Sigh, I should just have read the short stories, they are much better than the rest of his work.
The huge advantage of these short pieces of fiction isSigh, I should just have read the short stories, they are much better than the rest of his work.
The huge advantage of these short pieces of fiction is that Dick can´t endlessly drivel about pseudo philosophical topics and getting high and enlightened all the time like in all of his novels and tells real stories instead, making it the best parts of his work. Seriously, I was never really convinced that Dick came just close to the other titans of Sci-Fi and the many unknown, underrated authors nobody talks about today, but this short story collections showed that he could be ingenious, but just if focused on a shorter format. And, well, his mind probably still not so destroyed by drug induced madness and paranoia.
I may read the other 3 collections over the coming years, because it´s still Dick and no real pleasure to read as it´s more a collection of weird, eccentric writing experiments than normal literature, I will need breaks between. And think about the importance of not to do hard drugs and lurk on how it influenced his muse.
I´ve read very much Sci-Fi, which leads me to the conclusion that there are the two groups of the maybe and definitively ingenious Sci-Fi authors. The definitive ones are Lem, Clarke, Capek, Verne, Asimov, some unknown classic and new authors and the maybes are Heinlein, Dick, and some classics. It´s interesting that they are similar controversial as beat poets like Kerouac and all this kind of arty, experimental, pop psychology, fringe philosophy, or over the top literature stuff.
Or, maybe the best example, try to find someone who has a substantial problem she/he can point the finger at in the case of the real prodigy authors close to everyone enjoys. This is often accompanied by the feeling that it must be impossible for normal authors to write such literature, an impression many of the overhyped authors can´t awake.
There are other books dealing with drug addiction that tell a whole story and not just the introspection of the protagonist balancing next to the clifThere are other books dealing with drug addiction that tell a whole story and not just the introspection of the protagonist balancing next to the cliffs on insanity by using Dicks´ stylistic trademarks consciousness, parallel realities, illusion, perception, madness,…
Like most of Dicks´ novels, it is focused on one character and his mental problems, combined with the description of highs, illusions, and hallucinations with a sudden ending and many whats? and whys? while reading. It´s difficult to read, one gets a piece of information or disinformation, nothing is happening, then suddenly everything happens too quickly, it´s tricky to follow the whole thing and the end is so constructed, not pre implemented in the whole story and unlikely.
The Sci-Fi element got completely lost in this one, except for some magic cloak style and I still remember how long I waited for the ending until it suddenly erupted and ended the novel far too early at a point where it could have unfolded instead.
I added these paragraphs to my review of „Do Androids dream of electric sheep“ (still to come) too, because it fits for both novels.
Just as „A scanner darkly“, the novel shows that Dick was a highly overrated and overhyped writer, I will spontaneously call him Kazuo Ishiguro of Sci-Fi, whose novels I disliked so much that I first didn´t even wanted to add them to the library. Wait a moment, one of my inner voices just told me that I did yet delete them for the sake of my peace of mind and mental sanity.
I´ve read tons of sci-fi and just don´t get what people see in Dick and Heinlein, it´s not even social sci-fi because everything is so stereotypical, or illogical, full of authors' voice, both unplotted and without realistic character motivations. Just as if they wrote down whatever came to their mind without caring about the conventions and rules of the art of writing real, great, worldbuilding space opera sci fi, or meta social sci fi or full dystopian sci fi, or anything that has more than 2 grains of sci-fi trope elements, and not just egocentric, eccentric, very average novels with tiny amounts of fantastic elements and much drivel and delusion.
The 2 strange weirdo uncles problem: They are, especially in comparison to the true big three of sci-fi, Asimov (incredible worldbuilding, wit, innuendos, and connotations en masse, perfect pacing) Clarke ( über epic language, a positive interpretation of Lovecrafts´ big, dangerous old ones, subtle social criticism), and Lem (everything great about Asimov and Clarke conmpressed and so complex that it blows my poor, little mind whenever I reread it)the 2 strange uncles of the genre nobody wants to invite, but has to, because it would be too unfriendly and the aunt is quite ok at least. So the one is wasted, drunk or on drugs, mentally ill or extremely unstable, promoting pseudo fringe philosophical drivel about conscience and reality, conspiracy theories, alternate realities, and timelines, uchronias while he is losing the red line and inner logic of his strange ideas until he finishes with an extremely unsatisfying and far fetched conclusion nobody except of him understands. The other one is arbitrarily and unpredictably switching between extreme political and economic ideologies and ideas he is hardlinering and proselytizing about, while his views about women, gays, and sexuality are insulting half of the family, until he finishes his endless monologues without referring to any details, facts, or integrating complex interwoven character arcs. Family gatherings suck.
