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Title: Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik
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Manufacturer: Library of America
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| Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik by Library of America WHETHER FAN OR NEWBIE, THIS IS A MUST-HAVE | The Library of America (LoA) has issued a volume of Philip K. Dick's novels from the 1960, and in so doing has legitimized PKD as a "classic" American author -- in this case an author of science fiction. You can get this volume by subscribing to the LoA, or by getting it thru Amazon, which at this time is far the cheaper method. (The main difference between the two vols. is that the LoA version comes in blue cloth with a slipcase, while the release to bookstores -- Amazon included -- is a regular hardback with a dust jacket.)
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE does not take place in the future, as conventional sci-fi does. It is set in the time and place Dick wrote it -- San Francisco in the early 1960s. It is the past that has changed. FDR was assassinated in 1936; his successor, President John N. Garner, remained too isolationlist to re-arm America in the face of growing Nazi and Japanese threats. As a result, the USA lost World War Two; the eastern and midwestern parts of American going to the Nazis and the Pacific Northwest to the Japanese. In between lies a Rocky Mountain redoubt called the "CSA," chief city Denver, which is where the novel's multiple, shocking climaxes take place.
HIGH CASTLE has compelling plotworks along two story lines, but what the initial reader will notice is how the Japanese influence postwar San Francisco and how, eventually, they stop being the dictators as much as gentle giants atop of the government and business elite. The story with the Germans in the East is far more gruesome, and fortunately for us is related by one character, a Jew "in the closet," because the Japanese-held CSA would probably have extradited him to the Nazi East Coast for, apparently, what we all fear from Nazis.
THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH takes place in the "not-too-distant future," on an Earth that has almost globally-warmed itself to death. The main character lives in a co-op block in "Marilyn Monroe," a suburb of New York City. On a normal day, the temperature hits 180 degrees F. and ordinary people go and come only after dark, or with the help of intermediaries like pre-chilled taxis.
PKD was good friends with sci-fi author Robert Heinlein, and the Heinlein touch is apparent not only in the satiric tone of the novel but in the neologisms Dick invented. He saw the rise of blogs, although he called them "homeo-papes" (short for papers). Even though many of the terms took different names, the prescient point is that Dick foresaw and foretold them. And the new monikers are easy to figure out though a bit startling -- part of the fun IMHO. The hero, who is Palmer Eldritch's enemy, finds himself drafted and sent to a chilly moon of Jupiter by the resettlement-happy United Nations. Desparate refugees clinging to these moons are truly happy only when ingesting hallucinogens by chewing a specialty lichen!
DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? was the origin for the movie BLADE RUNNER. As usual, Dick did not warn of a post-atomic world; neither did he foretell a slick, high-tech and comfortable future. Insted, the grungy L.A. of near history was well presented by director Ridley Scott in BLADE RUNNER. The plot is driven by a Raymond Chandler-esque detective story, but as often happens in PDK literature, a philosophical question emerges: what is human, anyway? Is a machine (android) tuned to be a human and act human of the same stature as a human?
UBIK, first published in 1969, was Dick's most far-out novel to date. It is an imagining of spiritual realities distracting from and then supplanting the ordinary humdrum of unpleasant reality. In essence it takes themes he raised in PALMER ELDRITCH and rode them far into speculation. But the novel is amazingly fun and easy to read for all that.
If, after reading this product, you find yourself interested in this compelling man and his struggles with poverty and schizophrenia (and of course how he hatched many of his ideas!), take a look at the Afterword of this LoA volume, because it really is a nice tight biography of Philip K. Dick.
Want to read more? The LoA has a companion volume with five of PKD's novels of the 1960s and 1970s. Ready for short stories? THE PHILIP K. DICK READER is new, fresh, and packs in lots of stories, including "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," the inspiration for the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie TOTAL RECALL. Also "The Minority Report," which title Hollywood did not change for the movie. Do not look for biographical or critical comment in THE PHILIP K. DICK READER, though; the cost of the book's efficiency is the fact that it has no commentary or biography, just the stories themselves.
| | Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik by Library of America Wonderful Product | This is a great book! The stories are a good selection of Dick's work and arranged in a logical order, ranging from the odd in the beginning to down-right bizarre by the end. I recommend it, whether you're an old fan or new to his writing.
