"If you think this world is bad, you should see some of the others."

Or something like that.
It's a paraphrase of the title of an essay PKD wrote in 1978. He spent thirty years showing us those other worlds. He wrote more-or-less the same novel forty times: a person exists in a world that may or may not be real; they are very paranoid and then discover they have every right to be. Some of his novels are brilliant and some are complete crap, usually depending on his financial situation and the imperative that put on him to write. But even his lousiest books have something to recommend them for a summer beach read.

I haven't read all his books, but I'm pretty close to it. For general info, Jason Koornick's excellent fan site is the place to start. It actually looks like it hasn't been updated in a while - I hope he's still at it. There is also the PKD estate's homepage which has lots of interesting stuff including photos from his family's collection. If you're looking to leap right in, read on.

Best Novels

Scanner Darkly (1977). This is my favorite PKD novel and a completely twisted in all the best ways. Basically, a narc goes undercover to bust a dealer of a drug that splits the brain into two warring hemispheres. The deeper he goes undercover, the more it starts to look like he is both the cop and the perp. Maybe. Twist after twist until the end, where it's still not clear exactly what just happened. My head still hurts.

UBIK (1969). My other favorite PKD read, in which Joe Chip, an anti-psi profiler, gets communiqués from his dead boss via graffiti in bathroom stalls and his girlfriend is capable of altering past events to change present reality. And does so. Frequently. People also talk to the dead in special mortuaries and doors and appliances demand cash payments to function (Abre Los Ojos lifts this idea). Every time I read this book I peel away another layer.

Time Out of Joint (1962). Ragel Gumm is man who thinks he's living in 1959 and is the world champion of a daily newspaper game called "Where will the little green man be next?". Odd items start appearing - a phone book with exchanges that don't exist; a magazine featuring a world famous actress named Marilyn Monroe he's never seen or heard of; a car magazine with no advertisements for Tuckers. Paranoia-fueled chases ensue and he discovers that it is actually it is 1998 and he is the lynchpin of the world's defense systems. THE TRUMAN SHOW rips this book off heavily and without acknowledgment.

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?(1968). The film BLADE RUNNER is based on this book in the loosest sense you could imagine. Rick Deckard is a world-weary bounty hunter who dreams of buying a real sheep - this is a future where most birds and animals have been killed by waste (nuclear and other). Social status is based on the kind of pet you can afford. Retiring the replicants is a means to achieving his goal of a real animal. Science Fiction rarely produces such engrossing character studies. If you think the movie is good, read the book. If you think the movie stinks, read the book.

PKD on Film

Attempts to put PDK on-screen are a pretty mixed bag. None have yet to reach the brilliance of their source material and most have been pretty disappointing. In fact, I'd say one of the best PKD films is eXistenZ, David Cronenberg's 1999 virtual reality suspense film, which wasn't even written by or based on anything Dick wrote. Virtual worlds nested inside virtual worlds, this is THE MATRIX with fangs. Even if this film stunk, the organic gun and the dog packing automatic weapons would make it worth a peek. Additional props for references to Perky Pats.

[Cronenberg seems to be a big Phil fan and apparently worked on an early version of Total Recall. Besides eXistenZ, Naked Lunch (1991) and Spider (2002) have a fair amount of phildickian influence.]

Other flicks with a heavy PKD influence include La Jettee (1962), 12 Monkeys (1995), Gattaca (1997), Dark City (1998), Vanilla Sky (1999) [and the superior Spanish film it's based on- Abre Los Ojos ] and The Matirx (1999), Fight Club (2001). Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys is based in part on Chris Marker's La Jettee and both are pretty freaky time travel head-scratchers. For me, the earlier French film looks like it was born fully formed from Phil's head.

There is a French film based on Dick's book Confessions of a Crap Artist called Confessions d'un Barjo (1995). One of Dick's non-sci fi books, Crap Artist is about a strange guy who keeps an obsessive notebook of his observations about human behavior and his weird theories. He ends up living with his sister and brother-in-law and the story becomes a study of the weirdness of everyday life that we take for granted. The movie is pretty faithful to the book and is pretty good.

As mentioned earlier, The Truman Show riffs on TIME OUT OF JOINT and the idea of a man who lives in a reality constructed by others for their gain (in the book it's for world defense, in this movie it's for a highly rated TV show). It's an entertaining movie, but I have a really low tolerance for Jim Carey.

Actual Dick-based movies compared to the stories/books on which they are based:

Blade Runner, Ridley Scott, 1982.
Based on PKD's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968). As stated above, the film has little to do with the Dick novel. The tone and look of the movie could be out of many PKD books, just not this one. The title of the film actually comes from a William Burroughs novel by way of an earlier SF story by someone I've forgotten - Dick's title would have made little sense here as that main feature of the story line is completely removed. Or almost completely - the owl in the Tyrell Corporation and Zhora's android snake are the only vestiges of that left. It's not even really worth comparing the two as they are so completely different. It's easier to list the similarities since there are less of them:

• The main characters in both are named Deckard. In the book he's called Rick and he's married.
• Both Deckards retire replicants. In the book he's a bounty hunter hired by the cops; in the film he appears to be part of the police department (Blade Runner Division). The film version is also very "action hero" where the novel is a blue collar working stiff.
• Pris and Roy appear as hunted replicants in both. In the book, Roy is married to another replicant. Pris is the same replicant model that Rachael is, which adds an interesting layer to Deckard's relationship to each (one as "lover", one as executioner).
• In both, Deckard gives Rachael the Voight-Kampff test and she fails, though in the book it takes him longer to figure out (it's a later slip of her tongue that tips him off).

