If you like PHILIP K. DICK, then you'll love Christopher Priest - Thoughts on 'UBIK'
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- Опубліковано 11 вер 2024
- Looking at the links between Philip K Dick, Christopher Priest & David Cronenberg, Steve examines the attack on 'bourgeois' SF in 'Ubik' that underlies its significance as a metafiction and suggests that Priests' 'Indoctrinaire' might be just the thing for those who have enjoyed 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch'...
#booktube #bookrecommendations #sciencefiction #bookcollecting #sciencefictionbooks #davidcronenberg
That's what I like about PKD, the way he didn't care about conventional SF tropes. In Galactic Pot Healer his character goes to another planet and it's like someone catching a plane; no technobabble description of how the engines work, etc., just as mainstream writers wouldn't bother to describe how an airplane works. It's just a routine trip! And that's probably why I couldn't really appreciate his novels as a spaceporn-loving teen, and only 'discovered' PKD in my late 50's. Had some growing up to do...
Yes, Dick knew that the 'science' wasn't important, just what the science could enable for the good of the story-and not that he was unscientific when it helped make the points he wanted to get across. I cite 'Galactic Pot-Healer' as my key example of Conceptual Breakthrough in my first 'Elements of Science Fiction' video and there is other PKD here too...
OB when you referenced your UBIK poster, saying: "it's a bit dirty, perhaps I should spray some UBIK on it..." I laughed out loud. That aside, regarding PKD in the light of being a deconstructionist, I often feel as though he is analogous to music composers like John Cage or Stravinsky, to name a couple of deconstructors if you will, and vintage SF being analogous to classical music. The logical progression forward after classical music ran its course was the work of people like Cage and Stravinsky. I think of PKD as having the same function within SF. But I digress. OB, this is the best essay on PKD I have ever heard or seen, bar none. UBIK was my introduction to PKD and it has influenced my creative thinking ever since. Thanks for another eye opening episode! Fantastic job old chap. Truly. Cheers.
Cheers Rick. Yes, I can imagine Dick's SF version of '4:33' - you sit and look around you until the speculation begins LOL! There will be more like this, of course, as I revisit PKD over the next few years- I was planning to have a post-retirement Dick Year, when I read every book- one a week for an annum it would be, but I decided that was too systematic for a chaotic life like PKDs....
Phenomenal video. I'm glad I hung onto that copy of Indoctrinaire, per your encouragement. It's unfortunately many hundreds of miles away but maybe I'll bite the bullet and read it on Kindle.
Many thanks Matt. 'Indoctrinaire' is like Kafka on speed-cut LSD- dangerous, spiky!
Great video and exactly why enjoy your work. Looking forward to more!
Tune in thursday same time for something more in depth, theoretical and maybe controversial (to some). Thanks!
I must express my huge thanks to Mr Andrews for rekindling my love and obsession with books and reading and writing. Mille Grazie!
Folks do not overlook the unalluring thrift store and your local hospice.
Ealier today found a 1st Impression of a Christopher Priest Omnibus 2, Inverted World, Fugue For A Darkening Island (Earthlight 1999) for 2p. Like New.. A Format, with Jim Burns artwork.
Imagine my delight!
Yes, those are nice omnibi- wish I'd kept mine!
Synchronicity indeed! I commenced reading Ubik yesterday, all day in work dogged by the need to get home and finish the last thirty odd pages. Joe Chip wasn't long in Des Moines when my eyelids got pendulous last night. I loved it, fast paced and heavy hitting! Whats more, thanks to your waxing Steve, I have the Pan Lozenge of Priest's Indoctrinaire. I was going to read The Man in the High Castle or Flow My Tears next, but as ever, you've got me thinking . . .
Get stuck into 'Inoctrinaire' while you're in 'Ubik's collapsing cosmos- for me, the frenetic pace and nightmarish frisson of 'Ubik' is always exciting and CP's book will give you a different edge on the hallucinatory world of 1960s radical SF- and let me know how you get on. The other two Dick books are excellent, 'High Castle' calmer and more meditative, 'Flow' the final running down of Dick's cardinal 1960-1974 creative burst. After that, things were different...
As a youngster, I always found Dick more satisfying than other sf writers. Years later, i think Ursula K. LeGuin put a finger on why: he almost never resolved things through violence. That's what made him so interesting, though I hadn't realized it for years.
