Search results for ""Author Philip K. Dick""

Philip K Dick’s classic dystopian novel set in the future where the remaining human survivors on Earth must gamble for their future with aliens from Titan, one of the moons circling Saturn. Roaming the pristine landscape of Earth, cared for by machines and aliens, the few remaining humans alive since the war with Titan play Bluff, allowing them to win or lose property and also form new marriages in order to maximise the remote chance some pairings will produce a child. When Pete Garden, a particularly suicidal member of the Pretty Blue Fox game-playing group, loses his current wife and his deed to Berkeley, he stumbles upon a far bigger, more sinister version of the game. The telepathic, slug-like Vugs of Titan are the players and at stake is the Earth itself. The Game-Players of Titan is a brilliantly conceived vision of a future dystopia, full of imaginative detail, moments of pure humour and thought-provoking musings on the nature of perception, as the seemingly straightforward narrative soon turns into a tumultuous nightmare of delusion, precognition and conspiracy.

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Another classic novel from the world's greatest writer of science fictionJason Taverner is a Six, the result of top secret government experiments forty years before which produced a handful of unnaturally bright and beautiful people ... and he's the prime-time idol of millions until, inexplicably, all record of him is wiped from the data banks of Earth. Suddenly he's a nobody in a police state where nobody is allowed to be a nobody.Will he ever be rich and famous again? Was he, in fact, ever rich and famous?

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Jason Taverner has a glittering TV career, millions of fans, great wealth and something close to eternal youth. He is one of a handful of brilliant, beautiful people, the product of top-secret government experiments forty years earlier. But suddenly, all records of him vanish. He becomes a man with no identity, in a police state where everyone us closely monitored. Can he ever be rich and famous again? Or was that life just an illusion?

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The definitive editions of Philip K. Dick's short stories, containing some of the most defining works in the Science Fiction genre.This stunning new edition of Philip K Dick's work includes the influential 'Adjustment Team' and 'The Father Thing', as well as a litany of mind-expanding other works. Work your way through some of the most influential stories from the 20th century, which have had a massive impact on popular culture.'I am bowled over. I am so impressed by the variety in stories, and how interesting the individual story ideas are' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Philip K. Dick is a master of messing with your head in a story' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Enter the Mind of a Genius . . . This collection of short stories by Philip K. Dick are great, thought provoking, funny, and some really frightening' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'This blew my mind, and then some. The ideas and concepts alone need five stars. What an amazing man' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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The definitive editions of Philip K. Dick's short stories, containing some of the most defining works in the Science Fiction genre.This stunning new edition of Philip K Dick's work includes the influential 'Beyond Lies the Wub' and 'Second Variety', as well as a litany of mind-expanding other works. Work your way through some of the most influential stories from the 20th century, which have had a massive impact on popular culture.'One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction' Sunday Times'No other writer of his generation had such a powerful intellectual presence' Brian Aldiss'Thought-provoking,original,deeply moving. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Very fun. Classic PKD' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Wow. Every single story in this book could be made into a contemporary movie' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Absolutely brilliant . . . Strongly recommend to everyone (even those who normally do not like science fiction)' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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Nick and his family are forced to leave Earth in order for him to keep his cat, Horace - because all pets are now banned, as they use up badly needed resources. They settle on Plowman's Planet, where they discover a variety of strange and wonderful alien lifeforms.But not all of these weird lifeforms are benevolent - and the family is involved in a series of increasingly dangerous mishaps. Can Horace and Nick manage to outwit the Wub, the Werjes, the Trobes - and the most dangerous of all, the Glimmung?Philip K. Dick's only children's book, first published after his death, brings together many of his most famous alien creations in one gently humorous tale.

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Joe Fernwright works as a pot-healer, a repairer of ceramics, in a dull future where there isn't much call for his skills. He's broke and bored when the offer from the Glimmung comes along. It might just be the answer to both his financial and spiritual problems, even if it does mean working on a strange project on Plowman's Planet with other assorted odd creatures. The only thing is that the Glimmung may just be divine and ask for more than Joe's commitment to the job ...

