Philip K. Dick

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)

A few of these stories will put you off. A few of these would excite you to read more of his work. Most of his full length books originate from his excellent short stories. You will start to distinguish familiar themes in his stories around the middle of the book, but if you plough on you will be...

We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1966)

I watched the 1990's movie because my son and I were in our 1990 's RV with nothing but VHS tapes lol. So it prompted me to read the original story, I wanted to know more about the mutants and planets. Only to realize the movie isn't really like the novelette, 22 pgs. I enjoyed Philip's versio...

The Skull (2000)

Cold War paranoia meets time-traveling assassins (well, just one) while exploring issues of fatalism, sadism, xenophobia, and the struggle for a better way. You pretty much see where this short story is heading early in, but it's interesting (particularly from a character development angle) to se...

Beyond Lies the Wub (2000)

This story demonstrates the evil in man. The ending was interesting...it could be interpreted in different ways. All in all, humans live to kill.I gave it 3 stars because it seems like the end was rushed, and some pieces don't fit into the puzzle. Also, the names were confusing. There were severa...

The Variable Man (2010)

So - written in 1953 - I still cannot get my head around contemporary science fiction which often seems heavily fantasy.This was written, or published anyway, when I was 9 years old. The story is a good one and the drama a traditional one of the time using - consistanly creditable deviations fro...

Adjustment Team (2000)

Certainly a short read, I find amazing on how Philip K. Dick influenced a few movie adaptations of wide impact and entertainment value. Certainly a prolific author with genuine novel idea for his time. As per this short story, do not expect the theme of the "Adjustment Bureau" however - this shor...

Adjustment Bureau, The (2011)

I watched the movie Adjustment Bureau and noticed at the end of the movie that it was based losely on the book, so I decided to read it. I didn't realize it was just a short story, like 18 pages or something like that. It was ok, but I thought the movie was way better. I guess maybe I was expe...

The Adjustment Bureau (2000)

A magnificent theme.I wonder where PKD gets his ideas from!Adjustment Team has the makings to be an even better book that 'we can remember it for you'. But, the slightly 'less-than-awesome' climax lets it down a tiny bit.The 'Old Man' is the almighty overseeing force. He makes subtle 'adjustments...

Second Variety (2000)

OK maybe i was cheating rolling in a wee short story volume rather than a full novel, but i was just one away from my 2013 challenge and wasn't in the mood for something longer.Lovely little bit of old school sci-fi here, one the battle front between the yanks and the soviets the battle is almost...

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (2011)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is my favorite Philip K Dick novel. More than that, really. It's probably one of my favorite novels in general. One of the foundation stones of the genre. So I was curious about this graphic novelization. I read an increasing number of comics these days. And I'...

The Crystal Crypt: A Short Science Fiction Novel (2000)

It gets only 3 stars because it was pretty much predictable all the way.But, we have to remember that this book was first published in the 1960's where twists and turns were defined differently.As Philip K Dick's short stories go, it was a very short one. But, the story was filled with Dick's tra...

Les Défenseurs (1998)

This was a neat little short story that I found as a free download.America and Russia have gone to war. The weapons have advanced so much that it has devastated the surface of the planet. Humans have retreated underground while robots have continued the war for the last seven years.This story is ...

The Defenders (2000)

59/100 An average book, with average characters, with an average story. The book is about man living underground during a nuclear war. Robots, called "Leadys" go out on to the radioactive surface and wage war with the soviets. When a couple of leadys come back underground with no radiation partic...

Mr. Spaceship (2000)

Solid and classic Dick. It is a story that captures the imagination and is ride with social commentary about the world we live in. It has some interesting points about where we went wrong, and an extreme way of fixing it through starting completely from scratch on a new world.I found the ending t...

The Game-Players of Titan (2001)

Philip K. Dick's 10th novel, "The Game-Players of Titan," was originally released in 1963 as an Ace paperback (F-251, for all the collectors out there), with a cover price of a whopping 40 cents. His follow-up to the Hugo Award-winning "The Man in the High Castle," it was one of six novels that P...

Selected Stories (2002)

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (2015)

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch: What if god were a lonely drug-pushing alien?Originally posted at Fantasy LiteratureThis was the 10th and final PKD book I read last year after 40 years without reading any. I always felt as a teenager that I would get more from his books as an adult, and I ...

The Cosmic Puppets (2003)

Some time ago, for no readily apparent reason, I decided that I would aim to read at least one Philip K. Dick book each year. As December dawned this year I still hadn't, and with a lot of work going on I'd spent over two months on the last book I was reading, Saturn's Children by Charles Stros...

The Man in the High Castle (1992)

“They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archtype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It i...

