Dick

Michel Basilieres wrote an article about how much he doesn't like Philip K. Dick. Mumpsimus' Matthew Cheney takes the article apart in a manner which is both entertaining and provides more food for thought regarding Dick than Basilieres' original article did. Read them both.

I do have one quibble with the original article which Cheney does not address. Basilieres writes:

Of course, literary critics in France know little if anything of American science fiction, so Dick was never mentioned in any of the reviews. Instead, Carrère tells us, his novel was compared to Kafka.

I don't know if Basilieres is interpreting Carrère when he says this, but Dick is both popular and respected in France, and has been since before Hollywood started making movies based on his work. Tim Powers has said that on the cover of his (excellent) Philip K. Dick winning novel The Anubis Gates, Dick's name got bigger billing than his own, and the result was terrific sales, far outstripping those of any of Powers' other novels.