The idea of the one wonder-substance, superdrug, holy grail, dietary supplement,… to rule or enhance them all is an old one, but it needed Dicks´tendeThe idea of the one wonder-substance, superdrug, holy grail, dietary supplement,… to rule or enhance them all is an old one, but it needed Dicks´tendency to integrate mental illness, illusion, conspiracy, different realities and madness in the mix to make it a new one. So what to think about this?
I like this one more than „Do androids dream of electric sheep.“, because the plot is so dense, the ideas wrapped around it ingeniously and probably because Dick had so many drug experiences that writing about a topic like that was simply his thing.
The interpretations could go in all directions, biochemical, religious, pharmaceutic, transcendental, whatever one prefers and I will choose the economic one by saying that we are already running on so many wonder substances like the marvelous caffeine and that tech will someday bring us something close to a real ubik. Probably including some time travel, Psi and mind uploading to that Dick´s vision can become reality.
I added, or at this moment more precisely , will add this part to my review of „Do Androids dream of electric sheep“ too, because it´s appropriate and fitting for both novels.
The writing style is typical, one red line, no real subplots, the ending is quite kind of unsatisfying (looking at you, Man in the high castle.), it often gets confusing and it´s difficult to differentiate if it´s ingenuity or the authors' illumination. All of that are reasons why Dick is more controversial and not so universally acclaimed a grandmaster of Sci-Fi and I am more on the side of his critics. If one looks at the worldbuilding and complexity of all the other behemoths, Dick seems average, with the only hobbyhorse of dealing with consciousness, reality and the mentioned topics and some novels feel as if he just wrote them for the money (he needed) without real intrinsic motivation. I would call him, and I hardly ever do that because it is not nice, overrated. In this regard, he is more like the Nobel price, pseudo-intellectual, overhyped, higher literature stuff and less like pure, true, entertaining fiction. To write not understandable and confusing to seem deep and arcane is much easier than to write entertaining, suspenseful and yes, true, stereotypical following the rules of the genre. But that´s one of the key elements of why we love certain genres and tinkering around with conventions while writing 60 pages a day under the influence of LSD and amphetamines brings him in the corner of Kerouac and consorts and „first thought best thought.“
Dicks´ novels don´t feel coherent, there are no satisfying resolutions, just more and more mysteries and open questions and nothing gets answered and much feels unfinished. It's no bad writing, I just wouldn´t highly recommend it, because it are no fun reads and if Dick would have been a bit soberer and invested more time in developing satisfying, believable plots, that could have been great. What annoys me the most are the great moments and ideas that are followed by unanswered questions, unreliable protagonist behavior or losing the overview of what is happening.
A direct comparison with other grandmasters of Sci-Fi and what they have revolutionized shows the flaws even clearer. Heinlein with amazing military science fiction, Asimovs´robots and some of the first space opera, Clarkes unbelievable language and subtility, Pohl with his worldbuilding, Gibson with Cyberpunk, not to name all the newer authors, and Stanislaw Lem. Especially he would have deserved the same and more attention and appreciation as Dick and should be named in a row with Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein because he wrote revolutionary brilliant at Clarkes´ level and was really funny in other novels and short stories, highly recommended literature, he is unique. All those authors were able to write entertaining, unique, tropeforming, philosophical, and with metaplots that come all together to a satisfying and logical ending, something Dick was incapable of, because he didn´t construct a universe, just fragments not fitting together and of extremely varying quality.
Of course, it may be a question of personal taste and preference, but I have read so much great Sci-Fi, hundreds of novels, that it feels inappropriate to name him in a line with those works and I felt really unsatisfied after having read any of his novels that are all closer to psychological mindf*** mystery whodunnit whatever crossover hybrid than to real Sci-Fi and with less real genre-typical elements in them. All the giants were true intellectuals and able to endlessly talk about any tiny detail or their works and its meaning and sense and it would interest me if Dick would have been able to give answers to complex questions about his work.
Dick, did you really just wasted a perfect plot by endlessly driveling about pseudo philosophical deeper meaning of art while being unable to establisDick, did you really just wasted a perfect plot by endlessly driveling about pseudo philosophical deeper meaning of art while being unable to establish other plotlines, any major action, suspense, believable characters with comprehensible motivations to let the mess culminate, again, in just ending the novel in the middle of nowhere without anything, resolution, explanation, maybe an excuse for publishing something like that?
