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Philip K. Dick (Pocket Essentials) (Paperback)

by Andrew M. Butler (Author)

3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Price:	�4.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Pocket Essentials; 2nd Revised edition edition (30 Mar 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1904048927
ISBN-13: 978-1904048923
Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 11 x 1.6 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 568,975 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Synopsis

Who was Dick? A freaked-out junkie who took too many drugs? An explorer of madness who go too close to his subject and ended up claiming to have met God? A practical joker? The most consistently brilliant SF writer in the world? At a time when most SF was about cowboys in outer space, Dick explored the landscapes of the mind, conjured with fake realities and was able to make you believe six impossible things before breakfast. He embodied the counter-culture a decade before the 1960's. Perhaps best known for "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" - the novel which inspired "Blade Runner" - Dick's world is one where psychiatrists come in suitcases, and where God speaks through cat food commercials and comes in a handy aerosol can. And where you might be a figment of someone else's imagination...As well as an introductory essay, this pocket sized volume reviews and analyses each of Philip K Dick's novels, and for those who want more there is a listing of the many other books and articles which have grappled with his genius.

From the Author

What the Reviewers Said
'Deeply comprehensive, with breakdowns of all Dick's books, it's an essential guide for those wanting a quick tour of sci-fi's craziest mind. ****'

Saxon Bullock, Hot Dog (February 2001).

'it's another lucid, well-knit, little guide -- excellent value for the money.'

Interzone books received.

'Butler's love and enthusiasm for the writer shines from every page, and this is both a compelling read and a book that creates an irresistible impulse in the reader to rush out and plug those PKD gaps in their own collection.'

Barry Forshaw, Starlog (December 2000).

'This Pocket Essential is in fact one of the better entries in the series....'

Review by Tony Floyd

'An excellent introduction to the complex world of Philip K. Dick, filled with insight and synopsis galore, it gives a quick and in-depth look into each of the works of this Chicago born genius. [...] This book is a must have for any reader of Dick, novice or expert.' Justin Alan Price from Lineboro, MD United States, on www.amazon.com

'...those nice folk at Pocket Essentials have trained their microscope on sci-fi guru and drugfiend, Philip K. Dick and produced this handy little stash of info, anecdotes and all sorts...'

Richard Shephard, Waterstone's Online --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Apparently Real, 9 Dec 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Philip K.Dick (Pocket Essentials) (Paperback)

The Pocket Essentials Literature series moves ahead to cover one of science fiction's outstanding minds in this slim guidebook by Andrew M. Butler; released back to back with his less-than-stellar Cyberpunk guide, Butler is on much stronger ground here, covering the writer whose work inspired him to pen a PhD-winning thesis. He wastes no time with preamble, first running through a potted life story of Dick before taking a moment to highlight some of his recurring themes and concepts. There's a carefully academic lack of judgement in Butler's book, allowing Dick's work to be played as it lays and keeping to a middle ground that stays informative even when describing the greater extremes of Dick's drug-fuelled, expanded-mind fiction. In keeping with the format generated by the Pocket Essentials movie directors guides, this volume applies a series of points to each of Dick's novels and makes a brave attempt to order some of his most disjointed works into a synopsis that is frequently less than a page long. Butler's book clearly fulfilled its function with me; two Dick novels I had previously dismissed are now on my 'to read' pile, my opinions softened by his descriptions of them. But the guide is not without faults; poor editing on the part of the publisher allows Butler to repeat himself, particularly in the similar entries for The Unteleported Man and Lies, Inc, which could have been combined; and in a book that will appeal to most readers because of a link to Blade Runner, Butler repeats the error he makes in his Cyberpunk guide, stating that a version of the film was aired on British television with the lost hospital sequence replaced, when in fact the scene was shown as part of a documentary program aired after the regular Director's Cut. He neglects to mention the propagation of Dick's work outside the written or cinematic forms - there are stage and operatic versions of Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, Radio Free Albemuth, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and VALIS, computer games based on Ubik and Blade Runner, but not even a cursory mention of any of them here. But perhaps the largest failing is the brief manner in which Dick's short stories are covered. From a list of over one hundred and twenty, only six are discussed in any detail, and of these six, four are included by virtue of being optioned as films. In fact, there are more than a dozen Dick novels and stories that have been optioned in recent years, including Paycheck, A Little Something For Us Temponauts, The King of The Elves, James P. Crow and Palmer Eldritch; Butler noted in an on-line interview that, given Hollywood's shifting nature, collecting information on movies-to-be is admittedly difficult, and yet the very site that interviewed him contains reportage on several of these options. But that aside, considering that many of Dick's full-length novels were fix-ups or partially inspired by short fiction he had already written, it renders this guide incomplete by failing to cover his short stories in greater detail. If this book were titled The Novels of Phillip K Dick, then these arguments would be moot; but as it is presented here, Butler's guide falls short of what it could and should be. As with several of the titles in the Pocket Essentials range, this book seems like an attempt to make a pint hold a quart; with more page space and closer editing, I don't doubt that Butler would be able to produce a much better guide that touches all bases - as it is, this is a crisp, useful guide to Dick's long-form fiction, but not the 'almost everything you need to know' that the blurb claims.

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