The Essential Philip K. Dick
PKD is one of my favorite sci-fi writers and I recommend <i>Ubik</i> if you're a new reader, although like the article mentions, you definitely need to be in a certain mindset to "get it." <i>The Man in the High Castle</i> has an interesting concept but I don't think it's particularly well-written.<p>One thing that I think goes unnoticed about PKD is how some of his earlier short stories are undeniably, unquestionably <i>bad.</i> <i>Fair Game</i>, for instance. He wrote it in 1953, a decade+ before his work started to get really good: <i>The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch</i> was written in 1964, <i>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</i> in 1968, and <i>Ubik</i> in 1969.<p>I personally find this a bit reassuring. It's nice to know that even someone as influential as PKD took a long time to develop.