This thing is truly completely overrated, the weaknesses of Dicks´writing that can be compensated by great ideas in „Do androids dream of electric sheep“, „Ubik“, and other novels escalate close to illegibility because he simply doesn´t seem to have made an effort to make it a good novel, just money with it. Drugs can be damn expensive if they are not made homegrown Heisenberg´s DIY style…
This is like calling something a romantic novel and writing nothing about love or a war novel without fighting or a fantasy novel without magic or, in this case, an uchronia Sci-Fi novel without alternative timelines, tech, a plot, sense, action, freaking nazis, believable characters, what a mess. As it´s often the case with such books, I already felt that it won´t end well, because it stayed slow during the last third and culminated in absolutely nothing senseful. The man in the high castle is the prime example of why Dick can´t be named with the other behemoths of Sci-Fi, because they didn´t produce such messes, built meta-universes and timeless tropes instead and they loved their work and filed it to perfection and would have never dared to publish something like that. This thing is not just very average and loveless, it´s simply an insolence towards readers that trust an author to not publish something that has both no sense and no ending and... but I am repeating myself.
I have read a great many Sci-Fi novels and that was one of the very few that left me very unsatisfied, read one of the other 2 I mentioned, but avoid this one, it will just disappoint you. Dick was quite a dick to publish that concontion.
I added these last paragraphs to my review of „A scanner darkly“ too, because it fits for both novels.
Just as „A scanner darkly“, the novel shows that Dick was a highly overrated and overhyped writer, I will spontaneously call him Kazuo Ishiguro of Sci-Fi, whose novels I disliked so much that I first didn´t even wanted to add them to the library. Wait a moment, one of my inner voices just told me that I did yet delete them for the sake of my peace of mind and mental sanity.
I´ve read tons of sci-fi and just don´t get what people see in Dick and Heinlein, it´s not even social sci-fi because everything is so stereotypical, or illogical, full of authors' voice, both unplotted and without realistic character motivations. Just as if they wrote down whatever came to their mind without caring about the conventions and rules of the art of writing real, great, worldbuilding space opera sci fi, or meta social sci fi or full dystopian sci fi, or anything that has more than 2 grains of sci-fi trope elements, and not just egocentric, eccentric, very average novels with tiny amounts of fantastic elements and much drivel and delusion.
The 2 strange weirdo uncles problem: They are, especially in comparison to the true big three of sci-fi, Asimov (incredible worldbuilding, wit, innuendos, and connotations en masse, perfect pacing) Clarke ( über epic language, a positive interpretation of Lovecrafts´ big, dangerous old ones, subtle social criticism), and Lem (everything great about Asimov and Clarke conmpressed and so complex that it blows my poor, little mind whenever I reread it)the 2 strange uncles of the genre nobody wants to invite, but has to, because it would be too unfriendly and the aunt is quite ok at least. So the one is wasted, drunk or on drugs, mentally ill or extremely unstable, promoting pseudo fringe philosophical drivel about conscience and reality, conspiracy theories, alternate realities, and timelines, uchronias while he is losing the red line and inner logic of his strange ideas until he finishes with an extremely unsatisfying and far fetched conclusion nobody except of him understands. The other one is arbitrarily and unpredictably switching between extreme political and economic ideologies and ideas he is hardlinering and proselytizing about, while his views about women, gays, and sexuality are insulting half of the family, until he finishes his endless monologues without referring to any details, facts, or integrating complex interwoven character arcs. Family gatherings suck.
What differentiates humans from androids, if there is any difference at a certain point of technological progress, is the main question of this botchyWhat differentiates humans from androids, if there is any difference at a certain point of technological progress, is the main question of this botchy novel.
Very personal opinions fans of Dicks´work might find offending and nasty.
Prodigy or overrated There are two options, to see Dick as an ingenious literary prodigy, writing novels so densely packed that they can´t be understood without rereading and diving deeper into the complexity of the stories. Others think that he is completely overrated and I am standing somewhere between the lines, but instead of talking about positive things such as the immense influence Dicks´interest in philosophy in young years and his drug consumption had on writing quite a kind of Lovecraftian Sci-Fi, similar egocentric and weird, but packed with deep thoughts and very difficult to understand innuendos, a kind of writer philosopher in the footsteps of all those bearded thinkers of the past, I want to focus on the aspects I didn´t like so much and didn´t have to think of when reading other Sci-Fi classics.
