I used to love The Three Stigmata too, but when I tried to read it again recently I couldn't get in to it either. I do think you have to be in the right mood to savor a Dick book, so maybe I was in the wrong mood that time.
The other first-tier PKD book for me is Martian Time-Slip.
Second-tier PKD books for me are VALIS and Galactic Pot Healer.
Third-tier are Maze of Death, Eye in the Sky, and Divine Invasion (the 2nd in the VALIS trilogy.. didn't like the 3rd in the series, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer at all).
Many of his other books, like Lies, Inc, also have great parts in them, but are kind of inconsistent.
Some of his short stories are excellent. My favorites:
- Beyond Lies the Wub
- Roog
- The Father Thing
- Faith of Our Fathers
I didn't really like A Scanner Darkly, nor Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep and would consider them of minor import had not movies been made of them. Other books in this category are Now Wait for Last Year (made in to Total Recall) and Time Out of Joint (made in to The Truman Show.. though the book is much darker). The movie Minority Report was based on another minor short story of his, as The Terminator might have been partially based on his story Second Variety.
Virtually all of the movies made from his work only bear only a very slight resemblance to the originals, which tends to be a lot darker, a lot less action-filled, and much more thought-provoking than the Hollywood adaptations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Remember_It_for_You_Who...
Looks like Upon the Dull Earth can be read here: [1] and Faith of Our Fathers here: [2]
Well, I just read Upon the Dull Earth, and found it to be an interesting story. Like many PKD books I've read, it starts out pretty weak and a little boring, but gets a lot better and weirder as it goes along (except for the very beginning of this story, which is also weird and interesting).
I found the dialogue and writing to be pretty awkward and stilted, and the first half to be kind of predictable. The main interesting idea is the big twist towards the end, and of course the very ending of the story, where that idea is taken to its limit.
Overall, I liked Faith of Our Fathers much more. I think it's a deeper, more compellingly told story.
[1] - https://philipkdickfans.com/mirror/gutenberg/Upon_The_Dull_E...
Yeah, a different opinion: these are his best novels, along with Ubik and The Man in the High Castle.
The movie guys, in spite of all the derision they get for bumbling and fumbling, were on the mark spotting a powerful source of mana, and made hay from PKD's chaff.
Lem, being a genius in his own right and honed sharp by life in Soviet-watched Eastern Europe, was able to disregard the "shoddiness of the props" and get to the potency of the spell.
They're a lot more comprehensible and relatable if you've ever had a bad trip on psychedelics.
He was convinced, in paranoid-Dickian-realityisweird fashion that Lem was actually a committee of people, and a Soviet hoax, not an individual.
0: https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is...
The acknowledgements page after the ending of the book is brutally heart breaking: he mentions all the friends he lost to psychosis and death, due to the drugs they all took together.
I also find that the book remains a fantastic read a second or third time - which I only find worthwhile doing with a few books.
“Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said” is among Dick’s peak stuff, too.
Just recently, I've started re-reading them on my Kindle. I've just finished "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch", and while I enjoyed it, I have to say it wasn't as good as I remember. Next up is "A Scanner Darkly", so we shall see how things go.