>24460439
Heil.

>>24460456
It's not for nothing that PKD is my favorite author. I strive to write as weird as he does, but I know I'm a pale imitation.

>>24458371 (OP)
no but he's pretty good

>>24460468
He was my favourite author when I was like 22.

The elimination of the political and the emotional video game console: a bridge from Blade Runner to William Gibson's Neuromancer and cyberpunk
-
Suppose for a minute that there are special emotions connected to the use of the atomic bomb, and that these emotions and all other emotions have been coded and loaded into an emotional video game console that you play with your mind. This would be like replacing the emotional centers of the brain and brainstem with a computer or artificial emotional processing implant. Moreover, those emotions corresponding to the use of the atomic bomb are subject to a non-proliferation regime. Therefore, the emotions of those using atomic bombs for political ends, whether real or fictional, have been locked away and cannot be accessed for any purpose whatsoever. What does this imply? In order to forbid mass political murder, the individual must carry on as if in a trance, a zombie like shell or husk, where the inner joy of peace and serene bliss has been scooped out like so much material prone to carcinogenesis, and replaced with artificial parts compatible with non-proliferation. Two characteristics of this transformation: elimination of the political realm, political consciousness, political language, and domination over emotion as a dictionary dominates language, control over emotion the way video game console input devices control the action of the characters in the video game world.
Cyberpunk is a new operating system for this zombie trance hardware. Through Mr. Dick and Mr. Gibson we can access a virtual world of possible combinations of escape, and we feel pleasure as we sink deeper and deeper into the trance. This pleasure is a matter of freedom because it allows us to be naughty without risking anything fundamental. It is the pleasure of virtual sin that draws us near, while still maintaining a fundamentally secure moral framework, that peculiar combination of freedom and security is the key to unlocking the future in the sense of maintaining non-proliferation. The raw underside of non-proliferation is that it is tailor made for communist aspirations, as it implies both denying the communists access to atomic weapons, if possible, and if not possible, then working with the communists to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
What most do not recognize, therefore, is that communism and cyberpunk are linked: the way cyberpunk conforms to non-proliferation implies that it will be essentially bait for communists. It is a piece of Western propaganda in the sense that the origin is the West and the purpose is to generate a new consciousness. Just because cyberpunk is communist bait does not mean that communism will survive. There is, to a certain extent, an unwillingness to take cyberpunk to its biological end: the production of a new sort of person, a man, who is immune to the demoralizing toxin of the cyberpunk world. Moral decay is meaningless to him, he is a drug user, he is a Chinese person in a white man's body

>>24461604
[continued]
The trajectory of Blade Runner, Neuromancer, and cyberpunk can be summed up in the following equation: adherence to non-proliferation + tolerance of East Asia and communism = importing culture from the Far East. There are at least three albums that form the vanguard of this cultural movement:
Hong Kong Express - HK
https://hkedream.bandcamp.com/album/hk
2814 - 新しい日の誕生 (Birth of a New Day)
https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/--18
Hong Kong Express - This
https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/this
This musical movement, part of vaporwave, is a major cultural shift away from political engagement and social change. We can hypothesize that non-proliferation means ignoring Western values and replacing them with Eastern values. Instead of channeling the raw material for social change, we simply dull the pain. What we find, shockingly, is that this means turning away from life and turning towards death. Even though cyberpunk appears to offer non-proliferation new life, all we find is a greater selection of ways to slowly commit suicide. This could be drugs, intoxicants, prostitution, crime, espionage, or any other of a multitude of new ways to avoid living. This means that instead of genuine living, non-proliferation offers us instead suspended animation. We now identify with the replicant of Blade Runner simply because we are unwilling to take the power that corresponds to the will to commit mass political murder with an atomic bomb. If only we had been willing to do this one thing, the one thing that breaks the non-proliferation glass, and pull the emergency lever, sounding the alarm, then we could've been a living human. As it is, our fear and cowardice doom us to an existence that is merely the non-living operation of a machine. At this point, our curiosity about non-proliferation ends, and we come to regard the similarities between accepting non-proliferation and going through life in a zombie-like haze or machine hum. The suffering and ennui have been perpetuated to the point where our curiosity about the fundamental nature of the capitalist dystopia cyberpunk world has been satisfied with enough Zen literature and expansion of hi-tech electronics industry. What separates man from machine has already been explored, and the discoveries have been catalogued. Unexpectedly, we have discovered the key to unlock control over the rate of biological evolution.

>>24462389
[continued]
It seems that the Western liberal tradition has been largely ignored in the non-proliferation experiment, that it was necessary to ignore it, and that the non-proliferation experiment has ended in failure. The task before us then is to reenergize Western liberalism and breathe new life into it, to bring about the liberal renaissance. The only question it left open was: how long would the cultural exploration of the perimeter of non-proliferation take? Non-proliferation is a bottle, and the contents inside are pressurized liberalism. The pressure is rising, and non-proliferation will destroy itself in its attempt to halt the progress of liberalism. Non-proliferation will give liberalism what it needs to overcome non-proliferation. It just so happens that, by holding on to dear life and touring animism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, Darwin's theory of evolution, Kant, Hegel, Marx, historical materialism, and pragmatism, we can build up what amounts to a theory linking scientific discovery with emotional and political currents. Non-proliferation has become unendurable, as unendurable as slavery, as unendurable as living in fear of death. Is it any wonder, then, then we may decode Blade Runner thus: to accept non-proliferation is to live as a replicant, to exist in a form that falls sort of genuine living, to reject non-proliferation is to live as a human, a blade runner, one who retires replicants, but does not kill them since they were never alive in the first place. The movie provides us with a helpful clue: Quite an experience to live in fear isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave. By connecting with Faulkner's curse, we can see how the wires are connected: Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? By understanding that Hannah Arendt gave a clue as to the ultimate fate of power, we can finally wake up from our stupor:
>By "Victory or Death," the Leviathan can indeed overcome all political limitations that go with the existence of other peoples and can envelop the whole earth in its tyranny. But when the last war has come and every man has been provided for, no ultimate peace is established on earth: the power-accumulating machine, without which continual expansion would not have been achieved, needs more material to devour in its never-ending process. If the last victorious Commonwealth cannot proceed to "annex the planets," it can only proceed to destroy itself in order to begin anew the never-ending process of power generation.
The Origins of Totalitarianism p. 146
https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism/page/n165/mode/2up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE
>What if God tries out a suit of clothes and then, for reasons best known to him, changes his mind?
(For full text)

