Product Description
When CIA agent Chuck Rittersdorf and his psychiatrist wife, Mary, file for divorce, they have no idea that in a few weeks they’ll be shooting it out on Alpha III M2, the distant moon ruled by various psychotics liberated from a mental ward. Nor do they suspect that Chuck’s new employer, the famous TV comedian Bunny Hentman, will also be there aiming his own laser gun. How things came to such a darkly hilarious pass is the subject of Clans of the Alphane Moon, an astutely shrewd and acerbic tale that blurs all conventional distinctions between sanity and madness. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (31)

Good in theory, so-so in practice
Clans of the Alphane Moon had a promising topic - what happens when a whole society is (severely and persistently) mentally ill. Although this is not a new idea in fiction, it is one of the first to have structured a whole work of fiction on this idea. Unfortunately, although the book starts interestingly with a characterization of various psychopathologies and their impact on the society involved, it quickly deteriorates to stereotyping and to engulfment of most if not all involved - including from another (human) society - in psychopathology. The end, where so-called normals become part of psychopathological society, epitomizes this undeep approach to human experience and behavior. There are some additional flaws that are more technical (and hence less important), such as the unbelievability of a psychologist and people who know her discovering late in the day that she is and has been for long (very) mentally ill. Still, the book was an entertaining and easy read.

Essential for Fans, Potentially Surprising for Others
Though not Philip K. Dick's best-written or most ambitious novel, Clans of the Alphane Moon is highly recommended for fans; one should certainly read the more famous works first but should definitely stop here eventually. There is almost no plot, but the book abounds in delicious signature weirdness; we truly never know what will happen and keep reading feverishly to find out. The book has a wealth of suspense and surprises that will delight fans. More importantly, Dick's trademark reality manipulation is ever present; he plays with our senses, truly keeping us on edge. The dark humor, heavy irony, and sheer weirdness for which he is known are as strong as ever; this is one of his funniest books, though the humor is as ever far from conventional. Clans also deals with customary Dick themes like paranoia, government oppression, and mental illness. This last is especially important; Dick focused relentlessly on it, but this is in many ways his fullest and most thorough exploration. He shows stunning knowledge of and sympathy for the mentally ill, giving a fresh perspective on their problems and a bold new angle on their treatment. This gives the book substantial meat, as do some of the more allegorical elements, e.g., an attack on racism and general xenophobia via the slime mold. Clan's characters are also some of Dick's most vivid - far from traditionally likable but certainly engaging. All told, while this is of course essential for fans, it is also a good choice for those not usually keen on Dick, as it has several elements - interstellar war and politics, etc. - popular in science fiction but not usually common in him.

Choose Your Mind Ailing and Join a Clan!
Last year I've attended a seminar on "Philosophy & Sci-Fi" and was delighted when PKD was chosen the first author to discuss. I plunge into reading and re-reading his works.
Obviously the second step of my renewed PKD-mania is to produce new reviews!

"Clans of Alphane Moon" (1964) is a great sci-fi novel somewhat underrated in PKD's opus maybe due to its complex story.


This book, as each of PKD's novels, is unique, captivating and full of action, moral and ethical issues. Characters are not heroes, just human beings doing their best to survive in a hostile environment. They may be selfish and even despicable but within them there is always a spark of altruism trying to emerge.


The story is as follows: there is a moon situated in Alpha Centauri system where humans have installed a hospice. After war erupted among humans and alphans the asylum has been abandoned for 25 years.
In those years the ex-patients has grouped in seven clans according to their mental ailment, managed to survive and coexist among them.
After some years of peace the Terran power is trying to claim alphane's moon sovereignty again and send a medical aid mission as a Trojan horse.

Main characters are Chuck Rittersdorf an agent from the CIA (Counter Intelligence Authority) who is having a conflictive divorce from his wife; Dr. Mary Rittersdorf psychiatrist going bona fide in the fake humanitarian mission and Chuck's ex-wife; Lord Running Clam a telepathic amorphous yellow ganimedean; Bunny Hentman a powerful TV comic star and the Councilors of the Clans.
What a great mixture of odd characters! PKD manage an intricate story of spies, politics, mental illness and marital conflict delivering a gripping tale with his trademark talent.


Do not expect a neat "these are the good guys", that's not PKD style. The reader must compromise with the story and choose its own solution to the puzzle.

As usual with PKD writings, an unfathomable melancholic undercurrent traverses the whole story, forcing every character to wonder "why am I here?"

This book is real good. Not only sci-fi fans may appreciate it, general inquisitive public too!
Enjoy!

Reviewed by Max Yofre.

Another Feather In Dick's Already Crowded Cap
"Clans of the Alphane Moon" was one of six books that sci-fi cult author Philip K. Dick saw published in the years 1964 and '65. Released in 1964 as a 40-cent Ace paperback (F-309, for all you collectors out there), it was his 14th sci-fi novel since 1955. This period in the mid-'60s was a time of near hyperactivity for the author. Under the influence of prescription uppers (like one of "Clan"'s central characters, Chuck Rittersdorf, who takes extraterrestrial "thalamic stimulants of the hexo-amphetamine class" in order to work two jobs), his output during that time was both prodigious and wildly imaginative. "Clans," although it may be accused of being underdeveloped and shows signs of being hastily written, IS nevertheless as fun as can be, and a really wild ride.