My only qualm, thus four out of five stars, are the tissue-thin pages. They are delicate and easy to tear, and I repeatedly had to go back because I turned two or three pages not one. But the binding, spine, and covers are all topnotch, so I guess that makes up for it.
peace
bwc | | Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik by Library of America A window into the 60's, as well as the future | | I rarely read science fiction, but that was before I was introduced to the work of Philip K. Dick. His prose is clean and precise. His vision of the future from a 1960's standpoint can in one paragraph be eerily right-on and in the next, quaint. It's a future where typewriters and moon colonies, cigarettes and time travel, can all co-mingle seamlessly and believably. | | Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik by Library of America Four Ways to Pry at Reality | This was the first time I read anything by Dick, and I wasn't disappointed. I have reviewed each novel individually already - and you may wonder why I give this book a five-star rating when none of the novels actually received five stars from me on an individual basis. Well, as a collection I think it's great, and as individual novels, well it wasn't equally as great, but I hope you see what I mean.
"The Man in the High Castle" is about reality and how it would be if World War II had been lost by the Allies.
"The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" is about a colonial world in which a certain drug is used to allow the colons to escape the harsh reality of their life on Mars. Here, reality is questioned from the point of view of altered-states of consciousness, such as happens with drugs. Eldritch is someone who went to the end of the known universe, and came back after 20 years or so of absence. But who really came back... He comes back with a new drug, more powerful than the one hitherto used. Yet, there's something fishy about it. Eldritch is some kind of God, but malevolent, perhaps; at any rate, it is frightening. An impressive reality-doubting novel.
"Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?" is the novel that was the basis of the movie "Blade-Runner", one of the best movies in existence. I believe the novel to be inferior to the movie, however, but it also contains a lot of material that the movie did not use; so even if you saw the movie a billion times, reading the novel will be worth it. The whole "Mercerism" thing you never heard of if you only saw the movie, for instance.
"Ubik" is another novel about virtual realities and the manipulations thereof. It shares similarities with "Eldritch" in that the theological and philosophical concerns are very close. In other words, the idea that reality is a manipulation, and that the whole thing is orchestrated by some malevolent entity.
I absolutely recommend this book for anyone who wants a taste of Dick - no pun intended - if only because LOA has the best of books out there in the printing world, and because this hardcover is just the best; and a quick perusal of the paperback covers that people give Dick's novels will convince you that you want this edition over anything else (indeed, two thirds of the covers I have seen for his novels in paperbacks are plain simple hideous).
| | Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik by Library of America Great buy f Dick's later works | | This was one of my early reads of Dick's works and the 4 novels came across with mixed feelings. I was somewhat disappoiinted with "The Man in Highcastle" because of the pace and conclusion. But Dick does an excellent job, even with this work, in making the reader think. "The Three Stigmata..." was my favorite in that you are immersed in totally different realities and rules without knowing which one you are in at any given time. This is also the case with "Ubik" which was totally entertaining and the quick pace and plot lines never let you put it down. "Do Androids dream..." has the recurring robot, androids could be harmful theme with an interesting ironic twist as the hero owns a robotic animal but yearns for the real thing. Dick's works are a dark comedy read in science fiction, but always entertaining and presenting a creative approach from both the author and the reader. Based on other novels and short stories, this represents the best of Dick's efforts that I have read so far. | | Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik by Library of America Book Description | | Known in his lifetime primarily to readers of science fiction, Philip K. Dick (1928-82) is now seen as a uniquely visionary figure, a writer who, in editor Jonathan Lethem's words, "wielded a sardonic yet heartbroken acuity about the plight of being alive in the twentieth century, one that makes him a lonely hero to the readers who cherish him." Posing the questions "What is human?" and "What is real?" in a multitude of fascinating ways, Dick produced works-fantastic and weird yet developed with precise logic, marked by wild humor and soaring flights of religious speculation-that are startlingly prescient imaginative responses to 21st-century quandaries. This Library of America volume brings together four of Dick's most original novels. The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won the Hugo Award, describes an alternate world in which Japan and Germany have won World War II and America is divided into separate occupation zones. The dizzying The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) posits a future in which competing hallucinogens proffer different brands of virtual reality. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), about a bounty hunter in search of escaped androids in a postapocalyptic future, was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Ubik (1969), with its future world of psychic espionage agents and cryogenically frozen patients inhabiting an illusory "half-life," pursues Dick's theme of simulated realities and false perceptions to ever more disturbing conclusions. As with most of Dick's novels, no plot summary can suggest the mesmerizing and constantly surprising texture of these astonishing books. |
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