Philip K. Dick : tormented genius, lots of fun

 

 Philip K. Dick android missing head in metro, by NikiSublime

Philip K. Dick. Greatest among the great. Biggest imagination ever, although he often drew upon his own life experiences and addressed the nature of drug abuse, paranoia and schizophrenia. Tormented writter often called "american Borges", obviously intended as a flattery. 44 published novels and 121 short stories, impossible to say which is the best: nevertheless those are the ones listed among Top 100 Sci-fi books in Sci-Fi Lists:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Filmed as Blade Runner, this PKD classic has lost none of its appeal over the years. Bounty hunter Rick Deckard tracks down renegade 'replicants' - almost-faultlessly lifelike androids created to fill the void left by the devastating World War. As usual, Dick keeps us guessing - and the hunter becomes the hunted. Must read novel. Let's see some covers:

The Man in the High Castle.

In 1962 the few surviving Jews live in fear and slavery is legal - all because America lost World War II. The story of The Man in the High Castle is about daily life under totalitarian Fascist imperialism. The victorious Axis Powers — Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany — are conducting intrigues against each other in North America, specifically in the former U.S., which surrendered to them once they had conquered Eurasia and destroyed the populaces of Africa.

Despite his visions and general craziness, Dick married five times, I don't know what that says exactly about him :-P

His first wife was Jeanette Marlin. During May 1948, Dick married her, divorcing six months later; he never saw her again. I haven't found any photo of her.

This is Dick's second wife, Kleo Apostolides Dick Mini. Married June 14, 1950 – divorced 1959. Dick as in Philip K. Dick, his first husband and Mini as in Norman Mini, second husband who she met because Philip introduced them. You can find a very interesting interview to Anne Mini, Kleo's daughter here.

3rd: April 1, 1959 - 1965 Anne Williams Rubinstein.
Child Laura Archer born February 25, 1960

4th: July 6, 1966 - 1972 Nancy Hackett. Child: Isa, born March 15,1967

5th: April 18, 1973, to Leslie (Tessa) Busby – divorced 1977
child: Christopher Kenneth, born July 25, 1973

Curious facts of Dick's life:

Everything began in Chicago, on the 16th of December, 1928. Philip Kindred and Jane Kindred Dick cried and wept for the first time in their lives. Jane died after 41 days, because of the carelessness of their mother, Dorothy Grant Kindred (who didn't take her to the hospital at the proper time, a money matter). Since then, Phil had a unconscious culpability complex and we can understand perhaps a bit more why he felt anger toward his parents. Moreover, Jane would be found in many phildickian writings later on. Phil's dad, Joseph Edgar Dick, had a nice job indeed: cutting the throats of pigs as an employee of the government. His mother censored official texts of the government's spokesmen. Here again, what feelings went through the young Dick about his parents? Censorship is one of the
most important features in Philip K. Dick's writings: distinguishing truth from falsehood, the real from the imagined.

To learn more: you can find a fascinating interview with Tessa, Chris and Ranea Dick here

To be continued (because he wrote all this wonderful novels):

Solar Lottery 1955

The World Jones Made 1956

The Man Who Japed 1956

Eye in the Sky 1957

The Cosmic Puppets 1957

Time Out of Joint 1959

Dr. Futurity 1960

Vulcan's Hammer 1960

The Man in the High Castle 1962 1963 Hugo Award Winner for Best Science Fiction Novel

The Game-Players of Titan 1963

The Penultimate Truth 1964

Martian Time-Slip 1964

The Simulacra 1964

Clans of the Alphane Moon 1964

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch 1965

Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along after the Bomb 1965

Now Wait for Last Year 1966

The Crack in Space 1966

The Unteleported Man 1966

The Zap Gun 1967

Counter-Clock World 1967

The Ganymede Takeover (with Ray Nelson) 1967

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968 Adapted for the motion picture, "Blade Runner."