A Scanner Darkly (2006)

Whether unjustly or not, no other science fiction author has been as closely linked to the 1960s drug culture--at least in the public eye--as Philip K. Dick...and understandably so. From the San Francisco bar in "The World Jones Made" (1956) that dispensed pot and heroin, to the Bureau of Psyched...

Dr. Bloodmoney (2002)

I have absolutely no idea how this book lost its fourth star and ended up as a very strong 3. Ironically, in one respect, this was a breakthrough novel for me because something about PKD’s reality-blurring narrative style of addled consciousness really clicked with me for the first time. Now I l...

We Can Build You (1994)

Audiobook from Brilliance AudioNarrated by Dan John MillerLength: 8 hours, 22 minutesPublished in 1972, Dick uses the premise of a "future" (the book takes place in Dick's imagined 1982) where programming is advanced enough to allow programming the appearance of sentience into androids to provide...

Galactic Pot-Healer (1994)

Philip K. Dick's 24th published sci-fi novel, the whimsically titled "Galactic Pot-Healer," first saw the light of day as a Berkley Medallion paperback in June 1969, with a cover price of 60 cents. It both followed up and preceded two of its author's finest and most beloved works, 1968's "Do Andr...

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (2004)

To understand this novel and VALIS i think it is important to:- Have gnostic concepts.- Know about Philip Dick´s life.If you do not have the above requisites probably you will get bored at the second chapter and you will hate ones of the greater writers of S XX.This is not a SF writing, is more l...

The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 5: The Eye of The Sibyl (2015)

My Philip K. Dick ProjectEntry #32 = The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick: Vol. 5 - The Eye of the Sibyl (1964 - 1981) Well, here I am, skipping ahead in the chronology of Dick's writing again, this time all the way to the end of his life, and his very last story, “The Alien Mind”. This c...

The Crack in Space (2005)

In 2010 I interviewed for (and got) a job at the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth. In the interview for this job, I was asked what I thought was the most pressing emergency regarding climate change and how it should be tackled. I answered "education", but this was not correct. W...

VALIS (2004)

“A question we had to learn to deal with during the dope decade was, How do you break the news to someone that his brains are fried?” So says the first-person narrator in VALIS, Philip K. Dick’s autobiographical novel of spiritual odyssey, a novel where the narrator begins by laying out the major...

Ubik (2004)

What hallucinating narcotic stimulants had PKD been on while writing this wicked metaphysical novel shall remain an obscure affair like most of the enigmatic events occurring in this mind-fucking piece of genius i.e Ubik. One can only conjecture that he was getting some good shit. Maybe something...

The Divine Invasion (1991)

Divine Invasion by Dick is a startling experience to say the least. Had no idea what to expect and it definitely kept me on my toes. Sorry. Can't resist. In all seriousness however, I really didn't know what to expect. What little I new about the novel beforehand is that it was heavily influenced...

The World Jones Made (1993)

"Puoi credere a quello che vuoi; puoi credere che la terra è piatta, che Dio è una cipolla, che i bambini nascono nelle buste di plastica."Tra i primi romanzi sci-fi di Dick, E Jones creò il mondo, secondo il titolo rinnovato dalla Fanucci per la bellissima edizione per il venticinquesimo anniver...

Mary And The Giant (2015)

Mary Ann Reynolds is just emerging from her chrysalis of childhood to face the reality of 1950s' California. Her home is Pacific Park, a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere. Her new acquaintances, Joseph Schilling who owns the new record store, Paul Nitz who plays piano at the Lazy Wren Club, bl...

The Penultimate Truth (2005)

Hay momentos que nos cambian la vida. A veces no los notamos. Tengo la suerte de tener absolutamente claro uno de ellos, creo, el más importante. Tenía nueve años y me recomendaron una película. La alquilé en Beta y (sólo, los demás se fueron por aburrimiento) la vi. Me impresionó tanto que, por ...

Eye in the Sky (2009)

Eye in the Sky is another early Philip K. Dick novel that is uneven, but uneven in a different way to his later writeitinaweekonspeed works. While it may be silly to just compare Dick's efforts to each other in lieu of considering their merits individually, I'm pretty much a neophyte when it come...

Dr. Futurity (2005)

"Come può una certa società essere giudicata da un individuo creato da un’altra società?"Dottor Futuro rappresenta una prima importante svolta nell'opera di Dick, il primo tentativo di scrivere qualcosa di veramente diverso, un romanzo di più ampio respiro, che cerca di togliersi di dosso i vez...

Puttering About in a Small Land (2005)

I took a look at this book in a used bookstore and before I knew it, I had finished half of it. I finished the rest of it the following night. It's a simple read, but in no way is this book simplistic. There's so much I have to say about this book, I could fill another book, or maybe two. If y...

