Is anyone here a Philip K. Dick fan?

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I first heard of Dick after watching Total Recall and Blade Runner. I've got to say, once I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?(the basis for the Ridley Scott film), I became addicted to his works. So far, I have a whopping THIRTEEN of his novels! What I like most about Dick was his storytelling ability. He always weaved tales centered around these two questions:

-What is real and what is not?
-What is human?

Philip K Dick and J.G. Ballard are my two most favorite science fiction authors. William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Neal Stephenson are good too. It seems Dick is actually considered to be a great American author these days. He struggled terribly and had some mental and substance abuse problems, but I once heard an interview with him and he sounds like a really down to earth guy who made fun of his short-comings. He's an aspie author even if he was not an aspie himself.

Yes, I am. Have loved the genre since I could read and he is one of my favorite authors. You list the themes that I like best about his stories/novels and his great storytelling ability. For a budding screenwriter you have picked an excellent addiction!

Yes

Yeah, I like Philip K. Dick and have read quite a few of his works, many of which were more like novella length, really, but anyway, yeah, the alienation and dislocation in his stories, the need to connect to make something right or real, are all conditions or situations which I can identify with.

His personal life did seem a mess, but he was of the generation that were trying all sorts of things, including establishment disconnect with the usual social strata and substance experimentation, to reach some higher level that they felt they could attain. I felt they were mistaken in all that, but nonetheless, the works they created, including Dick's, were phenomenal and influential, and really intelligently done, I think.

Yes, Dick is my favourite Sci-Fi author. I love him so much that I ration his books, sprinkling them here or there in amongst my other reading. Never has he failed to awe me

my library does not have anything by him other than movies. go figure.

No, I think he's extremely overrated; science too soft to be interesting for its own sake, and action too dull to be space opera. Beyond Lies the Wub and Second Variety are good short stories, and some of the films made of his stories (emphatically not Screamers though) are passable.

I've owned a few of his books over the years. He's written some good stuff, but I tend more towards Heinlein/Clarke/Pournelle/Stirling/Turtledove, etc.

My favorites:

Robert Sheckley
Ray Bradbury
Philip K. Dick (he's had the most successful movie versions of his books)

"Screamers" (Second Variety) was one of the most underrated sci-fi movies ever.

If you're into Dick, you might like to visit the following site, which covers his work from the perspective of what is/ isn't real, in a subsection dedicated to him alonecheatingtheferryman.

I have been a science fiction fan since the age of 10 or so when I first discovered the genre.

Philip K Dick and J.G. Ballard are purists in the "what would happen if...." scenario.

The man was a complete genius. Had no skill at writing but such an imagination and so perceptive. His inspiration was mental illness, that and an immense amount of drugs. He saw beyond everything we see, only to find that left him with nothing to see, nothing to believe or hold onto, hence the collapse of identity, morality, understanding.

Has anyone read his Martian Timeslip? It has an autistic character and easily stands as the best account of autism I've ever read. No one understood isolation like Philip K Dick and so in many ways no one has understood autism better than Philip K Dick (not that he was autistic, merely had may psychological difficulties).

I'm about to buy a copy of Martian Timeslip because of that - I was looking down the list of SF Masterworks books (which is stuffed full of Dick) and that one looked worth a try.

(now have a copy, but it'll have to take its place as my queue of books-to-read is building up)