The Ten Best Novels of Philip K. Dick

[OSJ]

Okay, leaving aside the fact that his five-volume Collected Stories is mandatory, here are my thoiughts on the great man's best novels:

 

1.Ubik (the first PKD novel I read, I was about 12 and it blew my mind.)

 

2. Valis (Probably the definitive PKD novel, how much is autobiographical is up for debate. I'll go with my pal Jim Blaylock's comment "I don't know if he really saw God, but if anyone deserved to it was PKD."

 

3. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (another mind blower)

 

4. Man in the High Castle (The fact that this book rates fourth is a testament to just how good PKD was. For most authors this would be their peak achievement, for PKD, it was just business as usual.)

 

5. The Man Who Japed (an early novel that gets overlooked, which is a damn shame)

 

6. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Or Bladerunner to the Philistines. Gets a lot of ink because of the film and K.W. Jeter's sequels, but #6 is about right (that's not a bad thing by any means).

 

7. Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (The paranoia is just palpable in this, still gives me shudders today.)

 

8. Galactic Pot-Healer (I may be very much in the minority, but I just loved this)

 

9. A Scanner Darkly (Were it any other author, this might be #1)

 

10. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (The triumphant conclusion to the Valis trilogy. Brilliant.

[twiztor]

of those listed, i've only read Androids (which is probably my favorite book ever) and A Scanner Darkly (which i actually liked the movie as much if not more). i have a collection of short stories which i absolutely ADORE. will have to check out some all of these.

[OSJ]

If you are only going to have one short story collection, I guess The Preserving Machine would be the one to have. However, I am a sucker for "complete stories of" sets, so I bought the Underwood/Miller set when it came out in 1987. Holy shit, I just looked up the set and it goes for around $1000 now. Fortunately, there is a current trade paperback set that is much more modestly priced.

[OSJ]

Looked it up, the trades are published by Citadel and on Amazon will run you around ten bucks or so.

[Control]

Listomania!

 

1. Man in the High Castle
2. A Scanner Darkly
3. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
4. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
5. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
6. Ubik
7. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
8. VALIS
9. Martian Timeslip
10. Clans of the Alphane Moon

[Control]

Also:

 

[OSJ]

 

Listomania!

 

1. Man in the High Castle
2. A Scanner Darkly
3. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
4. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
5. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
6. Ubik
7. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
8. VALIS
9. Martian Timeslip
10. Clans of the Alphane Moon

 

 

 

Yes, Martian Timeslip and Clanes of the Alphane Moon don't get enough love. Neither does Our Friends from Frolix 8, but I was limiting myself to ten. Actually, other than some posthumous stuff like The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, you really aren't wasting your time with ANY PKD book.

[Control]

Definitely have FLOW MY TEARS too high, though. Great narrative voice, fuller characters, but the plot is nonsensical, even by Dick's standards.

[OSJ]

Definitely have FLOW MY TEARS too high, though. Great narrative voice, fuller characters, but the plot is nonsensical, even by Dick's standards.

 

Sensible plotting was not exactly Phil's forte.

[JRGoldman]

It's probably a discussion worthy of it's own thread, but I think PKD is alone (or at least in rare company) in that he is a writer that puts out huge amounts of amazing work, but never really improves as a writer or fixes the issues that he had as a writer to begin with. Of course there are many writers who peaked early in there careers, but generally as they progressed you could see them either attempting to change their voice or work on things, or the issues that seemed charming in their early work became glaring in their later work. Dick, while he clearly had periods, basically never learned (or cared, perhaps) to sensibly plot, as OSJ so diplomatically put it. Dick was also never truly much of a wordsmith, although there is some really beautiful imagery in a lot of his stuff. Really, I think his career is wholly unique simply because Dick is a rare individual who can be classified as more of a pure creative force than a writer. I think to simply say "PKD is an author" is doing his work a pretty immense disservice. 