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Another classic novel from the world's greatest writer of science fictionJason Taverner is a Six, the result of top secret government experiments forty years before which produced a handful of unnaturally bright and beautiful people ... and he's the prime-time idol of millions until, inexplicably, all record of him is wiped from the data banks of Earth. Suddenly he's a nobody in a police state where nobody is allowed to be a nobody.Will he ever be rich and famous again? Was he, in fact, ever rich and famous?

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Bruce Stevens is a young buyer for a big discount house when he meets the recently divorced Susan Faine. She suggests that he might like to manage her ailing typewriter store and he leaps at the suggestion. Then he realizes that Susan was his teacher when he was in fifth grade. In spite of that, they are married within days. And then the odd compulsions and instabilities start to interfere with their plans. Milton Lumky, the paper salesman in whose area they live, is uneasy about their future ...

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As the eagerly-anticipated new film Blade Runner 2049 finally comes to the screen, rediscover the world of Blade Runner . . . World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life. Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were never that simple, and his assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit - and the threat of death for the hunter, rather than the hunted . . .

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The science fiction masterpiece behind the cult classic films Bladerunner and Bladerunner 2049.World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon,he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life.Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were never that simple, and his assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit - and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted ...Readers have been blown away by Philip K. Dick:'Now I understand what all the fuss is about. The guy is a visionary . . . Every paragraph launches us forward, demands our attention . . . a classic example of the finest science fiction' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Probably my favourite Philip K. Dick book . . . set in a dystopian Earth much dilapidated after 'World War Terminus' . . . I cannot praise this book enough, it really is one of the all-time greats' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'A science fiction masterpiece . . . about a post-apocalyptic world seeking resurrection through the rediscovery of empathy. But who is more empathetic - humans or androids? What is the dividing line? The book constantly explores how far human ideas of life, death, religion and love could survive in a dark uncaring world' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'I thought this was great and original . . . The Earth has become barely habitable due to nuclear winter, radiation and depopulation . . . a really cool story and I think only PKD could have written something of this style. I would recommend this . . . if you liked the Blade Runner movies' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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Philip K Dick’s visionary forerunner to the novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ that became the film Bladerunner, tells the story of Louis Rosen and his love for the daughter of his business partner and the truth about where his life-like androids might end up… Making an animatronic replica of Abraham Lincoln has never been easier. Finding someone to buy it is the hard part. Louis Rosen’s firm, the Frauenzimmer Piano Company, builds electronic organs and upright pianos. Deciding to expand the business the firm get ambitious, building exact reconstructions of famous personalities. Sam K. Barrows, a lunar real estate tycoon wants to repopulate the moon with their creations, and he’s the only one rich enough to buy them. As the Lincoln model develops a fault and Rosen begins to fall for the daughter of his business partner, things go from bad to worse and his mental health rapidly begins to deteriorate. ‘We Can Build You’ bears striking similarities in Dick’s later novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ which was later transformed into Ridley Scott’s extraordinary science fiction film classic ‘Bladerunner’.

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Jack Isidore is a 'crap artist', a collector of crackpot ideas and worthless objects. His beliefs make him a man apparently unsuited for real life and so his sister, an edgy and aggressive woman, and his brother-in-law, a crass and foul-mouthed businessman, feel compelled to rescue him from it. But, observed through Jack's murderously innocent gaze, Fay and Charley Hume are seen to be just as obsessed as Jack. Their obsessions may be a little more acceptable than Jack's but they are uglier. And, in the end and thanks to Jack's intervention, theirs lead to tragedy ...

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No man in their rightful mind would kill their wife miles from home. Chuck Rittersdorf has recruited some robot help, and now, in the madness and dysfunction of the Alphane moon, there seems no better place to carry out his cruel plans unless he too is part of a much larger conspiracy. Alpha Centauri, a star within the closest star system to earth, has several orbiting moons, among which is Alpha III M2. On this remote moon, a colony, originally set up to provide respite for the mentally ill is about to become the focus of a secret invasion plan. Among them is Chuck Rittersdorf, a 21st century CIA robot programmer, who has decided to kill his own wife via a remote control simulacrum. He enlists the aid of a telepathic Ganymedean slime mould called Lord Running Clam, an attractive female police officer and various others both witting and unwitting. But when Chuck finds himself in the midst of an interplanetary spy ring on the Alphane moon inhabited entirely by certified maniacs, his personal revenge plans begin to awry as the nature of reality itself is called into question in this brilliantly inventive tale of interstellar madness, murder and violence.

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It began with a blinding light, a divine revelation from a mysterious intelligence that called itself VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System). And with that, the fabric of reality was torn apart and laid bare so that anything seemed possible, but nothing seemed quite right. It was madness, pure and simple. But what if it were true?

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The definitive editions of Philip K. Dick's short stories, containing some of the most defining works in the Science Fiction genre.This stunning new edition of Philip K Dick's work includes the influential 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale' and 'The Electric Ant', as well as a litany of mind-expanding other works. Work your way through some of the most influential stories from the 20th century, which have had a massive impact on popular culture.'A great collection, showcasing Dick's evolution' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'my reason for giving the book a five-star rating has to do with my emotional state I felt when I closed the last page. I feel that I delved into a more extensive realm of PKD's mind by reading this collection' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'An amazing collection of downright bizarre fiction. So many excellent stories that it would be hard to pick a favorite' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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A masterwork by Philip K. Dick, this is the final, expanded version of the novellla THE UNTELEPORTED MAN, which Dick worked on shortly before his death. In LIES, INC., fans of the science fiction legend will immediately recognise his hallmark themes of life in a security state, conspiracy, and the blurring of reality and illusion. In this wry, paranoid vision of the future, overpopulation has turned cities into crammed industrial anthills. For those sick of this dystopian reality, one corporation, Trails of Hoffman, Inc., promises an alternative: Take a teleport to Whale's Mouth, a colonized planet billed as the supreme paradise. The only catch is that you can never come back. When a neurotic man named Rachmael ben Applebaum discovers that the promotional films of happy crowds cheering their newfound existence on Whale's Mouth are faked, he decides to pilot a spaceship on the 18-year journey there to see if anyone wants to return.

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Four people's lives intertwine and collide in this early novel from one of the SF greatsSan Francisco in the 1950s, a turning point in American culture: the rise of rock and roll and the teenage lifestyle. Jim Briskin is a disc jockey on radio KOIF. He's still in love with his ex-wife, Pat - even though she's about to marry someone else at the station - and she's vacillating between them. But when he takes her to visit the desperate household of two of his teenage fans, she seduces the boy into abandoning his pregnant wife - who then claims Jim as her protector and support.And all around them the cultural upheaval of postwar American society is manifest, by teenage outcasts who have a remote-controlled Nazi automobile they use to bump into the rich kids' cars; by Thisbe Holt, the dancer who performs for conventioneers by stuffing herself inside a clear plastic bubble; by blaring used-car ads and the conflict between generations. Dick gives us a vision of redemption tempered with layered ironies and a lot of real humour.

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As the Communists advance, a small group of Americans trapped in a Chinese factory must learn to work together in this early novel from Philip K. DickThree American workers are left behind in China by their employer, biding their time in an abandoned factory as the communists approach. As they while away the days, both the young and naive Carl Fitter and the older, worldly Verne Tildon vie for the affections of Barbara Mahler, a woman who may not be as tough as she acts.But Carl's innocence and Verne's boorishness might drive Barbara away from both of them ...This early novel by Dick, unpublished in his lifetime, is a remarkable insight into his future works.

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One of Dick's earliest books but his last to be published, this is the story of one man's descent into depression and madness - and his escape to the other sideStuart Hadley is a young radio electronics salesman in early 1950s Oakland, California. He has what many would consider the ideal life. He has a nice house, a pretty wife, a decent job with prospects for advancement - but he still feels unfulfilled. Something is missing from his life.Hadley is also an angry young man - an artist, a dreamer, a screw-up. He tries to fill his void first with drinking, then sex, and then with religious fanaticism, but nothing seems to be working and it is driving him crazy. He reacts to the love of his wife and the kindness of his employer with anxiety and fear.Is there anything that can bring him back to the world?Winner of both the HUGO and JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARDs for BEST NOVEL, Philip K. Dick is widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day. The object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, he has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.

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Five of Philip K. Dick's best novels in one fantastic value volume: the best of SF's visionary masterThis volume contains DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? (filmed as BLADERUNNER), MARTIAN TIME SLIP, UBIK, THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH and A SCANNER DARKLY. Taken together they represent the best of Philip K. Dick's unique imagination. In Dick's writing nothing is what it seems, our sense of the world's order is fatally undermined and mass media tells us nothing but artful lies. Films such as THE MATRIX and THE TRUMAN SHOW would not have been made but for Philip K. Dick. His work has never been more timely.

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World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon,he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life.Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were never that simple, and his assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit - and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted ...

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Episcopal bishop Timothy Archer is haunted by the suicides of his son and mistress, and must cope with the implications of the discovery of a religious artefact. These events drive him into a quest for the identity of Christ.The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is Philip K. Dick's last completed novel and a learned, moving investigation of the paradoxes of belief.

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Scaldingly sarcastic yet enduringly empathetic, THE ZAP GUN is Dick's remarkable novel depicting the insanity of the arms race. Lars Powderdry and Lilo Topchev are counterpart weapons fashion designers for a world divided into two factions - Wes-bloc and Peep-East. Since the Plowshare Protocols of 2002, their job has been to invent elaborate weapons that only seem massively lethal. But when alien satellites hostile to both sides appear in the sky, the two are brought together in the dire hope that they can create a weapon to save the world, a task made all the more difficult by Lars falling in love with Lilo, even as he knows she's trying to kill him.

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Exiled for 2,000 years God must retake the Earth from the clutches of his nemesis using a man caught between life and death as His vessel. God is in exile. The only man who can help is clinically dead. Herb Asher, an audio engineer by trade, is in suspended animation following a car accident that appears to have taken his life. As he floats in cryonic suspension he awaits his new spleen and dreams back through the last six years of his life which reveal much of his bizarre journey and the battle with Belial, the force of evil that will stop at nothing to achieve its goal.

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A preliminary to Dick’s masterwork, Valis, in which Phil appears as an explicitly named autobiographical character for the first time. Soon to be a major new film. As America gasps in the stranglehold of a skull-crushing totalitarian regime, a supernatural intelligence speaks from the stars… ARAMCHEK… the word scratched in the sidewalk of the President’s childhood home. ARAMCHEK… the name of the subversive society ‘with no official membership’ whose sole purpose is to overthrow the American government. ARAMCHEK… the word printed on a book which contains the President’s signature – a book in the hands of a Communist Party organiser. ARAMCHEK… the name of a woman who may hold the key – and who has only weeks to live. Will the agents of the omniscient Valis succeed in their mission of liberation? Or will the seek-and-destroy tactics of President Ferris F. Freemont extend the mind-numbing grip of the Antagonist across the parameters of the free world? In Radio Free Albemuth, his last novel, Philip K. Dick morphed and recombined themes that had informed his fiction from A Scanner Darkly to VALIS and produced a wild, impassioned work that reads like a visionary alternate history of the United States. Agonizingly suspenseful, darkly hilarious, and filled with enough conspiracy theories to thrill the most hardened paranoid, Radio Free Albemuth is proof of Dick's stature as our century's greatest science fiction writer. This prophetic novel of social control and political oppression is now to be turned into a major new movie starring Alanis Morrissette, which promises a provocative and edgy antidote to the summer blockbusters.

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Contacted by starmen of similar racial stock who have a greatly advanced, galactic society, a united Earth becomes their ally in a lengthy war with the Reegs, blue, six-limbed aliens with no vocal chords. This is the story of how Earth chose the wrong ally.

