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Amazing this discussion got so far without Dick being mentioned. He is *the* genius of SF, surely. Though _A Scanner Darkly_ strikes me as being not really SF, but a brilliant drugs novel with a thin coating of SF over the top. (What an opening it has!) My favourite of Dick's work, apart from _Do Androids..._ is the short stories, eg 'I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon' and 'Rautavaara's Case' - astonishingly bleak, powerful stuff. Incidentally, I never see Dick credited for the plot of _Invasion of the Bodysnatchers_ , which surely owes something to his story 'The Father Thing'. _The Encyclopedia of SF_ credits a novel by Jack Finney published a year later. Best wishes Matthew -----Original Message----- From: Martin J. Walker <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Date: 26 June 2001 16:17 Subject: Re: Fwd: [SciFiNoir] FWD: Star Factory Near Galactic Center Bathed InHigh-Energy X-Rays >I'd like to put my vote in ~ at this late stage ~ for Philip K. Dick, whose >books I find very rereadable, _A Scanner Darkly _ being a masterpiece of >dystopian writing on drugs. He was also one of the only SF writers to >furnish a plot for an opera ~ Tod Machover's _Valis_, more recent than >_Aniara_ , & of course his novel _Do Androids etc _ provided the plot ideas >for _ Blade Runner_, though not the development. I find he creates a poetry >of modern life by slipping seamlessly from the mundane to the paranoid in an >apparently transparent style. Anyone who enjoys using the I Ching now & then >must read _The Man in the High Castle_. I have also got innocent >trans-artistic pleasure from Ian Watson's SF Bosch paraphrase, _The Garden >of Delights_ (I think it's called). >regards >Martin >