Galactic Pot-Healer 1969

Ubik 1969

A Maze of Death 1970

Our Friends from Frolix 8 1970

We Can Build You 1972

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said 1974 1974 John W Campbell Memorial Award Winner

Confessions of a Crap Artist 1975

Deus Irae (with Roger Zelazny) 1976

A Scanner Darkly 1977

VALIS 1981

The Divine Invasion 1981

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer 1982

The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike 1984

Radio Free Albemuth 1985

Puttering About in a Small Land 1985

In Milton Lumky Territory 1985

Humpty Dumpty in Oakland 1986

Mary and the Giant 1987

The Broken Bubble 1988

Nick and the Glimmung (a children's novel) 1988

Gather Yourselves Together Written in 1950 (Published in 1994)

Lies, Inc. 1964 (Published 2004)

Voices From the Street Written 1953 (Published 2007)

Just Read: Strain,Time Riders and the Lovely Bones

Known to all, Guadalajara's pride, Guillermo del Toro, and Prince of Thieves's creator, Chuck Hogan, have collaborated in writting this crap of a book about a Boeing 777 that just after landing suddenly stops as dead as the whole of the passengers on board but four. But those passenger are not dead but... undead and a terrifying contagion menaces N.Y. and not only N.Y. but all the planet.

(pause to vomit)

O.K. then, time enough spent with this junk, let's go to the next.

Time Riders - Alex Scarrow

Three adolescents should have died but didn't. One at sea, one in a fire and one on a plane, yet moments before death someone misteriously appeared and said "Take my hand". They are not rescued, though, but recruited by an agency with only one purpose: to fix broken history. Because time travel is here, and there are those who would go back in time and change the past.

Alex Scarrow used to be a graphic artist and then he decided to be a computer games designer.

This is just adolescent literature but not good, for that matter.

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973" 

So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -her friends trading rumors about her dissappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her griefstricken family unraveling.
Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense and even joy.
The point of view of the omniscient first person narrator is kind of innovative and refreshing and achieves more beauty than one could hope for giving the disturbing subject aproached.
Not junk this one. Nice to read and beautiful and, oddly enough given the story with which the book begins, leaves a good taste at the end.

Just read: Transition, by Iain (not M.?) Banks

Here starts the list of the last books I've read. No masterpiece to be found among them but a bit of fun and some surprises garantized. Let's see them and remember them although they're not staying home with me and a long journey to the public library awaits them:

Iain Banks - Transition

The absence of the middle initial M in Iain Banks' name on the front cover suggests that Transition is being sold by his publisher as one of the author's mainstream works, as opposed to his equally successful science-fiction books.

In fact, this 24th novel from the critically and commercially successful writer makes that distinction almost completely obsolete, its complex and wildly imaginative storyline ostensibly set on Earth, but infused with such mind-boggling phenomena as to make that setting seem stranger than any alien planet.
The critics to review Scottish novelist Iain Banks’ new novel Transition can’t agree on whether the book is a masterpiece or a hunk of junk but I've had a lot of fun with it, although it's not a simple one to read, needs attention and patience. Banks creates here an universe of infinite different but related worlds, giving his mind free rein to create and describe all sorts of weird and wonderful alternatives to our society. Although the rapid changes of perspective often become frustrating and confusing, this is also a properly thrilling read. Well, as a matter of fact, perhaps I'll manage to find some place left in a shelf for this one.
Sinopsis:

"A world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse, such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organisation with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers? On the Concern’s books are Temudjin Oh, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice; and a nameless, faceless torturer known only as the Philosopher.
And then there’s the renegade Mrs Mulverhill, who recruits rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, hiding out from a dirty past in a forgotten hospital ward. As these vivid, strange and sensuous worlds circle and collide, the implications of turning traitor to the Concern become horribly apparent, and an unstable universe is set on a dizzying course."

You will find more (and better) here:
http://www.keepingthedoor.com/2009/09/08/iain-banks-transition-gets-mixed-reviews/
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/transition-by-iain-banks-1777592.html
http://www.iain-banks.net/uk/transition/