Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged Philip K. Dick, PKD on March 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Not everyone likes PKD’s mainstream novels, almost all of which remained unpublished in his lifetime. They are often criticised for being bleak, dull or meaningless. There are plenty of people who say that they love PKD’s SF, but hate his mainstream works.
I am not one of those people.
I have been, and remain, fascinated by [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged Philip K. Dick, PKD, voices from the street on March 22, 2008 | No Comments »
This book represents an impossibility: a new novel from a man who died in 1982. But here it is, Voices from the Street, a novel PKD wrote in 1952-3, when he was around twenty five years old. This is not the earliest surviving PKD manuscript; that honour goes to Gather Yourselves Together, which must surely [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged Now Wait for Last Year, Philip K. Dick, PKD on March 19, 2008 | No Comments »
I like to think of Now Wait for Last Year as the quintessential PKD novel. Not many people would regard this as an ‘essential PKD novel’ and yet most PKD fans regard this as a ‘good’ book. I like to think of the book as being at the top of the second rank of PKD [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged PKD, The Owl in Daylight on March 8, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Reading this book - which is basically a transcript of a long interview with Philip K. Dick - is like catching up with an old friend. These interviews, which were recorded by Gwen Lee, have the distinction of being the last interviews in Philip K. Dick’s life. That’s this book’s first claim to fame. The [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged Philip K. Dick, PKD, valis on March 1, 2008 | No Comments »
I fell out of love with VALIS by degrees. When I first read it in 1999, at the age of eighteen, I was entranced. I distinctly recall starting to read it late in the evening and continuing almost until dawn. But over the years, on subsequent readings, I have grown increasingly uneasy with the [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged Philip K. Dick, PKD, ubik on February 24, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Ubik, written in 1966 and published in 1969, is widely regarded as one of PKD’s best novels. But if you were to read the first 70 pages or so, it would be hard to imagine why. More on this later. At the time of Ubik’s composition, PKD was living with Nancy Hackett, who would soon [...]
Posted in Philip K. Dick, tagged Philip K. Dick, PKD, subterranean press, ubik on February 23, 2008 | 4 Comments »
The obsession with all things PKD led me to obtain around 50 books by or about the great man. This includes around 40 novels, 6 story collections and a couple of miscellaneous items: a biography, a book of interviews, a book of essays, and a book containing selections from PKD’s ‘Exegesis.’ Anyway, there are around [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Philip K. Dick, tagged Martian Time-Slip, Philip K. Dick, PKD on February 17, 2008 | No Comments »
Martian Time-Slip, first published in 1964, is widely regarded as one of PKD’s top-tier novels, although most people probably don’t think of it quite as highly as I do. I will explain why this is so. Martian Time-Slip was re-released in 1999 as part of Orion’s SF Masterworks series, when I was 18 years old. [...]
