Views from Medina Road

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Noted, not Blinked

To call Dick's stories (post 1966) science fiction is to insult them. Dick was writing about the nature of God, the human mind, mental illness, drugs, and paranoia in a way that was humorous, dark, intelligent, and entertaining.

Too many people who are praising Dick to the skies these days (calling him "the greatest science fiction writer," for example) haven't read much sciece fiction. In fact, I'm not convinced that some of them have even read Dick. (By the way, I've been a huge fan of Dick's work for over thirty years, and he's definitely one of my favorite writers. I just detest it when people ---many of them outsiders to the SF genre--- praise him because it's the "fashionable" thing to do.)

Too many people who are praising Dick to the skies these days (calling him "the greatest science fiction writer," for example) haven't read much sciece fiction. In fact, I'm not convinced that some of them have even read Dick. (By the way, I've been a huge fan of Dick's work for over thirty years, and he's definitely one of my favorite writers. I just detest it when people ---many of them outsiders to the SF genre--- praise him because it's the "fashionable" thing to do.)