Philip K. Dick

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...

In the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late 21st century, tedium can be endured through the use of the drug Can-D, which enables the user to inhabit a shared illusory world. When industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z, which is far more potent than Can-D, but threatens to plunge the world into a permanent state of drugged illusion controlled by the mysterious Eldritch. «The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch» is, by universal consent, one of his three key novels, and the book in which he first took his perennial interest in the fragile nature of reality to a new level of imaginative intensity.

Ragle Gumm is an ordinary man leading an ordinary life, except that he makes his living by entering a newspaper contest every day — and winning, every day. But he gradually begins to suspect that his life — indeed his whole world — is an illusion, constructed around him for the express purpose of keeping him docile and happy. But if that is the case, what is his real world like, and what is he actually doing every day when he thinks he is guessing 'Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?'

In the years following World War III, a new and powerful faith has arisen from a scorched and poisoned Earth, a faith that embraces the architect of world wide devastation. The Servants of Wrath have deified Carlton Lufteufel and re-christened him the Deus Irae. In the small community of Charlottesville, Utah, Tibor McMasters, born without arms or legs, has, through an array of prostheses, established a far-reaching reputation as an inspired painter. When the new church commissions a grand mural depicting the Deus Irae, it falls upon Tibor to make a treacherous journey to find the man, to find the god, and capture his terrible visage for posterity.

Imagine the world if the Allies had lost the Second World War... Philip K. Dick trips the switches of our minds with his vision of the world as it might have been: the African continent virtually wiped out, the Mediterranean drained to make farmland, the United States divided between the Japanese and the Nazis...In the neutral zone that divides the rival superpowers in America lives the author of an underground best-seller. His book — a rallying cry for all those who dream of overthrowing the occupiers — offers an alternative theory of world history. Does 'reality' lie with him, or is his world just one among many others?

It began with a blinding light, a divine revelation from a mysterious intelligence that called itself Valis. And with that, the fabric of reality was ripped open and laid bare so that anything seemed possible, but nothing seemed quite right. Part science fiction, part theological detective story — in which God plays both the missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime, «Valis» is both disorienting and eerily funny, and a joy to read.

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.

At the beginning of his career, Philip K. Dick, whose later work won him widespread acclaim as the world's greatest sf 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 Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik in their quirky exuberance and originality.

The fifth and final part of the complete collected stories shows Philip K. Dick at the very height of his outstanding powers. The twenty-five tales were written between 1963 and 1981, just a few months before he died, and include two stories which have been turned into box office smashes: the title story, filmed as Total Recall, and «The Little Black Box», which grew into his masterpiece Blade Runner.

A classic Philip K Dick idea: the hero who keeps coming back from the dead — if he was ever alive at all. First, Gino Molinari was assassinated by a political Rival. Then he died of a heart attack. But now he is back, younger and more vigorous than ever, giving Earth new hope of survival in the war against the alien reegs. But is this really Molinari, or a robant masquerading as Earth's overlord? Whatever the truth, only he can save the Solar System — if he can stay alive long enough, or at least not stay dead for too long.

Substance 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.

Mars is a desolate world. Largely forgotten by Earth, the planet remains helpless in the stranglehold of Arnie Kott, who as boss of the plumber's union has a monopoly over the vital water supply. Arnie Kott is obsessed by the past; the native Bleekmen, poverty-stricken wanderers, can see into the future; while to Manfred, an autistic boy, time apparently stops. When one of the colonists, Norbert Steiner, commits suicide, the repercussions are startling and bizarre.

The stories within «Second Variety» were written between 1952 and 1955, while America was in the grip of McCarthyism. The concerns of the time are reflected in stories such as «Second Variety», which tells of an endless war fought by ever more cunning and sophisticated robots, or 'Imposter' where a man accused of being an alien spy finds his whole identity called into question. Using his marvellously varied, quirky and idiosyncratic style, Dick speaks up for ordinary people against militarism, paranoia and xenophobia.

“The Father Thing” contains the stories written in 1956, just before the publication of Dick's first novel, “Solar Lottery”. The stories are a mix of the previously uncollected and some of his most famous pieces such as “Foster, You're Dead” a powerful extrapolation of nuclear war hysteria, and “The Golden Man”, a very different story about a super-evolved mutant human.

What if the Allies had lost the Second World War ...? The Nazis have taken over New York — the Japanese control California. In a neutral buffer zone existing between the two states an underground author offers his own vision of reality, an alternative world that offers hope to the disenchanted ... Hugo Award winner Philip K Dick is one of the most original contributors to American sci-fi, and his books were the basis for the critically acclaimed films Blade Runner and Total Recall.

A preliminary to Dick's masterwork, Valis, in which Phil appears as an explicitly named autobiographical character for the first time. 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?