 

As for ranking, I know I would put MITHC as number one with a bullet. As for the rest of his out put, I think I tend to find some of his contemporaries a little more enjoyable. I like Delaney's short fiction more than Dicks by quite a wide margin, for example. 

[Control]

I dunno if I'd agree with that--his last books (after FLOW) are all fairly sensibly plotted (of what I've read, at least: SCANNER, VALIS, and TRANSMIGRATION). Dick is still having a lot of fun with narrative, but the cohesion in those is way beyond most of what he put out before.

[Liam]

As a Dick virgin (titter and all that), what should I be looking to read first?

 

I started with 'Man in the High Castle' a little while ago, but it didn't grab me straight away and I went on to something else. Was that a good starting point?

[OSJ]

It's probably a discussion worthy of it's own thread, but I think PKD is alone (or at least in rare company) in that he is a writer that puts out huge amounts of amazing work, but never really improves as a writer or fixes the issues that he had as a writer to begin with. Of course there are many writers who peaked early in there careers, but generally as they progressed you could see them either attempting to change their voice or work on things, or the issues that seemed charming in their early work became glaring in their later work. Dick, while he clearly had periods, basically never learned (or cared, perhaps) to sensibly plot, as OSJ so diplomatically put it. Dick was also never truly much of a wordsmith, although there is some really beautiful imagery in a lot of his stuff. Really, I think his career is wholly unique simply because Dick is a rare individual who can be classified as more of a pure creative force than a writer. I think to simply say "PKD is an author" is doing his work a pretty immense disservice. 

 

As for ranking, I know I would put MITHC as number one with a bullet. As for the rest of his out put, I think I tend to find some of his contemporaries a little more enjoyable. I like Delaney's short fiction more than Dicks by quite a wide margin, for example. 

 

 

Good points, all. When you compare Delaney or even Ellison to PKD in the 1960s, you have to factor that you're talking about guys that sweated bullets over every single word to get things just right as opposed to a guy that was banging out novels for ACE for $1500 a pop.

 

Control mentions the cohesiveness of Valis and Timothy Archer, when you consider that those were heavily autobiographical in nature the cohesiveness makes a great deal of sense. It was an odd world that PKD lived in, I sure wouldn't want to live there, but it is damned interesting to visit.

[OSJ]

As a Dick virgin (titter and all that), what should I be looking to read first?

 

I started with 'Man in the High Castle' a little while ago, but it didn't grab me straight away and I went on to something else. Was that a good starting point?

 

Dunno, my starting point was Ubik (which probably explains LOT). I'd suggest grabbing one of the short story collections and see what direction that takes you. And despite the fact that JR and I both love MITHC, I don't think of it as a typical PKD novel, so the answer as to whether or not it's a good starting point would have to be "no".

[Control]

Also, really, I'd say the first 30-40 pages of Dick's novels are usually the weakest. He rarely starts off strong.

I might suggest SCANNER as a first book

[OSJ]

Also, really, I'd say the first 30-40 pages of Dick's novels are usually the weakest. He rarely starts off strong.

I might suggest SCANNER as a first book

 

Can't argue with that. I have an inordinate amount of fondness for his late 1950s - 1960s "minor" works such as mentioned above, but Scanner should have won the Hugo.

[Graham Crackers]

 

 

Listomania!

 

1. Man in the High Castle
2. A Scanner Darkly
3. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
4. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
5. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
6. Ubik
7. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
8. VALIS
9. Martian Timeslip
10. Clans of the Alphane Moon

 

 

 

Yes, Martian Timeslip and Clanes of the Alphane Moon don't get enough love. Neither does Our Friends from Frolix 8, but I was limiting myself to ten. Actually, other than some posthumous stuff like The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, you really aren't wasting your time with ANY PKD book.

 

Only posthumous Dick I've read is Radio Free Albemuth and it is one of my favorites. I will say that while admitting that I've actually never read VALIS which has a similar plot and is supposedly much better.