50 ms·

PKD is my favorite writer of all times. I believe that even for his greatest works the writing could have been more polished, way better. The thing is PKD does

by x86x87 4y ago

PKD is my favorite writer of all times. I believe that even for his greatest works the writing could have been more polished, way better. The thing is PKD does not get you with the form of the writing but with the ideas that he captures. Truly visionary.

moris_borris 4y ago
That last bit could be said of any of my favorite sci fi thinkers. I love Asimov and Frank Herbert but not because I think they were great writers.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  it's funny because for me the prose of a lot of science fiction writers was always what turned me away from the genre. I could barely make it through Dune and gave the Foundation up. A lot of science fiction authors which I came to love a lot like Gibson or Le Guin I think I mostly got into because of their sense of style. Stephenson for me is probably the worst offender for this. I've met so many people both online and offline, particularly other programmers who always told me to read his stuff but he's straight up pasting pages of Wikipedia into his books, I felt like I was being trolled.
  - x86x87 4y ago
    Stephenson is a bit more polished than PKD but your point still stands.
    - pmoriarty 4y ago
      I had high expectations from a bunch of friends recommending Snowcrash, but when I read it I found it to be so awful I couldn't even finish it. It was just so childish and stupid. I don't get why people like it.
      - Jtsummers 4y ago
        Snow Crash is either an accidental or deliberate parody of cyberpunk. The main character is Hiro Protagonist. When he goes into a VR world and is "fighting" with a sword he's swinging a sword around wildly in the real world too, while around other people. And then in Diamond Age Stephenson [rot13]xvyyf gur zbfg plorechax punenpgre va gur svefg be frpbaq puncgre[/rot13]. When I read Snow Crash the first time it was back when cyberpunk was still a pretty hot style, and I was also reading a lot of Gibson and others. It fit well within that context. Then later I reread it and realized what I wrote above, it was parodying elements of the genre while creating almost a quintessentially action-adventure cyberpunk story with a programmer/pizza delivery driver hero. And then it had the typical Stephenson ending, which is to say
        FPGAhacker 4y ago
        > And then it had the typical Stephenson ending, which is to say that made me laugh out loud
        flybrand 4y ago
        Thank you for commenting on Stephenson’s plot resolutions. I love his writing and his stories, but the end of his books are just so unfulfilling. Especially Anathem!
        pmoriarty 4y ago
        Yeah, I got that it was a parody. It just wasn't funny.
      - cableshaft 4y ago
        Of his books that I read, it is definitely the one that comes across as the most childish and stupid (with a few good ideas). His other books aren't like that. I had trouble getting through them as well, but for other reasons. For Cryptonomicon it was his "let me prove how smart I am" diversions off the main story for dozens of pages at a time, and for Anathem it was an interesting idea told in a boring yet difficult-to-parse way, at least as far as I got. The quality of the prose in those other two books seemed better, at least. Big fan of PKD books, btw, although I think his writing style and characters are pretty plain and not that compelling on their own (but they are quick to read as a result, I could knock one out in about 4-6 hours, usually). The ideas, dialogue, and often the endings make them all worth reading, though.
  - Slow_Hand 4y ago
    I can relate. I'm massive Dune fan, but I see why people would have difficulty with Frank's prose. It's dry and not particularly sensual. However it is incredibly functional and lucid once you acclimate to the world he's building. He has a strong way of making you very aware of how everything relates to one another, both in space and conceptually. Stanislaw Lem, on the other hand. The substance is usually fantastic, but the reality of the characters tends to get obscured by long, intricate sentences that lack the precise objective descriptions of Frank's writing and lose a sense of where everything is in relation to one another. Lem tends to be extremely light on description in many instances. Perhaps that can be partly attributed to translation difficulties, as I've never read the Polish source. On the other hand I'd disagree about Neal Stephenson, I'm reading Snow Crash for the first time (halfway through it right now) and I loved the opening chapters. There's a real kineticism with Hiro and YT speeding through traffic that I find very evocative and leaves me pining for my days of doing irresponsible shit in traffic. He really has a way of writing action that feels exciting and focused. Neal has some hilarious descriptions that really paint a picture. There's a great description of the "rat thing" robotic sentry disarming a lawn full of aggressors with blinding speed and he describes one of the aggressors as having "had his trousers torn from the waistband all the way down to the ankle, and a strip of fabric is trailing out across the lot, as though he had his pocket picked by something that was in too much of a hurry to let go of the actual pocket before it left." That said, if do have one gripe so far it's the five uninterrupted chapters with Hiro expositing hard with the Librarian daemon about Sumerian mythology. The concepts being discussed are really interesting but it becomes tiring after a while, even when broken up by a few interstitial chapters following YT.
skyechurch 4y ago
Dick can be really rewarding, although he's definitely not to everyone's taste, or a particularly good stylist. This is true of other great writers who deal in extreme psychological states - Dostoyevsky for example. The extreme state for PKD was a metaphysical paranoia (probably augmented by amphetamine abuse), which many people can relate to, although it's usually not as intense or as intricate as in his novels. Dick was often writing autobiographical science fiction, which is an absolutely unique vision, though not one I'd like to experience first hand.
- x86x87 4y ago
  Yup. Sort of upset as I think with better form/style more people would have been exposed to his idea.
- xhevahir 4y ago
  I'm no authority on Russian literature but I've never agreed with this criticism of Dostoevsky. His writing is of a different kind, one that has its own logic. This article does a good job of explaining it I think: https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/the-master-of-petersburg-and-the-martyr-of-style/ https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/the-master-of-peter...

by x86x87 4y ago

moris_borris 4y ago

That last bit could be said of any of my favorite sci fi thinkers. I love Asimov and Frank Herbert but not because I think they were great writers.

