Comment by dcw303 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dcw303 | Hacker News Reader

Being a child of the 80s, I was first introduced to PKD through Total Recall - the original, good one with Schwarzenegger in it. The mix of sci-fi, paranoia, and reality bending was mesmerising. Verhoeven is the only director who really got to the essence of what Philip K Dick was about.

With the exception of the occasional episode of Star Trek TNG, I didn't have much access to much mindfuck sci-fi, so whatever I could get would leave pretty deep impression on me. I didn't immediately read through his stuff, though. I wouldn't really be reminded of it until I got into Sonic Youth in my late teens and found out that the Sister LP was a loose biography. Sonic Youth's guitar rock/pop mixed with discordant feedback was basically the musical equivalent of PKD's paranoia.

After that I spent years going through a big chunk of his catalog. Obviously, a classic like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is worth your time. The Man in the High Castle is alternate history, and features what I still consider to be the best execution of a things-are-not-what-you-think-they-are ever. I've also been thinking of The Game Players of Titan recently, but that's probably because of the talking self driving car. Ubik is also really, really good, but I can't explain it to you at all.

If you want some fiction that will make you question your grip on reality, I highly recommend reading through his stuff. Just don't wait until you're too old - once your ideals are firmly set in place it gets a lot harder to get into it.

I read a lot of PKD when I was in my 20's. It all started with Ubik. Then Androids. A Scanner Darkly. And about 10 other novels. The early Total Recall is one of the better movie adaptations wrt covering the core concepts of the story. Waves and Waves of revelations about the nature of reality. Minority Report, not so much. And of course, Blade Runner is tangentially related to the book. (It's a masterpiece, but it's not Androids)

Once I started getting into the short stories, I started getting pretty paranoid. There's one theme that repeats throughout that reality is not your perception of it, to your eventual downfall. Repeated over and over, across post apocalyptic wastelands, it leads to a somewhat bleak view of the future. (One in particular, I think it's The Fifth Variety, seems to be tailor made to describe computer security from here on out. Spoiler: _Everything_ is a trojan)

In his own words "Reality is made of cardboard and if you push too hard, you fall through."

Describes his stories perfectly.

I think you mean Second Variety [1], which is really great in my opinion as well. It, like many of PKD's works, was also made into a movie (Screamers).

Second Variety is freely available [2] on the Internet Archive, via Project Gutenberg.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety

[2]: https://archive.org/details/secondvariety32032gut

Yep. Lost track of the number of Varieties.

Yes, there were more than 2 varieties - it's kind of key to the story! ;)

I think (or at least hope) that's not a spoiler for anyone who hasn't read it yet - it's worth reading!

You really need to read Ursula K Leguin's "the Lathe of Heaven" - it's a book written with her friend PKD in mind.

One of my favorite recent books.

> Total Recall - the original, good one with Schwarzenegger in it.

it wasn't really considered "the good one" until a worse one was made.

Like how 'lethal weapon' wasn't referred to as 'lethal weapon one' until the sequels. It has always been regarded as a gem by many people. First use of CGI in a film too, I believe. For the x-ray scene at the Mars port.

Early use, sure, but hardly the first. The owl in Labyrinth was 1986, and I'm certain there are earlier examples.

Tron (1982) Star Wars (1977)

Star Wars, 1977 (the Death Star diagram), The Black Hole, 1979 (the wireframe model of the titular black hole-- drawn on a plotter!), etc. By 1986 we'd already had two entire films based around CGI-- Tron (1982) and The Last Starfighter (1984).

I thought it was a gem at the time ... a gem of b-movie bad sci-fi.

Another PKD fandom perk is you get to call yourself a Dickhead.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is also a total mind fuck.

Wow - I just ordered a copy after reading the first part of the plot summary on Wikipedia. (Those things can be a little spoilery...) It's interesting to see someone talking about global warming that early, and I want to try to find out how far back the notice of it goes. I don't recall anyone talking about it before the late 80's.

If you want ecology apocalypse, check out John Brunner's _The Sheep Look Up_ (written in the early 70s). No other book I've read scared me as much as that one. I think what did it was the utter normalcy with which everything was just accepted as is.

It's a great book, unfortunately few of its environmental predictions are very valid today. Brunner missed the greenhouse gas problem and focused on things like air quality, garbage, sonic booms (!), poisoned drinking water and overpopulation. One thing he does get right is the need to develop new agricultural tech -- a core subplot is about a company that uses a new hydroponics system to grow cassava at a large scale, for distribution to impoverished third-world countries.

The real impact, for me, was twofold: First, the idea that someone could develop a simulation of modern society to the point where it could make a recommendation about how to make a course correction (which turns out to provide the books its deliciously tragicomic ending), and second, the idea that society's collapse will prevent a technological solution to envionmental disaster. The latter is implied rather than spelled out.

User spc476's recommendation, Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up", isn't really a sequel, but appears to take place in the world of "Stand on Zanzibar", which I (personally) thought was better written.

Having been influenced by Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock", he (Brunner) also wrote a novel called "Shockwave Rider".

People of that era appear to have been worried more about "The Population Bomb" scenarios than "Global Ecosystem Collapse" scenarios. That said - the underlying driver of ecosystem collapse is overpopulation, so there is a fair amount of thematic overlap.

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson comes to mind, but that might just be my broken brain talking nonsense...

2312 is definitely good ecosystem sci Fi (though it serves less well as a murder mystery sci fi). But it was written quite recently (published 2012).

There's also "Zodiac: An Eco-Thriller" written by Neil Stephenson in 1988, who's written a lot of other classic cyberpunk you may have heard of.

>The protagonist is inspired by environmental chemist Marco Kaltofen. Taylor is a recreational user of nitrous oxide, justifying his choice of drug by the eponymous Sangamon's principle: "the simpler the molecule, the better the drug".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_(novel)

An excellent book, featuring the Boston area as a major character.

