the three stigmata of queen lua

[queenlua]

So I was just reading this review of The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, and there was this lovely bit that reminded me why I love that man's writing so much:

Dick thrived in SF, of course, because it's a genre whose readers prize evocative ideas over fine prose and detailed characterisation, and as far as really exciting concepts go Dick was a powerhouse. Whilst other authors were sat around cranking out innumerable variations on pet themes such as "what if a space ship got into trouble X miles from a black hole?" or "if we program robots with these axioms, how can we trick them into committing murder?" or "how do we exterminate all those beastly Commies brown people aliens?", Dick would burst in wild-eyed and short of breath and yell "What if God was disguised as a Communist dictator and was out to conquer the world and eat us all? What if the only difference between being human and being a robot was giving a fuck about your fellow creatures? What if salvation were sold in a spray can? What if the world were taken apart every night while you slept and rebuilt very slightly differently? If the Nazis and Japanese won World War II, what sort of souvenirs would they buy from America? If the cops knew you were going to murder someone in the future would it be right for them to arrest you now? What if we're all police informers but we don't know it? If aliens caught you murdering a cat, how would they punish you? What if autistic people can travel in time? HOW DO DOGS PERCEIVE GARBAGE DAY?!?!?!?" Often you'd get a whole heap of such ideas in the same novel. If SF is the genre which asks "what if?", Dick was asking "what ifs" which were simultaneously too brilliant and too goofy for anyone else to consider.

Salvation spray cans. Alternate history post-WWII souvenirs. Autistic time travelers. Dude's done it all.

When you look at his personal writings, you know the dude had to be a little batty—the Exegesis is literally several thousand pages of stream-of-consciousness semi-philosophical babblings. Based on that, it's surprising that he managed to write novels at all—and flat-out astonishing that those novels manage to be both coherent and engrossing. But he does it.

(Aside: It seems like a lot of famous writers have issues with some form of substance abuse or another—Dick was a speed addict, Faulkner was an alcoholic, etc. I wonder if this is just observation bias or indicative of some trend? Like, it's very hard to imagine that Dick's work wasn't heavily influenced by his experiments with amphetamines and psychedelics, for better or for worse—and quite possibly for the better, in this case.)

Anyway, if you haven't read any Dick before, I highly recommend both Ubik and The Man in the High Castle. Ubik feels more like a "typical" Dick novel, featuring hinjinks with psychic powers, moon travel, cryogenics, talking to dead people, spray-can salvation, etc. The Man in the High Castle feels a bit quieter and more character-centric than most of his work—there's very few sci-fi-y hijinks, beyond the whole alternate history thing, and it's very strong. (You could also do a lot worse than The Lathe of Heaven, which is by Ursula K. Le Guin, but is a pretty blatant Dick tribute & very much resembles his style.)

(Also, random fun fact: Le Guin and Dick were actually in the same graduating class in the same high school. But while Le Guin did well in her classes, went to Radcliffe for college, got an M.A. and a Fullbright., etc etc, Dick dropped out of college, married five times, worked at a record store, etc etc. And yet both of them wound up being hugely famous scifi authors—kind of a cool parallel.)

also, newsflash: while googling about for Dick stuff, I discovered that evidently Harold Bloom, renowned pretentious windbag / snob literary critic, wrote a novel. A sci-fi novel with a pretentious title: The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy. Oh, I am going to relish reading this one.