Yes, though of course characters in his novels often speak very directly to each other about their negative feelings about the other person- a lot more so than in real life. I noticed this after 3-4 books into my reading of PKD and have often thought it's unrealistic, as this never leads to fisitcuffs or shouting or the like- but then this is fiction, and the dialogue is at the service of the writer's vision and it is credible in most of the circumstances he depicts, though I doubt if a similar proportion of people in real life would be as direct and forthright. I don't see this as a weakness though, just a Dickian thing.
Leguin of course has an excellent point- on that front, I've just re-read hr amazing story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", eight pages of wisdom and guilt-inducing humanism. I think she lost it in the early 80s, probably, but before that...well!
your videos introduced me to Priests work, so far I've only read A Dream of Wessex and Inverted World both of which were very good. Indoctrinaire will be my next Priest read. Many thanks another inspiring video.
I'm glad you're enjoying his work. The best of his oeuvre is yet to come for you...
Really enjoyed this as Ubik is one of my favorite Dick books. I like Three Stigmata better, I know you have a different opinion. I haven't read Electric Sheep yet. I'm sure that, per usual, the book would be much better than the movie. Also I haven't read any Priest so I must do.
Different topic, I read Flowers For Algernon which I last read 65 years ago when I was 10. Very good. Can't image I could have absorbed it all at 10 years old. I do remember thinking it was sad back then, which it still is.
Also I just read Childhood's End for the first time though I always knew it was a classic. It certainly didn't disappoint!
Btw probably you knew but"Ubik" was (rather surprisingly) named one of Time magazines top 100 books of the 20th Century
Thanks for your comments as ever, my friend.
I think Dick's canonisation in the mainstream - safe now that he's dead, caused by a successful film (if only the mainstream could see beyond their 'sci-fi' blinkers and stop making assumptions about SF all being crap, right?) - has become problematic. Why have they not discovered Disch or Silverberg or Malzberg? Why is M John Harrison only now being called "The best writer you never heard of,". In that way, the cult of PKD has become distasteful to me- it's like 'we've let one of 'em in, **** the others,'.
I like 'Stigmata', it is brilliant, but I think it's talked about too much in relation to other books- 'Martian Time-Slip' is the neglected one, I feel.
I love 'Flowers For Algernon', but it's been a while for me too. I'm still amazed it's only a cult book in the UK- it stays in print- when it should be famous. One day, the mainstream (again) will discover it and blather on and things will change....so cleverly written and emotionally devastating, quiet genius.
I do have my issues with ACC as I've said, but I like 'Childhood's' too- it is a bit of landmark.
You just reminded me of the story by Fritz Leiber, "You're All Alone".
Well yes! Ever read 'John Barleycorn' by Jack London? If not, you should, amazing book.
Great vid. I remember reading Ubik in my late teens and it affecting my dreams for weeks! It's still my favourite PKD, but probably more for nostalgic reasons than anything else. About CP - i just finished 'Airside' and while I liked it well enough, I loved the chapters that were reviews, especially the one on 'La Jetée'. I'm struck with the similarities with that to 'Indoctrinaire' - someone endures a weird interrogation, travels through time (in both directions) and ends up at a critical point for themselves and humanity. In fact, the more I think about it, the more there seems to be a very definable thread from Morel, to Marienbad, to Marker, to Priest, to Tom McCarthy - people reliving their past and getting 'stuck' in an ambiguous way.
Absolutely. It was the disorienting nature of airports I felt he explored beautifully in relation to film- I always find airports confounding, being a bit of a control freak. And of course he's a big film buff since around 1960 and Morel, le Jetee and the other references closely mirror his own works. Good to hear from you as ever, Michael.
I have just finished reading the glamour on your recommendation and i cannot stop thinking about it. What a recommendation.
I would be very interested to hear your take on the ending. I have looked up some 'explanations' but i feel they try to make the ending too neat, and there is more ambiguity in it than they seem to have inferred. Did you ever talk to Chris about the ending? Has he ever discussed it in depth?
I'm very glad you enjoyed it, but I will not discuss the ending here as this is a public forum as the denouements of Chris' work are super-important and hard to talk about without giving the game away. This is one reason why his books are very, very hard to sell even by an old pro like me. Go to the 'About' page on the channel, scroll down and email me.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Thank you - I have just emailed. Very interested to hear your thoughts.