All in all, a worthwhile movie and hugely influential on all sci-fi movies that followed.

Screamers, 1985.
B-movie that isn't as bad as it looks. Based on the story ,"Second Variety", it's pretty entertaining. I haven't seen it in a while but I remember liking it. There must be something in the fact that the, er, less-than-blockbuster movies seem to work better than the big budget adaptations.

Total Recall, 1990.
Based on Dick's short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" (1965). Dick's original story packs more weirdness and confusing realities into a dozen pages than this movie has any intention of following. Too bad. If they'd been just a little less concerned with making an Arnold Schwarzenegger action extravaganza, they could have really made the audience think a little bit. As it turns out, the whole thing feels a little predictable because of how the constant reversals in the story are neutered. Unfortunately the most interesting thing about this movie is that it's one of the last pre-CG flicks - lots of models and make-up and prosthetics.

Impostor, 2002.
Also based on a short story, "Impostor" (1952), I like this movie though it had absolutely zero theatrical life and pretty much went straight to DVD. Gary Sinese plays a Spencer Olham, a government scientist working on a top secret military project, who finds himself accused of being an alien-constructed android time bomb. And of course, part of the design is that the android would think he was the real person, so unfortunately, the only way for Spencer to really prove he's innocent is to be killed and dissected. Basically a long chase movie, it's got a nice look and feel. It's pretty faithful to the story until the end, which has a clever twist Dick would certainly have liked. Very B-film script, but very entertaining.

Minority Report, Stephen Spielberg, 2003.
Based on a short story of the same name. This isn't one of my favorite Dick stories, coming from early in his career and before he really had chops, but the idea of the Precrime unit that arrests people before they commit murder is fantastic. And Mr. S really fleshes out the story nicely for the most part, especially where dealing with the precogs. I ultimately don't really care for this film but lots of other Dick fans hail this as the first great PDK movie.

Paycheck, John Woo, 2003.
Another disappointment, especially for me, being that I'm also a John Woo fan. Is there a more wooden actor than Ben Afleck? Someone explain to me what makes him so appealing to Hollywood? Anyway, a man who steals industrial secrets for a living awakens from a mind wipe to find he has apparently forfeited his big paycheck for an envelope of perplexing debris. As the action progresses, the function of each article in the envelope becomes apparent in saving his life. Oh, it's based on a short story too. The film is more of an action flick than the story, which is more about how a bunch of seemingly random and common objects suddenly take on huge importance in a man's life.

Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater, 2006.
Visually, this movie stuns. Using the digital rotoscoping technique utilized on Waking Life, the footage was captured on dv and artists later illustrated over the live action. It gives the movie a nervous jittery quality that is perfect for the subject matter. A generally good adapation that ends up revealing the problems with adapting a novel that is so based in the mind and perception: the novel exists only in the reader's mind and when the novel is about the tenuous grasp of reality, having the visual presented makes the experience less satisfying. I'll need to watch this a few more times before I can look at it on its own merits.

It could be that my beef with Dick films on screen is the casting and the treatment. Dick's books aren't about action heroes; they are about small, blue-collar working guys struggling to survive in a world that they isn't always what they think it is. Dick's books have really well crafted characters and even if the movies weren't written as action pictures, the leading men used (Arnold, Ben, Tom ) couldn't carry off that sort of nuanced performance. Gary Sinese comes closest and it makes Impostor hum along in a way the so-called bigger films don't. And the Cronenberg films I mentioned have actors (Jude Law, Ralph Feinnes) rather than action stars. So maybe Johnny Depp or Samuel L. Jackson in a future PKD film? I'm holding my breath that someone will wise up and cast Ian Holm as the Phil Dick character from VALIS. I can dream...

Some Dick-like Books

There's no one quite like PKD but there are a few books that skirt the unique universe he wrote about. They're not the easiest to find and I generally just happen on them by dumb luck, but as you read the first couple of pages they reveal their Dick-ensian roots.

GLADIATOR AT-LAW by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth (1955) is about a lawyer in a future world where the justice system is entirely mechanized. This book might be the birth of Reality TV: the poor have a chance to win tricked-out modern homes by participating in TV spectacles which involve violent death matches. Like Dick, this is a future world with less emphasis on technologies and more emphasis on the social commentary.

MASTERS OF THE MAZE by Avram Davidson (1965) has giant insect aliens attempting to take over the world by controlling "The Maze", a mystic construct that connects Time and Space and has been protected since the 1600's by a secret order of vaguely Masonic guardians. An average guy, a hack writer actually, becomes the key in stopping the alien invasion by entering the Maze to warn the godlike Masters who dwell at its center. It plays out in dizzying twists and turns as the basically inept "hero" is forced to save the world.

THE STARS MY DESTINATION by Alfred Bester (1956) is the greatest science fiction novel Dick didn't write. Gulliver Foyle seeks revenge on those who stranded him in space and ends up saving the Earth. Time travel (jaunting), telepaths, junkies who are hooked on diseases and The Burning Man people this classic, which is something of a rewrite of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. Generally regarded as the seed of cyberpunk science fiction. Very cool.

THE THIRD POLICEMAN by Flann O'Brien (1940/pub 1967) isn't a science fiction novel per se, but then a lot of Dick's books are sci-fi merely by association. A strange funny book narrated by a murderer seeking a box of cash hidden by his victim. His search leads him to a strange two-dimensional police station where the cops are more concerned about bicycles than anything else. Meanwhile, the narrator's soul begins talking to him and gets named "Joe". Like a puzzling and menacing dream, the book bounces around philosophy, existence, and physics like a flea hopped up on Ritalin.