**A place to discuss published speculative fiction**—novels, short stories, comics, and more. Not sure if a book counts? Then post it! Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alt. History, Postmodern Lit., and more are all welcome here. **The key is that it be speculative, not that it fit some arbitrary genre guidelines**. Any sort of link or text post is welcome as long as it is about printed / text / static SF material.
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Yeah I don't think any of them lack surrealism.
Yes, pretty much all of them in one way or another. Even his explorations into writing more ‘mainstream’ fiction like Confessions of a Crap Artist and Mary and the Giant were weird in one way or another.
Hard yes. That's his entire schtick. His shorts are just as out there. Like his short about a brown oxford shoe.
Try his short stories. He wrote a lot of short stories, all various degrees of crazy, out there.
It's pretty common for the main character's worldview, identity or even entire reality to be rugpulled out from under them in some way. It's "Phil-Dick-ian" even.
"The Father-thing"
Pretty much all of them.
Our Friends From Frolix 8 is my vote for the weirdest of the bunch. It's a mess of a novel, and the usual streak of Dick misogyny is particularly wide and glaring — but it's so unhinged that it's a bizarrely compelling read.
Counter-Clock World. As the name suggests, everything occurs backwards: people say "goodbye" when greeting each other, people doing some mad Benjamin Button-type stuff by digging themselves out of their own graves, living their lives before eventually returning to the womb and becoming an egg. The concept is taken to its absolute extreme in every way.
It’s a real fun world for having a meal with your friends.
I read Ubik recently and while it was a little "out there" I would not describe it as "super surreal."
Recommend you read it and see for yourself. It will blow your mind. Ubik is one of my favorites of his.
They're all weird, although not all in the same way or to the same degree. For what it sounds like you want, the two I'd most recommend are Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Palmer Eldritch. Those can both be found together in one of the Library of America volumes. If you pick that one up, don't read it in order because it starts with The Man in the High Castle, which is a great book but not what I think you're going to want to make your first stop. You might appreciate that one more if you read the other three novels first and then go back and read that one to see Dick taking his trademark themes in a different direction (although he actually wrote that one before the other three novels in that volume).