A Maze of Death (1994)

In Philip K. Dick's 25th science fiction novel, "Ubik," a group of a dozen people is trapped in an increasingly bizarre world, in which objects revert to their previous forms, reality itself is suspect, and the 12 bewildered people slowly crumble to dust, murderously done in, "Ten Little Indians"...

Martian Time-Slip (1995)

"You must die," the dark man said. "Then you will be reborn. Do you see, child?""Yes," Manfred said. And then he fled into the blackness of the future . . . -p.0"Rains are falling from me onto your valuable persons," he called to them, the proper Bleekman greeting in the Bleeky dialect. (..) Risi...

Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (2007)

Writing in the 1950s, did Philip K. Dick really anticipate the Gregorian chant music could be popular? Yes he did.I’ve said it before, unfortunately, I will likely say it again, why, why, why was he not more popular in his own time?“You nothing but ditch water walking around on two feet.”Poetry....

Radio Free Albemuth (1998)

“Come non pensare al normale corso dell’esistenza umana, dell’uomo lasciato a se stesso? Destinato a percorrere la sua traiettoria circolare, come una massa di materia inerte orbitante attorno a un sole morto, inutile e indifferente, sorda all’universo, cieca e fredda. Refrattaria a qualsiasi nuo...

The Simulacra (2002)

The Simulacra is the funniest Philip K Dick book I've read to date. There were some hilarious moments, very funny scenes. That said, it was often hard to follow and somewhat convoluted. I think one major thing that contributes to this is there are so many characters to keep track of. I think I re...

The Zap Gun (2002)

Solar Lottery (2003)

Solar Lottery was Philip K. Dick's first published novel, and a “PKD” novel it certainly is. Someone whose output was as large and as varied as Dick's is bound to have a few clunkers, and his early work (early SF anyway, I haven't read any of his “straight” novels yet) is no exception, despite co...

The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1986)

This book is arguably the best of Philip K. Dick's mainstream literary works. In my opinion, the other that is closest in quality is "Voices from the Street". Both novels present stories that flow satisfyingly from their initial concept without their plots becoming forced, a significant problem...

The Man Who Japed (2002)

Третья Мировая Война заставила человечество радикально изменить свое отношение к окружающему миру. Всего за считанные десятилетия Майор Штрайтер и его последователи смогли создать цивилизацию нового образца – Общество Морального Обновления, где интересы коллектива всегда доминируют над интересами...

The Ganymede Takeover (1990)

When I read Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore's 1946 novella "Chessboard Planet" some years back, the thought occurred to me that this story is a must-read for all fans of cult author Philip K. Dick. In the story, the United States is in the midst of a decades-long war with the European union and is i...

The Broken Bubble (1988)

**SOME SPOILERS AHEAD**UGH. Worst PKD book I've read thus far and I've read a lot. It reads like it was lifted from a bad soap opera that needed one more storyline for filler, only in that context, it would have been tolerable since you'd also have 6 other storylines running parallel so you'd o...

The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1996)

Voices From the Street (2007)

Counter-Clock World (2002)

This is a three star book I'm giving four stars to because of its originality. Dick is an author unlike any other. He can definitely come up with some unique stuff. This isn't Dick's best book, but it's not bad. The premise is interesting. Due to the mysterious Hobart Phase, everything on Earth i...

Vintage PKD (2006)

In Milton Lumky Territory (2005)

So it might surprise folks that In Milton Lumky Territory, a very posthumously published piece of Philip K. Dick's literary fiction, is in many ways the strangest and most uncanny of his works I've ever read. Then again it might not; it's still Philip K. Dick, after all.What makes it uncanny is t...

Time Out of Joint (2002)

Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick THE TRUMAN SHOW meets THE MATRIX Synopsis It’s 1959. Ragle Gum lives with his sister and her family. He’s having an affair with the woman next door. He’s the champion of the newspaper contest, “Where Will the Little Green Man be Next?” Oh yeah, and he’s going s...

Our Friends from Frolix 8 (2009)

В недалеком будущем человечество поделено на людей высшей и простой категорий. Успешное прохождение федерального теста может обеспечить любому успешное попадание в десятитысячную элиту, которая реально и управляет этой планетой. Понятно, что далеко не все люди согласны с подобным положением вещей...

A Handful of Darkness (1980)

Vulcan's Hammer (2004)

Clans of the Alphane Moon (2002)

At a large corner table in a bar in San Francisco in 1962, Philip K. Dick, Poul Anderson, Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon and Kurt Vonnegut sit having lunch and discussing novels. Phil: Guys, listen to this, I have an idea for a story. In the near future, a planet is populated from groups o...

Republic and Empire (1987)

Second Variety and Other Classic Stories (2002)