After reading that book, I was afraid of Legal Sea Foods' All-You-Can-Eat Lobster Buffet.

I think of Shockwave Rider as the first nascent foray into what became cyberpunk. Highly recommended if cyberpunk is something you enjoy. John Brunner's work in general, really, but Shockwave Rider in particular

You should read "Only Forward" by Michael Marshall Smith. He seems to be fairly unknown, but I love his work. Based on your descriptions I think you would too.

> Verhoeven is the only director who really got to the essence of what Philip K Dick was about.

maybe, but he totally destroyed "the starship troopers".

I think he captured Heinlein's fascist streak quite well, albeit while poking fun at it.

Starship Troopers is a very well made movie, quite cleverly constructed. For people without a sense of humour, it appeals to their own militaristic tendencies; it hits two audiences at once.

It's an even better book - especially if you have any familiarity with the genre of soldier's memoirs, which often follow a very similar trajectory, from pre-military life to boot camp to the first brush with combat, to the climactic battle.

The philosophy is somewhat different, but the spiritual and thematic successor to Starship Troopers, Armor by John Steakley[1], which I think is an underappreciated classic.

[1] http://amzn.to/2bNDHMB

I'd also recommend you read Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, which is very much a response to Starship Troopers: while Heinlein was writing from the perspective of WW2, Haldeman was writing from the perspective of Vietnam, and it shows.

I haven't read Armor. I should check it out.

Haldeman has said on many occasions (like nearly every interview with him) that The Forever War was absolutely not a response to Starship Troopers. He oughtta know, right?

I strongly support the recommendation to read both of them, though.

> I think he captured Heinlein's fascist streak quite well, albeit while poking fun at it.

read spider-robinson's essay : 'rah rah R.A.H !'. imho, anyone trying to pigeonhole robert-heinlein into any of pejoratives e.g. fascist, racist, militarist etc. etc. has either an axe to grind, or has serious reading comprehension problems.

I'm not pigeonholing Heinlein, thanks. There's a few recurring themes in some of his books; one is an enthusiastic embrace of militarism (and it's far from universal, it's mostly in his earlier books for younger readers). When something comes up, it's good to see it reproduced in a screen adaptation.

Militarism is intrinsically fascist. It's all about banding together, being stronger when pulling in a single direction, under the leadership of the state, and not brooking any dissent. It's intrinsically a dangerous social setup only suited to extremes of survival. I'm not a fan of fans of military qua military.

>nyone trying to pigeonhole robert-heinlein into any of pejoratives e.g. fascist, racist, militarist etc. etc. has either an axe to grind, or has serious reading comprehension problems.

Pigeonhole as in "he was just/only a militarist" no.

But he was clearly a militarist.

Uh no. I have recently written an article about this very subject. Heinlein seems militaristic in the "starship troopers" but he effectively kills two of the concepts militarists love: the chosen one myth - that the soldiers, best ones at least, are chosen ones and they should be smart and brilliant and be a Nietzschean superman, and discipline myth - that because the soldiers are disciplined, they are better than civilians. You can read it in the chapters where Rico is inducted into Officer Training School, where Major Reed is giving the Moral Philosophy lesson again.

Actually, if you take a look at the man's literary career I think he is just experimenting with the "what is best ruling regime?" "Starship troopers" is a possible answer, so is the "moon is a harsh mistress" and I even see the "Stranger in a Strange Land" in this light.

My two cents.

Heinlein moved substantially politically over the years, from being a firm Democrat in his younger years (campaigning for the Democrats and attempting to win a seat to the California State Assembly as a Democrat in 1938, to becoming conservative in the early 50's, and right-libertarian and eventually describing himself as anarchist or autarchist (economically right wing anarchism, basically) by the 60's, and a lot of his works reflects pretty directly his political position at the time of writing.

Starship Troopers is sometimes viewed as his "parting shot" to the left wing, though it was written several years after he ceased to consider himself a Democrat.

While it probably wasn't as militaristic as it appears at a casual glance (he's elaborated on the ideas elsewhere in ways that further "softens" it), it did come at a time where his political views were evolving towards a more conservative and more authoritarian ideal (though that soon changed again).

I think this goes for many Verhoeven's movies - lot of them contain a non-negligible amount of parody. But as the common wisdom says, working parody must be a good example of the genre it parodies and Verhoeven's movies are excellent examples of their genres.

At least, I think it works with Starship Troopers, Total Recall and Robocop. I'm not sure what to make of Basic Instinct and Playgirls.

Isn't it Showgirls, or is this a regional title variation? Anyway, it's clearly an attempt at parodying the exploitation movie genre by delivering all the required elements but not actually being enjoyable.

I think it's a real stretch to say Heinlein had a fascist streak.

You'd be surprised.

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/26352/did-heinlein-...

Perhaps, but to be so would require a line of argument, and a source, much more capably supporting the "Heinlein was a fascist" thesis than those. It would help for said source to be new, and it would help more for it to have some stronger claim to make than "he said a couple times that war probably isn't going away any time soon, therefore Mussolini".

I mean, don't get me wrong! I agree that you can see fascism in some of Heinlein's work. But you have to want to see it there. If that's the way in which you choose to appreciate his work, I don't suppose it's my place to tell you you're wrong, but I do think it's apropos that the place where we find ourselves discussing the matter is a thread originating in an article that explores a different sf author's perennial difficulty maintaining the distinction between perception and reality.

I thought he did pretty well with the film considering it was one of Heinlein's poorest books.

The movie shares little but the name with the book. I don't think of it as an adaptation.

I highly advise the original Twilight Zone.

This show was miles ahead...

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