The day after he died Ursula LeGuin was supposed to give the commencement address at Reed College, in Portland. She started by saying, “Yesterday the greatest science fiction author of all time, and the greatest living author in English, died. So I’m going to talk about Philip K Dick instead of give this speech I wrote.”
(Source: I took SF classes at Portland State University with Tony Wolk, a good friend of Ursula LeGuin. He’d often have her come and talk to a class.)
Now, many people I respect would still say LeGuin herself is still the literary pinnacle in SF, and I agree. That she, the most human of writers, saw such humanity in PKD — that’s always struck me.
quadhome · 3m ago
Screamers (1995) is one of my favourite sci-fi movies and it's more or less The Secondary Variety in film form.
Beware: low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, "frustrating close to being great."
dsq · 3d ago
Dick is one of the writers that accompanied me in my youth, along with the Golden Agers (IA, RAH, AC etc.). His books are the base for many SF tv/movies. Total Recall, The Man in the High Castle, and others. This story, written in the fifties, is eerily evocative of todays drone warfare.
The day after he died Ursula LeGuin was supposed to give the commencement address at Reed College, in Portland. She started by saying, “Yesterday the greatest science fiction author of all time, and the greatest living author in English, died. So I’m going to talk about Philip K Dick instead of give this speech I wrote.”
(Source: I took SF classes at Portland State University with Tony Wolk, a good friend of Ursula LeGuin. He’d often have her come and talk to a class.)
Now, many people I respect would still say LeGuin herself is still the literary pinnacle in SF, and I agree. That she, the most human of writers, saw such humanity in PKD — that’s always struck me.
Beware: low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, "frustrating close to being great."