I read „A scanner darkly“ by Dick years ago and had similar thoughts, so here they are again in full redundancy. I promise (lie!), I don´t recycle genre specific realizations as if it was nothing. No, but seriously, I´m somewhat trying to get a more objective view on a writing style I just can´t get warm with. So let´s pimp the old thoughts.
An idea what people with different tastes might like about him One can see everything in this writing, it´s so vague that one can do any kind of subjective interpretation, it´s an intellectual riddle to find the hidden meaning and everyone can see something else in it. That´s a bit like with special music tastes, subjectively heaven or hell, although there are the universally acclaimed megahits close to everybody loves and other genres that make the ears of most listeners bleed. Asimov, Clarke, Lem, Capek, etc. are multi selling platin global evergreen hits, Heinlein (some works, not all) and Dick are more like strange Scandinavian death metal or industrial instrumental progressive construction noise. Or take food, everybody loves a pizza or (veggie) burger, but who eats Haggis or English food in general? See?
Maybe try out more, longer, and better plots? The writing style is typical, one red line, no real subplots, the ending is quite kind of unsatisfying (looking at you, Man in the high castle.), it often gets confusing and it´s difficult to differentiate if it´s ingenuity or the authors' illumination or paranoia. All of that are reasons why Dick is more controversial and not so universally acclaimed as a grandmaster of Sci-Fi and I am more on the side of his critics. If one looks at the worldbuilding and complexity of all the other behemoths, Dick seems average, with the only hobbyhorse of dealing with consciousness, reality, and the mentioned topics and some novels feel as if he just wrote them for the money (he needed) without real intrinsic motivation. Not for the art, just for the cash, not even having enough financial space to at least make them good.
Close to fantastic realism, high brow, and Nobel Prize trash. I would call him, and I hardly ever do that because it is not nice, overrated. In this regard, he is more like the Nobel prize, pseudo-intellectual, overhyped, higher literature stuff and less like pure, true, entertaining fiction. To write not understandable and confusing to seem deep and arcane is much easier than to write entertaining, suspenseful, and yes, true, stereotypical following the rules of the genre. But that´s one of the key elements of why we love certain genres and tinkering around with conventions while writing 60 pages a day under the influence of LSD and amphetamines brings him into the corner of Kerouac and consorts and „first thought best thought“ madness. Who needs stinking editing, rewriting, or even planning and plotting before writing? Completely overrated.
No big picture or satisfying conclusion that glues everything together Dicks´ novels don´t feel coherent, there are no satisfying resolutions, just more and more mysteries and open questions, and nothing gets answered, and much feels unfinished. It's no bad writing, I just wouldn´t highly recommend it, because it are no fun reads, and if Dick would have been a bit soberer and invested more time in developing satisfying, believable plots, that could have been great. What annoys me the most are the great moments and ideas that are followed by unanswered questions, unreliable protagonist behavior, or completely losing the overview of what´s happening. Not to forget the running get of making the reader angry by ridiculous ends and no conclusions.
Look at the real behemoths A direct comparison with other grandmasters of Sci-Fi and what they have revolutionized shows the flaws even clearer. Heinlein (his good works) with amazing military science fiction, Asimovs´robots and some of the first space operas, Clarkes unbelievable language and subtility, Pohl with his worldbuilding, Gibson with Cyberpunk, not to name all the newer authors, and especially Stanislaw Lem and Karel Capek who are close to unknown. Especially they would have deserved the same and more attention and appreciation as Dick and should be named in a row with Asimov, Clarke, and, somewhat, Heinlein because they wrote revolutionary brilliant at Clarkes´ level and were really funny in other novels and short stories, it´s highly recommended literature, totally unique. All those authors were able to write entertaining, unique, tropeforming, philosophical, and with metaplots that come all together to a satisfying and logical ending, something Dick was incapable of, because he didn´t construct a universe, just fragments not fitting together and of extremely varying quality.
A final, failing attempt to be more objective Of course, it may be a question of personal taste and preference, but I have read so much great Sci-Fi, hundreds of novels, that it feels inappropriate to name him in a line with those works and I felt really unsatisfied after having read any of his novels that are all closer to psychological mindf***ing, pardon my language, mind penetrating mystery whodunnit whatever crossover hybrid progressive alternative indie crap than to real Sci-Fi and with less real genre-typical elements in them. All the giants were true intellectuals and able to endlessly talk about any tiny detail of their work and its meaning and sense and it would interest me if Dick would have been able to give answers to complex questions about his novels. If he remembered writing them at all.
Mario the lone bookwolf
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