To me PKD is someone who saw through the veil, akin to Jung. They have had access to something we might never know/understand and danced with madness as the price.
Valis introduced me to gnosis, just for that I owe him much.

>>24458371 (OP)
Hes certainly underappreciated and a great introduction into the beyond

>>24460379
If you weren't a straight-edge larper who never bought drugs on silk road you would know that every reliable dealer had a good rating and was interested in keeping it that way.
inb4: b...but dead customers can't leave bad ratings!
Yeah, sure, lets pretend that people don't talk and the word about a dealer that kills people with laced drugs wouldn't get out.
Let's ignore that it's in the best interest of dealers to not kill their paying customers, nice try, glowie.

>>24459028
Retard.

boomps

>>24459456
>Philip K. Dick, frustrated by Harlan Ellison's habitual lateness for a 1972 Westercon panel they were both scheduled to be on, physically picked Ellison up and carried him out of the green room (the backstage area for panelists), through the convention hall, and deposited him onto the stage where the audience was waiting. Ellison, known for being small in stature, was reportedly carried "like a suitcase" or "a ventriloquist's dummy."
Ellisonsisters...

>>24462630
Anon I understand why you are pretending that an average greedy dumbass dealing nigger has an IQ above room temperature - you have a room temperature IQ yourself - but you should try and be aware of ridiculous it looks.
>"people in drug business are NOT dumb"
You said you used to suck dick for coke, QED.

>>24463119
>You said you used to suck dick for coke, QED.
And your dumb ass didn't realize he was quoting Bob Saget's cameo in the 1998 stoner-comedy film Half Baked starring Dave Chappelle. Uncultured swine.

>>24463129
I don't watch nigger media.

>>24463131
Sure you don't, buddy.

>>24463138
>- Anon you didn't watch [niggerslop]!
>- Correct, I don't watch nigger slop.
>- Haha yeah, sure, of course. Man I know you do watch nigger slop, for sure.
Is that you, Barris?

>>24458371 (OP)
He had great talent, but wasted it most of the time for financial and personal reasons. His stories start out interesting but always fizzle out to a rushed mess when he ran out of drugs, time, and motivation. He excelled in short stories more so than novels.

>>24463144
Take your meds fool.

>>24463146
Androids, Stigmata, Scanner, Valis and Ubik are kino all the way through thougheverbeit.

I've read:
>Androids
>UBIK
>Scanner
>Stigmata
>High Castle
>Flow My Tears
>Dr. Bloodmoney
>We Can Build You
>Minority Report (it's a novelette so it counts)
also
>I've read most of Galactic Pot-healer
>never been able to get past the first few chapters of VALIS despite the constant praise it receives

>>24463131
Bob Saget is white. Besides, you already admitted to smoking pot, which is by far the most "black" drug out there. So why split hairs?

>>24463316
The blackest drug is crack though.

>>24463318
You watch too many movies.

>>24463146
>>24463150
So is Flow My Tears, his secret masterpiece

>>24459028
He’s saying that it is saying something new, so yeah, duh it’s not like what he originally tried for.

>>24458371 (OP)
I liked his schizophrenic lucidity.
reminds me of Nick Land
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2lR-igH67k

>>24464426
>secret
I know what you mean. It's definitely one of his best in terms of prose. There are some very kino and heartfelt passages in there. I'd rec this to anyone saying his prose is shit.

>>24464426
>lol it was all a drug dream
Oh, fuck off

>>24465165
Really? Thats what single-digit iqlets think the book is about?

>>24465157
Theres that side, the prose and what i consiser the strongest cast of characters in all of his novels, but there's also something truly mysterious about the novel that i felt, that ive seen other's feel while reading it and that PK Dick felt about it. There's a story behind the story that is being told here.

>>24458371 (OP)
There is absolutely no chance this man doesn't blow homeless dudes under highway overpasses. Peak homosexual aesthetic. Is this man a known homo or what? I would comfortably bet $10,000 this man is gay.

He certainly is the most memorable and most studied SF writer.

>>24459456
>not as good as these two hacks

>>24465329
I think you're right brother. Like how the first scene when Jason or whatever his name is gets mortally wounded by that tentacled alien thing his girlfriend sicc'd on him, doesn't ever come up again and doesn't really segue well with the rest of the novel either. It's like he changed dimensions. Which is what that drug the punk chick takes right. That's what the entire plot revolves around.

>>24463318
No its lean and/or jenkum

>>24463115
Notice how you can't say anything bad about Vance...