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Not OP, but this resonates, so I'll speak for myself. One common thread in a lot of PKD is that he takes tons of very esoteric philosophical, religious, and sc

Not OP, but this resonates, so I'll speak for myself. One common thread in a lot of PKD is that he takes tons of very esoteric philosophical, religious, and scientific ideas extremely seriously. This includes everything from Buddhist Maya, to Platos circular theory of time, and includes lots of really interesting Gnostic stuff too. Reading his stuff at 10-15 years old can set you up with a follow-up reading list that lasts decades and reaches way outside of scifi. As a human being, there's some very real benefit to explicitly grappling with ideas like Cartesian solipsism at ~12 instead of hearing about it for the first time at ~20 in philosophy 101, but there's also some real dangers too! Besides being well read, PKD was obviously compelled to imagine the logical conclusion of almost everything he encountered in his life, including socio-political trends. While this inclination obviously bestowed an amazing gift, if you look at biographical elements of his life, it's equally obvious that it was a curse. There's definitely such a thing as being way too smart for your own good. His prescience on many topics is well known, so I'll skip that and add something more obscure. I'm very pleased that PKD is gradually becoming recognized as way more than just some pulp / SF writer, or just another prolific pop-fiction dude (like say Dan Brown or Stephen King) with an existing audience that Hollywood can monetize. PKD deserves much credit in the high-brow postmodern canon too, and although it's not widely realized yet, probably has done more to pioneer and popularize truly experimental fiction generally, and metafiction in particular, than almost anyone else you could name. Since I recently reread 3-stigmata, I will also quickly remind everyone that Choosy folks choose Chew-Z. As of today, it's uncanny how much Palmer Eldritch looks like an unholy combination of Zuck+Musk.

madaxe_again 1y ago
I read his SF corpus as a pre-teen and teen, too - but really didn’t “get” his non SF stuff until a lot later in life. Confessions, Mary and the giant, Milton Lumkey, all the rest - I don’t know if anyone captured the texture of the American mind quite so perfectly. He may have been a philosopher and a prophet, but the thing that he seemed to really understand was people. Their frailty, their avarice, their comfortable delusions, their prejudices, that love and hate are one and the same. As with his SF work, he poked at this consensus driven thing we call “reality”, and brought it crashing down. He profoundly shaped my thinking, too - you see a cat, I see a thing that is labelled “cat”. Shit, Jean Baudrillard developed an entire philosophy after reading his stuff.

madaxe_again 1y ago

I read his SF corpus as a pre-teen and teen, too - but really didn’t “get” his non SF stuff until a lot later in life. Confessions, Mary and the giant, Milton Lumkey, all the rest - I don’t know if anyone captured the texture of the American mind quite so perfectly. He may have been a philosopher and a prophet, but the thing that he seemed to really understand was people. Their frailty, their avarice, their comfortable delusions, their prejudices, that love and hate are one and the same. As with his SF work, he poked at this consensus driven thing we call “reality”, and brought it crashing down. He profoundly shaped my thinking, too - you see a cat, I see a thing that is labelled “cat”. Shit, Jean Baudrillard developed an entire philosophy after reading his stuff.