erickson (02/15/83)
P. K. Dick books. My favorites include Eye in the Sky, A Scanner Darkly, Confessions of a Crap Artist, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said. Time out of Joint, Clans of the Alphane Moon, Martian Time Slip, the Three Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer, and Ubik are also quite good. I should tell you that I a P.K.D. fanatic. (Most of the above are still in print; but you'll have to go to second hand stores (like Zeising Bros.) to get Eye in the Sky (well worth it, it's a really funny book). I would warn newcomers to Dick to avoid his recent theolgical sf (namely VALIS, the Divine Invasion, and the Transmigration of Timothy Archer). In particular, I do not recomment VALIS, except to those fascinated enough by PKD's work to be interested in what one of the less saner periods of his life was like. The above-mentioned Confessions of a Crap Artist is not sf but is one of at least 11 "experimental mainstream novels" Dick wrote during the first ten years of his writing career. It is exceptionally good (if you like black humor) and has just been re-released as sf in the last year. His short storys are also quite good: The Golden Man and The Preserving Machine are good collections. Tom Erickson UCSD Psyc Department ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdcsla!erickson
mclure (03/09/83)
#R:sdcsla:-28900:sri-unix:13200011:000:237 sri-unix!mclure Feb 19 01:02:00 1983 VALIS was the first P.K.D. book I read and I found it an interesting exercise of self-exploration. It prompted me to read much more of P.K.D. He's one of the few authors I can generally count on for a good and interesting read. Stuart
bhayes (03/27/83)
#R:sdcsla:-28900:sri-unix:13200015:000:282 sri-unix!bhayes Mar 24 18:35:00 1983 The worst thing about reading VALIS first is that several running themes in PKDs books show up there, but oddly. I think they'd look out of place. But if you've got a few others under your belt, you wouldn't be surprised when, say, someone turns out to be a tire regrover. barry