Seven of the top ten books of all time are by Ayn Rand or L. Ron Hubbard... who knew?

Moriveth

I think Stephen King suffers from similar problems as Philip K. Dick

great short stories, maybe not the best at extending them into books

I'd wager King's a better writer than Dick, though

Platypus Beirut

What did you read that gave you that impression, Mori?

ChicoBlue

I prefer Dick.

Moriveth

Which impression? I'm just going off what people have said here about King's work and my own experience reading Dick's books.

I mean Dick has written some amazing books (A Scanner Darkly, Man In The High Castle), but he also wrote a lot of books that would be (or were) better as short stories, like Counter-Clock World, which was essentially a short story.

Kwoaru

ChicoBlue wrote: »

I prefer Dick.

teehee

Platypus Beirut

I was referring to your statement that King's a better writer. I personally wouldn't be able to quote a single sentence from any King book I read, it's quite the opposite with Dick.

A Dabble Of Thelonius

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

Always been one of my favorite opening lines, if not my favorite.

Moriveth

Platypus Beirut wrote: »

I was referring to your statement that King's a better writer. I personally wouldn't be able to quote a single sentence from any King book I read, it's quite the opposite with Dick.

Well, okay. Just my opinion, anyway.

Old Red Ink

PKD is pretty much the epitome of idea-driven sf. There's almost always a really cool idea at the heart of his stories, but the other elements (prose, characters, plot, etc) are mostly there to serve the idea and aren't particularly interesting in and of themselves. If the coolness of the cool idea ever wears off, I just completely stop caring.

Kwoaru wrote: »

ChicoBlue wrote: »

I prefer Dick.

teehee

You, and people like you, are the reason I always refer to him as PKD.

You have done this to me.

I hope you're proud of yourself.

Mr Fuzzbutt

penis knob dick

Grey Ghost

Speaking of Philip K. Dick, I've been off and on trying to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for a while now and it is just not holding my interest at all

Moriveth

It's kinda tough to read, yeah. I think the only reason I can reread it as many times as I have is because it's one of those books I loved in high school, like East of Eden.

Tam

I'm trying to read Goedel Escher Bach and it's one of those things where you're almost grasping a big idea and suddenly it evaporates

Druhim

Tam wrote: »

I'm trying to read Goedel Escher Bach and it's one of those things where you're almost grasping a big idea and suddenly it evaporates

I keep meaning to go back and finish that book. I think he does a pretty good job of breaking it down, but the ideas do get increasingly difficult and require more and more work to really understand and proceed. I think I've only ever made it about halfway through the book. Been years since I've cracked it open.

Moriveth

I kinda felt that way about The Raw Shark Texts. Which I did enjoy, it just took a bit of thinking after the fact to wrap my head around some of the meta stuff.

Druhim

Well Godel, Escher, Bach isn't a novel. It's more an exploration of the nature of thought and logic and he starts with pretty simple concepts and exercises but gradually moves into some pretty challenging and tricky stuff that takes more and more work to grasp. But it's also important that you really grasp each concept before you move on because it all builds on what he's presented before. It's an interesting book.

Moriveth

Hmm, neat. I'll have to check it out sometime.

laughingfuzzball

DADOES is just really poorly written.

I guess I owe it some small debt of gratitude for Blade Runner, and the Church of Ford was a fun thing, but it's just not a good book.

Old Red Ink

I'm generally a huge Dick fan* but yeah, Androids is kind of a mess. Like I said before, there's definitely some cool stuff going on there, but it never comes together into anything coherent. A huge chunk of PKD's work is, in one way or another, about the nature of identity and what is means to be human, and Androids feels like it's supposed to be some major statement along those lines, but I have no idea what that statement is supposed to be. I did enjoy the book, but all the things that it did well, Blade Runner did better.

* Yeah, that's what I'm going with.

Grey Ghost

Having empathy is the key thing in Androids that makes one human
It's why there's such a craze for keeping animals, even robot animals, because you're caring for another entity (or keeping up the appearance of doing so), and I guess it also has something to do with that wacky religion

That said, while I understand what he's going for, I do not really care for either of those elements as they are executed

Crimson King

philip k. dick is amazing

his short stories are definitely better than his novels but he's still written some great novels

the man in the high castle, for instance

Aneurhythmia

ChicoBlue wrote: »

You'd think I might say The Running Hedgehog, but you would be mistaken.

I don't really care for any of the stuff he published under the Richard Eggman pseudonym.

Aneurhythmia

Grey Ghost wrote: »

Having empathy is the key thing in Androids that makes one human
It's why there's such a craze for keeping animals, even robot animals, because you're caring for another entity (or keeping up the appearance of doing so), and I guess it also has something to do with that wacky religion

Keeping up the appearance of doing so is a really big deal. Deckard has trouble discerning if what he experiences equates to what he thinks everyone around him experiences. Empathy becomes the promise of a social framework for people struggling against the real or imagined threat of pervasive radiation erasing their identity as humans, and just as quickly, it gets commodified as synthetic animals and a new religious movement.

Bucketman

I was at the bookstore today, decided to kick off my summer reading list I would grab House Of Leaves, so I'm going to see what you guys were talking about

Bucketman

PiptheFair wrote: »

also I'm still fucking pissed at king for dreamcatcher

I...liked Dreamcatcher

Moriveth

Bucketman wrote: »

PiptheFair wrote: »

also I'm still fucking pissed at king for dreamcatcher

I...liked Dreamcatcher

You go into the corner, Bucketman

Bucketman

I also read it when the movie had just come out, so 2003. I was 16 or 17, so I don't recall anything about it being bad. I just liked the aliens and the music from the chopper and the solider guy.

