p.k. dick and pulp science fiction

I love the guy. I love his stories. I love the ideas he writes about in his stories, but man... they are so simplistic. They're pulp science fiction. They're Keanu Reeves when there was Harrison Ford. But he's still tasty.

I'm reading a few more pk Dicks in the stack Barbarino lent me years ago. The past two days have been: A Maze of Death. It's interesting for sure, but pales in comparison to Dan Simmons. Rereading the final of the Hyperion series, Rise of Endymion, was just amazing. I love these four books. I could read them over and over. Simmons has an amazing mind, he tells amazing stories, has great characters and they are chock full of adventure as well as that love and sex thing. I mean, this IS a science fiction story, who are his readers. Oh, I'm one. Still, all these characteristics make Dan Simmons probably my favorite author - right up there with Jonathan Carroll, who I'd practically fly to Vienna to have coffee with but I'm not into author worship. Anyway, I guess this means I'll have to go out and buy Illium as well as the new Carroll very soon.

Fellow readers, send me your book suggestions.

Comments

[erin malone]

hey heather - have been enjoying reading about your la adventures. just saw you like jonathon carroll - has to be one of my favorite authors of all time. you are the first person I know who also likes him - most people who I mention him to, give me blank looks...anyway - drop me a line next time you are ever back in the bay area. or one of these days I might just catch you out in the desert. --- erin

[Will Campbell]

I'm in a book rut. I tried reading Bruce Wagner's "Crysanthemum Palace" but bailed halfway through in favor (for whatever reason) of the historical nonfiction of David McCullough's "The Johnstown Flood," which I completed — hallelujah! Then I climbed into David James Duncan's "The River Why" but lost interest quickly in its zen-and-the-art-of-fly-fishing narrative. Hell, I even dusted off Cervantes "Don Quixote," but three pages into the deathless prologue I ram screaming from it, and now with even less commitment I've picked up Marlon Brando's 11-year-old biography... something about "Songs His Mother Sang Him," or somesuch. Jeez, I can't even remember the title. Help Mr. Wizard!