Weekend rambling

As a teaser, I will offer up the opinion that what I'm reading for book 6 is probably the best book I've read in a long time. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. And that will have to do for now.

I mentioned Dick's work in brief yesterday. I've rambled on about him before, but he's probably worth a brief re-visit. I've only read a few of his stories (to my great shame), but I've enjoyed just about all the ones I've read. I like his short fiction quite a bit (mostly because I feel the short story is just about the perfect medium) as it gives you an excellent boiled down version of what he's all about. And it's mostly drugs, insanity, paranoia and humanity. Well, ok, I'm being a little facetious, but only a little. His work does do an excellent job of looking at what it means to be human though. And he's one of those "sci-fi" writers that really helps show just what science fiction can do for literature. It's not the red headed step child that mainstream literati try and present it as.

But I digress. I shall kick the soapbox back over in the corner. If you haven't read anything by Dick, then you can probably start in a couple places. A lot of his work has been turned into film. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is probably the most notable instance as it became Blade Runner. But there are short story to novella length pieces that morphed into Total Recall and Minority Report to name a few. So you can start with some of the collections of his short fiction (a good place) or you can try Electric Sheep.

If you want a look at something that hasn't been filmed yet, I can recommend Ubik as a wonderful little diversion. It's quite amusing and has that same feel as the rest of Dick's work. Most people will point to A Scanner Darkly as his best work in a lot of ways, although I still need to track down a copy and verify that.

I can't explain why, but his writings in a lot of ways remind me of William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson. And I don't think it's just the obvious drug connections. I keep meaning to track down Burroughs's Naked Lunch and give it a go, but Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is similar in some ways to Dick's work, just a different tune using some of the same notes (to try and cram it into an awkward musical metaphor). I don't believe I've mentioned the recent death of Thompson here, but I should have.

At any rate, I believe that's enough rambling about that. At this point I think I'll simply offer this link to a site about PK Dick and call it good.