Now the movie, fuck that thing. And the movie for the Mist. The Mist is an amazing short story

The Geebs That Is A Pony

remember when the dude sat on the toilet because the shit alien was in there and the only way to hold it there was to sit on the lid and hold it in place

and then he was like "oh man I need to chew on a toothpick" but his toothpicks were on the ground in front of him but just out of his reach

the ground that, by the way, was covered in blood from the mad that had died expelling the shit alien

but he reaches forward anyways to get the shitblood covered toothpicks and by shifting his weight it lets the shit alien out and it kills him and his last thought is "my mom always said toothpicks would be the death of me"

Dichotomy

I do not remember that, no

YaYa

Bucketman wrote: »

YaYa wrote: »

man, you fucking nerds spend 5 pages talking about fantasy plotholes and nobody brings up the fucking Goblet of Fire

for shame, internet

I thought I knew you

What's the plot hole in goblet of fire?

okay so, Barty Crouch's entire plan involves tricking Harry into touching a portkey that takes him to Voldemort

he executes this via the relatively circuitous method of getting Harry into the tri-wizard tournament and all but rigging it so he wins, and thus can touch the portkey (being the tri-wizard cup) to fulfil his plan

but

a portkey can be literally anything, the book makes a point of it

and Harry is around Barty Crouch all the time as well while he's disguised as Moody


so why go through the trouble? Why not ask Harry to just hand him a book and WHISH

Tossrock

well you see, the humans don't actually know the real reason the machines are keeping them in pods, they're actually using their brains as a giant distributed neural network to do parallel computations on unfathomably large problem spaces and hey where are you going

The Geebs That Is A Pony

yaya that isn't a plot hole

Bucketman

YaYa wrote: »

Bucketman wrote: »

YaYa wrote: »

man, you fucking nerds spend 5 pages talking about fantasy plotholes and nobody brings up the fucking Goblet of Fire

for shame, internet

I thought I knew you

What's the plot hole in goblet of fire?

okay so, Barty Crouch's entire plan involves tricking Harry into touching a portkey that takes him to Voldemort

he executes this via the relatively circuitous method of getting Harry into the tri-wizard tournament and all but rigging it so he wins, and thus can touch the portkey (being the tri-wizard cup) to fulfil his plan

but

a portkey can be literally anything, the book makes a point of it

and Harry is around Barty Crouch all the time as well while he's disguised as Moody


so why go through the trouble? Why not ask Harry to just hand him a book and WHISH

Because (are we really spoilering Harry Potter?)

Making a big public display is better. My thought was that Harry was suppose to win, get his ass killed, then the Death Eaters would pop back with Voldy at the helm all "Fuck your shit look who we killed!"

Moriveth

I remember I read a Myst book once about Atrus' youth and in the very beginning he has a kitten that rolls in some grass only it's poison grass and it died

it made me so sad that I never picked up the book again

BYToady

The Geebs That Is A Pony wrote: »

remember when the dude sat on the toilet because the shit alien was in there and the only way to hold it there was to sit on the lid and hold it in place

and then he was like "oh man I need to chew on a toothpick" but his toothpicks were on the ground in front of him but just out of his reach

the ground that, by the way, was covered in blood from the mad that had died expelling the shit alien

but he reaches forward anyways to get the shitblood covered toothpicks and by shifting his weight it lets the shit alien out and it kills him and his last thought is "my mom always said toothpicks would be the death of me"

Remember when the space marines decided to fuck behind some machinery and then the guy's dick explodes and out jumps the Leprechaun?

The Geebs That Is A Pony

BYToady wrote: »

The Geebs That Is A Pony wrote: »

remember when the dude sat on the toilet because the shit alien was in there and the only way to hold it there was to sit on the lid and hold it in place

and then he was like "oh man I need to chew on a toothpick" but his toothpicks were on the ground in front of him but just out of his reach

the ground that, by the way, was covered in blood from the mad that had died expelling the shit alien

but he reaches forward anyways to get the shitblood covered toothpicks and by shifting his weight it lets the shit alien out and it kills him and his last thought is "my mom always said toothpicks would be the death of me"

Remember when the space marines decided to fuck behind some machinery and then the guy's dick explodes and out jumps the Leprechaun?

well if it was after the toothpick scene I have no idea because I immediately took the book back to the library

laughingfuzzball

Never read the book, but the movie is a masterpiece of modern cinema.

"I Duddits" indeed!

BYToady

The Geebs That Is A Pony wrote: »

BYToady wrote: »

The Geebs That Is A Pony wrote: »

remember when the dude sat on the toilet because the shit alien was in there and the only way to hold it there was to sit on the lid and hold it in place

and then he was like "oh man I need to chew on a toothpick" but his toothpicks were on the ground in front of him but just out of his reach

the ground that, by the way, was covered in blood from the mad that had died expelling the shit alien

but he reaches forward anyways to get the shitblood covered toothpicks and by shifting his weight it lets the shit alien out and it kills him and his last thought is "my mom always said toothpicks would be the death of me"

Remember when the space marines decided to fuck behind some machinery and then the guy's dick explodes and out jumps the Leprechaun?

well if it was after the toothpick scene I have no idea because I immediately took the book back to the library

Book? No this was the classic film "Leprechaun 7: Leprechaun in Space"

Which really paved the way for Jason X: Jason Vorheese in Space.

The Geebs That Is A Pony

my knowledge of the leprechaun series comes only from walking past the L section in family video

chiasaur11

laughingfuzzball wrote: »

Never read the book, but the movie is a masterpiece of modern cinema.

"I Duddits" indeed!

On the one hand, it has Tim Olyphant AND Damian Lewis, stars of my two favorite cop shows of recent years. Not to mention Tom Jane.

On the other hand, everything else.