I ordered Priest's Inverted World earlier today because of your videos! I wasn't familiar with him yet, so I'm excited to dig in. Indoctrinaire sounds superb too. I've read about 10 PKD novels and I've always liked Ballard's style of writing (I read a lot of his short stories at some point some years ago). Anyway, great job on these videos bringing the better, unknown works to the public - I'm enjoying watching these!
My pleasure, If you like JGB and PKD, you CANNOT go wrong with Priest- and besides these cardinal influences, he has his own voice, his own takes on things that is uniquely his, from the very first story onwards...
I agree with you... mostly, Steve. Priest must have been influenced a bit by PKD, which is probably why I prefer Chris' earlier books. Over the last twenty to thirty years it seems to me that he's marched too much to the same tune, there's not the thematic variety of which he used to be capable. He's still a good writer, of course, so I still buy and read his books.
On the Dick critical volume, Aldiss' piece was from Martian Timeslip, published by NEL, not Hodder... just saying.
Yes, that's where I first read the Aldiss piece, very good. I do think Chris settled into a groove, agreed, there is less variety- he seemed to change style too between 'The Quiet Woman' and 'The Prestige' - the later work is less spiky in its vocabulary, smoother, but I'm not as fond of it stylistically. I think Chris has been a in quasi-playful, experimental riffing phase for the last five years or so, where he's playing with 'mystery' as in crime fiction and while this hasn't always been as compelling, I think it's reached a fresh, enjoyable apogee in 'Airside', which I loved.
I really like Ubik ❤
Me too, read it many times....Joe Chip, what a hero!
My paperback copy of "Ubik" has the same cover! 👍 Though mine is the printing that came after yours; 1988. Grafton on the spine. I would imagine yours says Granada (or Perhaps even Triad Grafton. Actually, come to think of it, their spine names were all over the place back then: Panther Granada is another one! 🙄 Must be a bibliophile's nightmare! 😂).
The problem is inconsistency. There is an evolution - Pather was acquired by Granada in the 70s (then a TV company as you'll recall maybe), then when Granada was acquired by Collins in 1985, they changed the name to Grafton (as the HQ of the company was on Grafton Street, London) then as the 90s dawned, when Collins acquired Unwin in order to exploit the Tolkien backlist, they took Unwin editor Jane Johnson on to run their SFF and Grafton's SFF imprint then became Voyager, with a subsequent diminuation of the SF element of the list (lots of it had been licensed from hardcover publishers - Triad, which sometimes popped up on the spines, indicates a deal with Chatto, Cape and Bodley Head to issue their books in pbk- these three unrelated companies eventually were swallowed up by Random House, now merged with Penguin). I worked in the industry through all these transitions as small publishers snowballed together into giant media conglomerates.
Jane is lovely but she's always been more of a Fantasy lady- she's a real Tolkien and Old English scholar- and I do put the decline of Voyager as an SF imprint down to her greater interest in F, plus Collins by then were more sales-driven and SF in the 90s was floundering, the US renaissance of the 1980s puttering out as many of the finest authors proved too sophisticated for the Ian Banks audience.
@@outlawbookselleroriginalI'm ten years younger than yourself but I, too, have fond memories of Grafton paperbacks. Bought a whole loads of secondhand books in the '90s with - variously - Triad Panther, Triad Granada, Triad Grafton and (of course) all three without the 'Triad' prefix. Gosh, I was buying old paperbacks for less than it would cost today to post one! 😂
@@paulcampbell6003 Ain't that the truth!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Just had me a mini secondhand book haul in Glasgow. Couple of nostalgia buys, some non-fic Hitchcock but - of more relevance to the channel! - a 1974 NEL reprint of "Jizzle" (1954) by John Wyndham with the terrific train 'n' skull against a red/orange/yellow flaming background which you displayed prominently in one of your videos! 😌🤗🥰
@@paulcampbell6003 Love that book, both content and design!
Another great video mate
Thanks my friend!
I am half way through Paul Williams - Only apparently Real. It’s based on his conversations with PKD. Interesting stuff.
