While visiting my parents in El Paso I ran across two great paperback editions by PKD, one was "The Unteleported Man" and the other was "The Eye in the Sky". I picked up both for $5.00 which was awesome and I started reading "The Unteleported Man" immediately.
The first 100 pages of the book are seriously amazing. I was all prepared to declare it one of my favorite PKD books, up until page 100 when the story took a complete left turn into stupidity.
Apparently the book has been published in various forms over the years with the additional material (where things get really stupid) being added in by the author himself to expand a short story which originally appeared in a sci-fi anthology as a long-form short story.
Those first 100 pages are good enough to inspire a feature length film, as long as the adaptation avoided the detour added in to pad the story.
I would recommend the book to those who already love PKD as I do and who are patient enough to plow their way through the second half of the book to get to the ending which was part of the original short story.
For the record, these are my favorite PKD books in no particular order:
*Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
*Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
*The Man Who Japed
*Ubik
I might also note that I have read but not particularly enjoyed "The Man in the High Castle" and "A Scanner Darkly" which are often hailed as some of PKD's greatest novels.
Of course, I have barely scratched the surface since he wrote over 40 novels and hundreds of short stories in his lifetime.
I am currently reading the "Paycheck" collection of short stories by PKD and have just finished "The Eye of the Sybil" collection.
While I'm in a list-making mood, here are my favorite sci-fi films of all time:
*Blade Runner
*Brazil
*Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
*Children of Men
*Gattaca
*Alien
*Aliens
*Terminator
*The Matrix
-kg
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