The handful of people who got the meaning behind my screen name might realize I'm a pretty big Philip K. Dick fan. For those of you who don't know, he's the guy who brought us Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (adapted into the film Blade Runner), We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (adapted as Total Recall), A Scanner Darkly, UBIK, Minority Report, Flow My Tears The Policemen Said, VALIS, Paycheck, Lies Inc., and (the source of my name) The Man In the High Castle. Not to mention about 120 short stories and 30-something novels. The man defined the word "prolific." He also proved that SF can be intellectual. The trademark of his novels was the questioning of reality and morality. You constantly are questioning the validity of what's going on. I absolutely love his fiction. It saddens me that he's not a regular in the curriculum of American Literature, because his voice was so powerful and the way he expressed it so unique. I rank Dick among Hemingway and Mailer as one of the top American writers in the past century.
Aside from Dick, I think the best recent SF I've come across has been the Warchild series by Karin Lowachee. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only one who's read them. They were hardly promoted and now rather hard to find in stores. But if you can pick them up, I highly recommend them. Possibly the scariest villain comes from her books (and I've read the Brothers Karamazov). But more importantly, while Dick gave us grand ideas and philosophical themes, Lowachee gives us characters. The novels are entirely character-driven, the voices of the narrators distinct and vivid. I can STILL sit down and read her books in an afternoon. The first two are the strongest. The third's good, but it's so dark it's like a punch in the gut.
Alright, that's enough wall-of-texting from me.
