But she’s caught in a narrow little routine. Business-profit.” He shook his head. “A mind like that, a warped, miserable flea-sized mind …
Philip K. Dick, Captive Market (via swimmingunder)
Tag: philip k. dick
I don’t want to offend anybody. It’s an inoffensive novel. It will not offend any reader anywhere. No bad words. Now that’s another thing. It could not be published as science fiction by Doubleday because it had four letter words in it. And their science fiction list does not allow four letter words in a book. There were too many of them to remove them. If there only had been a few, like in Deus Irae, which they bought from me and Roger Zelazny. There were only a few four letter words so they inked them out and then marketed it as science fiction. And I had never known this before. I didn’t know the distinction between science fiction and mainstream was the number of four letter words.
Philip K. Dick (via swimmingunder)
What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too. -pg.185
angel-93: No, I haven’t.. Only recently have I been turned back on to his work.. I am waiting for VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer to show up in the mail.. Do you think it’s worth a buy, Dr. Futurity?
I may or may not know of a torrent with all of Philip K. Dick’s books in audio book format. You could send me an ask.
Gods & Heroes of my Writing Pantheon
1. F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Chuck Palahniuk
3. Stephen King
4. H.P. Lovecraft
5. Edgar Allan Poe
6. Philip K. Dick
7. William Gibson
8. Neil Gaiman
9. Mary Doria Russell
Every writer is a magician. With a word I create.
Add yours and reblog.
I just finished my second Philip K. Dick novel in less than a month. The guy’s writing blows me away. It’s hard to believe he did most of his work in the 1950s and 60s.
Also of note, something most critics have missed, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch* is in many ways, a story about two dueling magicians. An excellent examination of the kind of hubris and paranoia a magus can suffer when they feel beset by enemies.
*You think this obvious symbolism in the antagonist’s last name would be a clue.