Philip K Dick suggestions

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
i just read ubik, first time i read something by philip k. dick. it's wonderful. i saw luka mentioning the coin-operated door earlier in this thread. something i noticed as well as something that has became part of today's reality. makes me think of that company that started to lease bicycles, where you have to pay an amount each month but never own it. it has expanded into every branch of products. money and transactions are a big theme anyway in the book. all those coins, some functioning, some obsolete and i couldn't help thinking of the half-life world as a metaphor for capitalism as a zero-sum game. spoilers: the big bully, jory, as a representation of the capitalist class surviving and feeding on the proletariat. one other interesting aspect to the book was the "world-creating" or "mapping" aspect that i think version made a thread about. jory only being able to create a limited amount of "world" based on how much energy he could gain from eating half-lifers.
 

luka

Well-known member
Has anyone read the Erik Davis book, High Weirdness?

I've been reading snippets at random. It's a PhD thesis which means it's larded with a lot of unnecessary references and concepts from pop philosophy. I find that irritating. But I like McKenna, RAW and Dick enough to keep picking at it.

Groupname for Grapejuice is a vastly better guide to the territory and an infinitely better writer so read his work (which is free) before looking at the Davis.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
High Weirdness is fun enough to draw you in & wonky enough to make you keep your distance.

Imho, Davis seems so enamoured with the “weird” of west coast psychedelic counterculture, the weird of the GD et al, that it can over-ride his focus because that’s his self-confessed tribe.

If you can filter it, overall the ontological analysis of Latour is fun. I skimmed the McKenna(s) section due to the absurdity behind their “experiment”. The PKD section is the strongest. Hints at dissociation, eg : the metal face in the sky (abuse history?), but it has a glaring hole in the shape of the influence of folks like William Burroughs, his fixation with Control, the Yage explorations & the scope of possibilities with use. It’s touched upon, but maybe for reasons to do with keeping it all Left Coast, you keep bumping into that hole.

Frustrating, but there are gems in there aplenty.
 
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