Yes, read that back when it came out. It is fascinating, but I am rather in the 'Cult of PKD focused on his religious experiences is distasteful' group. It's not that these aspects are not important, I just think they have been over-emphasised since his untimely death. Norman Spinrad, who knew PKD very well in the last decade of his life is in agreement on this point- he says that the VALIS trilogy is an aberration and unfilfilling, while Dick's final novel 'The Transmigration of Timothy Archer' is where he was heading and that he was entirely lucid at that point. We'll never know, but when you think during that late 70s period that PKD was entering his fifth marriage, had mental health and drug issues for a long time, had produced a huge amount of work- well, it would get to anyone. But I'd say try and pick up Lawrence Sutin's biography of PKD- the others are lame by comparison.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal One of the biggest things to happen to Phil was his mother telling him his twin sister died of starvation and neglect. He could never forgive her for this. His mother also married his uncle after his aunty death. He always felt he never had a real family. Therefore he made so many people in his books that he could help and be around.
@@slurmcarey3069 Yes,. this is covered extensively in Sutin's biography of Dick which I read when first published around 30 years ago and revisited it recently- Made reference to it in my review video for 'Dr Bloodmoney', where Jane's presence is highly germane.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I will check out Sutin. Thanks again mate.
fantastic video 👍
You're too kind.
Read Existenz. It's penned by Chris Priest. EDIT: your books are in such good condition, and some nuggets of variations there too. Great discussion.
Thanks for that. Yep, I know how to curate, that's decades of working at it in the industry.
Yep, Chris first used the pseudonym John Luther Novak back in 1986 for the tie-in for 'Mona Lisa'. I asked him to sign it for me in 87 (when we first met and became firm friends immediately), but he denied it then- at least verbally- he knew I knew. He had already been outed as 'Colin Wedgelock' for 'Short Circuit 2' tie-in. Reportedly, there are others, but no-one knows and no-one is telling....
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Brilliant, a bit of mystery.
Is there a collection of short stories by Priest? Thankyou!
There are several, here they are in publication order (I've included his self-publishing GrimGrin titles, available from his website, in the chronology, so earliest written first):
'Ersatz Wines' (very early material, some unpublished at the time, GrimGrin), 'Real-Time World' (the 'Real Time World +2' from GrimGrin is the better edition, with extra material and I wrote the review on the back), 'An Infinite Summer', 'The Dream Archipelago', 'Episodes'. There is some duplication of material between the last three, but ALL are essential. I'm hoping to talk CP into talking Gollancz into a 'Complete' short stories someday, as he is no longer writing them and I think there are a few still uncollected, but my memory may be vague on that point.
what would you suggest is a good Michael Bishop book to start with? first time hearing his name and i'm fascinated
Depends what sort of thing you like. Michael's early work is quite trippy, colourful and usually has exotic otherworldly settings- it's very flavoursome, but not suitable for all tastes. I prefer his 1980s work on, which is more realism-based but I feel more effective: 'Ancient of Days' (see the video on the channel in the '100 Must Read Science Fiction Novels' playlist) is my fave, 'Philip K Dick is Dead, Alas' (aka 'The Secret Ascension') is brilliant if you love PKD and should be read alongside Dick's 'Radio Free Albemuth' for full impact and 'Brittle Innings', about a Frankenstein-type being joining a smalltown baseball team is incredibly charming.
Not too much on that series. Is the editor consistent?
I can't recall without looking them up. There were at least 6 on the series, maybe more, wish I'd bought them all, I think they're uncommon now, but the PKD one has seminal Dick studies contents, way before it was fashionable...
Great stuff as always , never linked scanners , existenz and PKD saw the movies when they first came out , read dick a little later . Priest is fast becoming a firm favourite , Love his writing . A hand coming out of a table ??? Very strange trippy stuff . Classic 👍🏻
Yeah, that bit gets everyone- CP has come up with some frightening moments in his time. Try "The Miraculous Cairn" from 'The Dream Archipelago' (or the original, sharper version in 'Granta Best of Young British Novelists (1983 edition with a Union Jack flag on it).
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I have ordered dream archipelago in hardback from Wob , I will have to see what condition it turns up in , also infinite summer ,and the affirmation🤞🏻. Was going to try the glamour next although I may stick to publication order . With PKD I just jump all over the place. Scanners was the first film on video I watched I think 1980 ish I would guess loved it . 😱💥
@@themojocorpse1290 Yes, I first saw 'Scanners' in the cinema in 1980, my first DC. With Priest, publication order is good as you see real development and you get a lot out of him by going that way. PKD, with his uneven quality and development is a different matter, you can cherry pick.