Last edited Mon Oct 13, 2025, 06:32 PM - Edit history (1)

I read several of his books. I considered him the equal of people like Bradbury, Asimov, and Heinlein.
Oh yes, also Arthur Clarke.

Decades ago Heinlein predicted skin-tight fashions, widespread photovoltaic power, self-driving cars, evangelical dictator president of the US, common-place acceptance of homosexualism and transgenderism (which exists today despite backward looking maga revisionism), and commercial space travel. However, like all futurists, he has more failed predictions than successful.

All laid out with compelling yarn spinning. He has his flaws as a writer (multiple) but Heinlein is the most influential science fiction writer of all time.

Orwell's reputation rests on one spectacular book of science fiction and one iconic animal fable. He does have many top shelf essays but they are not widely read.

Bradbury is very lyrical, poetry disguised as prose. Le Guin has sociological insights nobody has come close to.

If you like Dick, you need to get deep into Harlan Ellison.

The Year's Best Science Fiction series edited by Gardner Dozois is well worth reading, all 35 years up to 2018, for modern cutting edge short stories and longer form short fiction.

In the introduction to the 1980 short story collection The Golden Man, Dick wrote: "Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in this world. I don't agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn't raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to them in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine-looking man, very impressive and very military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I'm a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love."

I was in a band formed of people who all loved Dick. My attorney son has now read his entire catalog.

Ellison is my personal favorite. And I still love Heinlein very much.

It's called Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick.