Search results for ""author philip k dick""

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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Earth has been invaded - but one human terrorist has discovered a weapon which might change the course of the war!Earth has been taken over by the Ganymedians, a race of telepathic worm-like aliens whose instinct for survival has overridden any human attempt to resist their rule. But there is one man who may have discovered a way to defeat them. Dr Balkani has created a machine which distorts reality, and therefore will allow a determined human to avoid the Ganymedians' telepathic oversight.But there is one problem - Balkani is a worm-kisser, a servant of the invaders, and may not allow his invention to be used against them ...

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A brilliant sci-fi novel from one of the last century's most influential pop culture figuresSubstance D - otherwise known as Death - is the most dangerous drug ever to find its way on to the black market. It destroys the links between the brain's two hemispheres, leading first to disorentation and then to complete and irreversible brain damage. Bob Arctor, undercover narcotics agent, is trying to find a lead to the source of supply, but to pass as an addict he must become a user, and soon, without knowing what is happening to him, he is as dependent as any of the addicts he is monitoring.

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Pre-empting novels such as the Booker Prize-winning ‘Time’s Arrow’ by as much as twenty years, Counter-Clock world is a story of racial tensions told against the background of the year 1998 in which time flows in reverse as people are born old only to grow younger and younger. Time runs backwards in the Counter-Clock World. Old people emerge from their graves, grow to middle age, youth, adolescence and childhood to be finally unborn in their mothers wombs. The most powerful - and most feared - organisation in the world is the Library, in charge of expunging the written records of events, which have no longer happened. When a powerful black leader is reborn, the Library's one concern is to eliminate him before the renewal of racial violence tears the country apart. But in this counter-clock year of 1998 it isn't that simple… This eerie and unforgettable premise encapsulates Philip K Dick's ambitious and inimitable approach to fiction writing. The attempts of his characters to cope with the bizarre reality of a world that runs backwards while their minds run forwards like ours, operate as a stunning critique of the way in which we perceive our own civilization.

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A brilliant sci-fi novel from one of the last century's most influential pop culture figuresSubstance D - otherwise known as Death - is the most dangerous drug ever to find its way on to the black market. It destroys the links between the brain's two hemispheres, leading first to disorentation and then to complete and irreversible brain damage. Bob Arctor, undercover narcotics agent, is trying to find a lead to the source of supply, but to pass as an addict he must become a user, and soon, without knowing what is happening to him, he is as dependent as any of the addicts he is monitoring.

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Glen Runciter is dead.Or is he?Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages from their boss. And the world around them is warping and regressing in ways which suggest that their own time is running out.If it hasn't already.

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'Dick's best work, and the most memorable alternative world tale...ever written' SCIENCE FICTION: THE 100 BEST NOVELSIt is 1962 and the Second World War has been over for seventeen years: people have now had a chance to adjust to the new order. But it's not been easy. The Mediterranean has been drained to make farmland, the population of Africa has virtually been wiped out and America has been divided between the Nazis and the Japanese. In the neutral buffer zone that divides the two superpowers lives the man in the high castle, the author of an underground bestseller, a work of fiction that offers an alternative theory of world history in which the Axis powers didn't win the war. The novel is a rallying cry for all those who dream of overthrowing the occupiers. But could it be more than that?Subtle, complex and beautifully characterized, The Man in the High Castle remains the finest alternative world novel ever written, and a work of profundity and significance.

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Small town America tears itself apart in this realist novel from one of the greats of science fictionLeo Runcible - of Runcible Realty - is too excitable and too pushy. His wife drinks too much. He may be a man of principle, but Liberal Jewish Leo is an outsider in the lilywhite Carquinez, Marin County.When he gets into a pointless argument with a customer over his neighbour Walt Dombrosio's house guests, the resulting ramifications follow a bizarre logic of cause and effect to lead in entirely unexpected directions ...And can Leo really have found the skull of a Neanderthal man in middle America?THE MAN WHOSE TEETH WERE ALL EXACTLY ALIKE is a dazzling novel by a writer famous for his power to surprise and delight.

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It's the year 2080, and Earth's seemingly insurmountable overpopulation problem has been temporarily alleviated by placing millions of people in voluntary deep freeze. But in election year, the pressure is on to find a solution which will enable them to resume their lives. For Jim Briskin, Presidential candidate, it seems an insoluble problem - until a flaw in the new instantaneous travel system opens up the possibility of finding whole new worlds to colonise.

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Dreams, nightmares and realities: a classic by the author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?What begins as an ordinary laboratory visit turns into a bizarre and apocalyptic experience when a particle-light beam slices across the visitors' paths, plunging them into different worlds constructed from their innermost dreams and fears. As emergency works scramble to free them from the wreckage, their minds begin an incredible journey through one fantastic shared world after another.

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For all the strange worlds borne of his vast and vivid imagination, Philip K. Dick was largely concerned with humanity's most achingly familiar heartaches and struggles. In OUR FRIENDS FROM FROLIX 8, he clashes private dreams against public battles in a fast-paced and provocative tale that ultimately addresses our salvation both as individuals and a whole.Nick Appleton is a menial labourer whose life is a series of endless frustrations. Willis Gram is the despotic oligarch of a planet ruled by big-brained elites. When they both fall in love with Charlotte Boyer, a feisty black marketer of revolutionary propaganda, Nick seems destined for doom. But everything takes a decidedly unpredictable turn when the revolution's leader, Thors Provoni, returns from ten years of intergalactic hiding with a 90-ton protoplasmic slime that is bent on creating a new world order.

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Imagine a future where crimes can be detected before they are committed, and criminals are convicted and sentenced for crimes before committing them. This is the scenario of Philip K. Dick's classic story, now filmed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise.In addition to MINORITY REPORT this exclusive collection includes nine other outstanding short stories by the twentieth century's outstanding SF master, three of which have been made into feature films.

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The operating principle was random selection: positions of public power were decided by a sophisticated lottery. Everyone had a chance, everyone could live in hope that they would be chosen to be the boss, the Quizmaster. But with the power came the game - the assassination game - which everyone could watch on TV. Would the new man be good enough to avoid his chosen killer? Which made for fascinating and exciting viewing, compelling enough to distract the public's attention while the Big Five industrial complexes run the world, the solar system and the people, unnoticed and completely unopposed. Then, in 2203, with the choice of a member of a maverick cult as Quizmaster, the system developed a little hitch...

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This volume covers a wide span, from late 1954 through to 1963, the years during which Dick began writing novels prolifically and his short story output lessened. The title story of this collection has been made into the Steven Spielberg-directed movie of the same name, while "The Days of Perky Pat" inspired one of Dick's greatest works, the novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; The Penultimate Truth grew from "The Mold of Yancy".Philip K. Dick is shown at his incomparable prime in this fourth volume of the definitive collection of short fiction.

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NOW AN AMAZON ORIGINAL SERIES'Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.'America, fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. The winning Axis powers have divided their spoils: the Nazis control New York, while California is ruled by the Japanese. But between these two states - locked in a cold war - lies a neutal buffer zone in which legendary author Hawthorne Abendsen is rumoured to live. Abendsen lives in fear of his life for he has written a book in which World War Two was won by the Allies. . .

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A dazzling speculative novel of 'counterfactual history' from one of America's most highly-regarded science fiction authors, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle includes an introduction by Eric Brown in Penguin Modern Classics.Philip K. Dick's acclaimed cult novel gives us a horrifying glimpse of an alternative world - one where the Allies have lost the Second World War. In this nightmare dystopia the Nazis have taken over New York, the Japanese control California and the African continent is virtually wiped out. In a neutral buffer zone in America that divides the world's new rival superpowers, lives the author of an underground bestseller. His book offers a new vision of reality - an alternative theory of world history in which the Axis powers were defeated - giving hope to the disenchanted. Does 'reality' lie with him, or is his world just one among many others?Philip Kindred Dick (1928-82) was born in Chicago in 1928. His career as a science fiction writer comprised an early burst of short stories followed by a stream of novels, typically character studies incorporating androids, drugs, and hallucinations. His best works are generally agreed to be The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the inspiration for the movie Blade Runner.If you enjoyed The Man in the High Castle, you might like Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, also available in Penguin Classics.'The most brilliant science fiction mind on any planet'Rolling Stone'Dick's finest book, and one of the very best science fiction novels ever published'Eric Brown

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After World War III, the Servants of Wrath cult deified the mysterious Carlton Lufteufel, creator of the doomsday weapon that wiped out much of humanity. But to worship the man, they need an image of him as a god, and no one has ever seen him. So the high priests send a limbless master painter named Tibor McMasters into the wilderness on a mission to find Lufteufel and capture his likeness. Unfortunately for Tibor, the nation's remaining Christians do not want him to succeed and are willing to kill to ensure that the so-called Deus Irae remains hidden. This hallucinatory tale through a nuclear wasteland asks what price the artist must pay for art and tries to figure out just what makes a god.

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