Kari Foster writes:
>
>In my family he is known as Philip K. "what the hell is going on" Dick
because,
>typically, the protagonist is plunged into a world where he can't
>distinguish illusion from reality. Meanwhile, the reader is plunged into
>a world where he can't distinguish one Dick story from another.
>(I exaggerate, but certainly a lot of his stories seem to follow that
line.)
>
I agree. The most recent novel of his I read, _Ubik_, is a classic
example. The changes of direction are so many and so disorientating that it
feels as though Dick can't have planned them all in advance. It's as if he
improvised the whole thing, getting more and more daring as he went along.
And the novels don't quite seem finished works as a result - they're
performances rather than constructions. You can tell (most of) them apart by
the premises they start off with, but the end result does tend to be the
same. And it's hard to pick one novel and say this is his great achievement.
I love _Do Androids_ for its absurdist satire (at one point someone tries to
bribe the hero with the offer of a live owl); _The Man in the High Castle_
struck me as uncharacteristically tentative and safe; _The Three Stigmata_
seems to dissipate the satire of the story that formed the basis of it ('The
Days of Perky Pat') in the typical hallucinatory plot twists you describe;
_Valis_ I haven't read yet, and hear very conflicting accounts from those
who have. Overall, as I said before, I find his best short stories his most
completely satisfying work - but reading a Dick novel is still a dizzying,
thrilling experience.
Best wishes
Matthew
