This is too difficult. I feel I ought to go with Vonnegut, but PKD is so great also. They're so different...

Dick has had much more impact on popular cinema, but the stories are usually changed so drastically that only the most basic premises are left intact. It feels that there's a lot more, I dunno, humnaity to Vonnegut's writings...

Tough decision, but I guess I've got to go with Kurt Vonnegut.

Phil, for the Valis Trilogy alone.

don't get me wrong, I've read and love everything by both men, but, seriously, The Psychological and Emotional heft of the later novels, combined with the Humour, paranoia and just plain insanity of possibility in the earlier works leads me to Phil.

a more interesting question, and something my father and I ponder regularly over cocktails is, how much our world is turning into a version of a Dick novel (and/or Snow Crash)

Vonnegut for me, by twelve miles.

Maybe I just like Vonnegut's conversational prose tone better. But P.K.Dick is right on his heels.

Mark Hansen wrote:I like Vonnegut, and I've read plenty of his books, but I think I've read virtually everything by P.K. Dick, and his books are the only ones that I pick up and re-read over and over.

I'm the same but the other way around. I have reread Sirens of Titan so many times over the years.

Vonnegut, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of Dick.

Allegedly.

A more fair Crap/Not Crap would Vonnegut V.S. Twain.

Versus PKD... Vonnegut, but the battle doesn't make much since to me.

Philip K. Dick's plots/subplots, and philosophy always interested me more than Vonnegut's.

Vonnegut is the better by far but Dick wrote a handful of great books. Just nothing as good as Mother Night or Cat's Cradle.