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The definitive editions of Philip K. Dick's short stories, containing some of the most defining works in the Science Fiction genre.This stunning new edition of Philip K Dick's work includes the influential 'Minority Report' and 'Sales Pitch', as well as a litany of mind-expanding other works. Work your way through some of the most influential stories from the 20th century, which have had a massive impact on popular culture.'First time I have read Philip K. Dick and I thoroughly enjoyed his stories and the suspense that he puts into them' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Most of the stories had something to say about society. It was interesting to see how 50 years later so many of the fears and criticism was still relevant. Highly recommended' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Dick's stories are often surprising and spin a captivating yarn, but they are also teeming with fascinating ideas which ensure their ability to age well and keep modern readers interested' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Each tale is filled with twists and turns, and it's a total pageturner' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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At the beginning of his career, Philip K. Dick, whose later work won him widespread acclaim as the world's greatest science fiction writer, wrote a number of short novels which were published as paperback originals back-to-back in dual volumes with works by writers who were then more famous. Considerably more straightforward than his later novels, these stories are nevertheless unmistakably the work of the author of DO ANDOIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? and UBIK in their quirky exuberance and originality.THE MAN WHO JAPED: Following a devastating nuclear war, the Moral Reclamation government took over the world and forced its citizens to live by strictly puritanical rules - no premarital sex, drunkenness, or displaying of neon signs - all of which are reinforced through a constant barrage of messaging to the public. The chief purveyor of these messages is Alan Purcell, next in line to become head of the propaganda bureau. But there is just one problem: a statue of the government's founder has been vandalized and the head is hidden in Purcell's closet. VULCAN'S HAMMER: After the 20th century's devastating series of wars, the world's governments banded together into one globe-spanning entity, committed to peace at all costs. Ensuring that peace is the Vulcan supercomputer, responsible for all major decisions. But some people don't like being taken out of the equation. And others resent the idea that the Vulcan is taking the place of God. As the world grows ever closer to all-out war, one functionary frantically tries to prevent it. But the Vulcan computer has its own plans, plans that might not include humanity at all.DR. FUTURITY: When Dr Jim Parsons wakes up from a car accident, he finds himself in a future populated almost entirely by the young. But to keep the world run by the young, death is fetishized, and those who survive to old age are put down. In such a world, Parsons - with his innate desire to save lives - is a criminal and outcast. But for one revolutionary group, he may be just the saviour they need to heal and revive their cryogenically frozen leader. And when he and the group journey to 1500s California, what they find causes them to question what they know about history and the underpinnings of their society.

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A prophetic and unsettling chronicle detailing the rise and fall of a post-nuclear messiah, by the author of BLADE RUNNER and MINORITY REPORTFloyd Jones is sullen, ungainly and quite possibly mad, but he really can see exactly one year into the future. And this talent means that in a very short time he rises from being a disgruntled carnival fortune-teller to convulse an entire planet. For Jones becomes a demagogue, whipping up the ideal-starved population into a frenzy against the threat of the 'drifters', enormous single-cell protoplasms that may be landing on Earth soon. But, in a world of engineered mutants, hermaphrodite sex performers in drug-fuelled nightclubs, Jones is a tragic messiah. His limited precognition renders him helpless because he cannot bring himself to fight against what he knows will happen ...

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A prescient tale of political satire set in a near future America by a master of the genreA few years from now the President of the USA will be an android and his entire government a fraud. Everyone in the country is maladjusted. Doesn't seem possible, does it? Welcome to the world of Dr. Superb, the sole remaining psychotherapist.Philip K. Dick tells a story of desperate love, lethal body odour and an attempted fascistic takeover of the USA and shows that there is always another layer of conspiracy beneath the one we see.

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Drawn from the five volumes of his complete short stories (also published by Gollancz) this volume represents the very cream of Philip K. Dick's output. It serves both as a celebration of his work, in the 25th year since his death, and as the ideal introduction to his unique take on the world for new readers.As our culture becomes ever more fluid, as fact is fictionalised, as documentary gives way to reality-TV, as our identities are digitised, as globalism runs wild, as drugs become ever more ubiquitous the world is finally catching up with even the most bizarre of Philip K. Dick's imaginings.25 years after his death we are living in Philip K. Dick's world, this new authoratitive collection of his best short fiction shows us why.

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