Barrin92 4y ago
it's funny because for me the prose of a lot of science fiction writers was always what turned me away from the genre. I could barely make it through Dune and gave the Foundation up. A lot of science fiction authors which I came to love a lot like Gibson or Le Guin I think I mostly got into because of their sense of style. Stephenson for me is probably the worst offender for this. I've met so many people both online and offline, particularly other programmers who always told me to read his stuff but he's straight up pasting pages of Wikipedia into his books, I felt like I was being trolled.
- x86x87 4y ago
  Stephenson is a bit more polished than PKD but your point still stands.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    I had high expectations from a bunch of friends recommending Snowcrash, but when I read it I found it to be so awful I couldn't even finish it. It was just so childish and stupid. I don't get why people like it.
    - Jtsummers 4y ago
      Snow Crash is either an accidental or deliberate parody of cyberpunk. The main character is Hiro Protagonist. When he goes into a VR world and is "fighting" with a sword he's swinging a sword around wildly in the real world too, while around other people. And then in Diamond Age Stephenson [rot13]xvyyf gur zbfg plorechax punenpgre va gur svefg be frpbaq puncgre[/rot13]. When I read Snow Crash the first time it was back when cyberpunk was still a pretty hot style, and I was also reading a lot of Gibson and others. It fit well within that context. Then later I reread it and realized what I wrote above, it was parodying elements of the genre while creating almost a quintessentially action-adventure cyberpunk story with a programmer/pizza delivery driver hero. And then it had the typical Stephenson ending, which is to say
      - FPGAhacker 4y ago
        > And then it had the typical Stephenson ending, which is to say that made me laugh out loud
      - flybrand 4y ago
        Thank you for commenting on Stephenson’s plot resolutions. I love his writing and his stories, but the end of his books are just so unfulfilling. Especially Anathem!
      - pmoriarty 4y ago
        Yeah, I got that it was a parody. It just wasn't funny.
    - cableshaft 4y ago
      Of his books that I read, it is definitely the one that comes across as the most childish and stupid (with a few good ideas). His other books aren't like that. I had trouble getting through them as well, but for other reasons. For Cryptonomicon it was his "let me prove how smart I am" diversions off the main story for dozens of pages at a time, and for Anathem it was an interesting idea told in a boring yet difficult-to-parse way, at least as far as I got. The quality of the prose in those other two books seemed better, at least. Big fan of PKD books, btw, although I think his writing style and characters are pretty plain and not that compelling on their own (but they are quick to read as a result, I could knock one out in about 4-6 hours, usually). The ideas, dialogue, and often the endings make them all worth reading, though.
- Slow_Hand 4y ago
  I can relate. I'm massive Dune fan, but I see why people would have difficulty with Frank's prose. It's dry and not particularly sensual. However it is incredibly functional and lucid once you acclimate to the world he's building. He has a strong way of making you very aware of how everything relates to one another, both in space and conceptually. Stanislaw Lem, on the other hand. The substance is usually fantastic, but the reality of the characters tends to get obscured by long, intricate sentences that lack the precise objective descriptions of Frank's writing and lose a sense of where everything is in relation to one another. Lem tends to be extremely light on description in many instances. Perhaps that can be partly attributed to translation difficulties, as I've never read the Polish source. On the other hand I'd disagree about Neal Stephenson, I'm reading Snow Crash for the first time (halfway through it right now) and I loved the opening chapters. There's a real kineticism with Hiro and YT speeding through traffic that I find very evocative and leaves me pining for my days of doing irresponsible shit in traffic. He really has a way of writing action that feels exciting and focused. Neal has some hilarious descriptions that really paint a picture. There's a great description of the "rat thing" robotic sentry disarming a lawn full of aggressors with blinding speed and he describes one of the aggressors as having "had his trousers torn from the waistband all the way down to the ankle, and a strip of fabric is trailing out across the lot, as though he had his pocket picked by something that was in too much of a hurry to let go of the actual pocket before it left." That said, if do have one gripe so far it's the five uninterrupted chapters with Hiro expositing hard with the Librarian daemon about Sumerian mythology. The concepts being discussed are really interesting but it becomes tiring after a while, even when broken up by a few interstitial chapters following YT.

skyechurch 4y ago

Dick can be really rewarding, although he's definitely not to everyone's taste, or a particularly good stylist. This is true of other great writers who deal in extreme psychological states - Dostoyevsky for example. The extreme state for PKD was a metaphysical paranoia (probably augmented by amphetamine abuse), which many people can relate to, although it's usually not as intense or as intricate as in his novels. Dick was often writing autobiographical science fiction, which is an absolutely unique vision, though not one I'd like to experience first hand.

x86x87 4y ago
Yup. Sort of upset as I think with better form/style more people would have been exposed to his idea.
xhevahir 4y ago
I'm no authority on Russian literature but I've never agreed with this criticism of Dostoevsky. His writing is of a different kind, one that has its own logic. This article does a good job of explaining it I think: https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/the-master-of-petersburg-and-the-martyr-of-style/ https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/the-master-of-peter...