In the book, we are introduced to some of the residents of the second moon of Alpha Centauri's third planet: Alpha III M2. A mental hospital had existed there some 25 years before, its residents left to their own devices when Earth abandoned this world back when. Now, in the year 2055 or so, the former inmates have most certainly taken over the asylum, and the moon is ruled by the six titular clans, organized according to their members' various mental imbalances. Thus, there are the Manses (manics), the Pares (paranoiacs), the Heebs (hebephrenics), the Skitzes (schizophrenics), the Ob-Coms (obsessive-compulsives) and the Polys (polymorphous schizophrenics). Some of these residents, mainly the Heebs and Skitzes, have even developed various "psionic" powers, such as the ability to foretell the future via visions and to levitate! To this literally crazy world comes a group of disparate characters, drawn there for various reasons revolving around the Alphans' and Terrans' annexation claims. Mary Rittersdorf is a psychiatrist, there to assess and analyze the population; Chuck, her husband, a CIA (Counter Intelligence Authority) agent, is there to kill his ex-wife, with whom he had recently split; and the famous TV comedian Bunny Hentman is present for political reasons of his own. And then there is Lord Running Clam, easily the most memorable and likable character in this book: a telepathic, self-locomoting, yellow slime mold from Ganymede (!) who befriends Chuck and helps him on his adventure.

As you may have inferred, there is some pretty zany sci-fi plotting involved here, with 36 named characters, and Dick mixes his stew with a good deal of zest and humor. The novel is one of the author's more accessible ones, with none of his trademarked abnegations of reality to blow the reader's mind. Still, not everything is as it seems, double agents abound, human-seeming "simulacra" are ubiquitous ("Person, shmerson," one of them tellingly says at one point) and moral truths are slippery things ("Quid est veritas...what is truth?" one of the Pares asks). And Dick's Earth of the mid-21st century almost seems as whacky as the Alphane moon (and perhaps that is the point). Nipple-dilation and extreme breast-augmentation surgeries for women are common (50-lb. breasts?!?!?!), lawyers use "potent-cameras" to take pictures of people's future deeds, and the CIA uses programmed propaganda robots to spread the good word about the U.S.A.

I must say that as much as I enjoyed "Clans" (and it IS an extremely enjoyable work), I was still left with the feeling that the book could have been so much more. As with some other Dick books that I have recently read, this one cries out to be 100 pages or so longer, or to have a sequel added on to it. Heck, I could've used another novel just featuring Lord Running Clam himself! Still, what the author HAS given us is a significant achievement, and yet another feather in his already crowded cap.

"What are we getting here, a psychological drama or a comedy skit?"
This book has all the hallmarks of Dick's body of work without being one of this best novels. It is certainly mining a rich vein of story-- an abandoned mental hospital on a small moon evolves its own complex society and corresponding psi abilities. After the war that resulted in the abandonment ends, Earth intends to reclaim the colony by launching a mission in the best colonial tradition-- occupation disguised as a humanitarian mission. Add into this mix a feuding couple whose efforts to destroy each other place them squarely in the middle of the action. Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964) has all the ingredients for a great book, and it is without a doubt a good one.

For me, the difference between a book like this and some of Dick's more important works are how well he works out the ideas that he uses as part of the plot. Clans is occasionally a little frantic, with images and new thoughts tossed together in a kind of mental salad. Each one of the bits was fascinating, and I couldn't help but wish that he had spent a bit more time over the respective moments. And, yeah, I also wasn't in love with Dick's view on women or marriage here. I know that it's just a novel, but I can't help but think that Mary is unnecessarily evil-- was Dick going through one of his relationship breakdowns during the writing of this?

I'd certainly recommend this to Dick fans. If you don't already know the big novels in his body of work, then I would suggest that you begin somewhere else. VALIS is my unquestioned favorite, but The Man in the High Castle is also amazing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Future Noir
I enjoyed this collection of science fiction short stories from Philip K. Dick under the title of Minority Report, no doubt to cash in on the Spielberg movie of the same name. I had read two of the stories already, the title story and "Second Variety" in another collection of stories- The Variable Man. Quite a few of Dick's stories, apart from "Minority Report," have been filmed. "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale" became Total Recall, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" became Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, "Paycheck" became John Woo's Paycheck, and "Second Variety," which after reading I thought would make a good short film, became Screamers written by Dan O'Bannon (he of Alien and Dark Star fame) - beaten to the punch again. These are pretty engrossing stories. Some, like "Oh, to Be a Blobel," about a human who involuntarily tranforms into a blob-like creature, after having fought a battle with this species on the other side of the galaxy, seem like the prose equivalent of a Silver Age Marvel comic (not that there's anything wrong with that). Others like "The Electric Ant" are chilling meditations on the nature of identity - does a cyborg with programmed memories fear extinction if his memory tapes are arranged? If it does fear extinction it must have consciousness. Is it therefore a "person" with a "soul"? Science fiction writers are often credited with anticipating future technology. What strikes me about these stories however is how they fail on that point. These stories, written between 1953 and 1969, do not seem to have anticipated digital technology at all - everything is on tapes and computers are still huge devices housed in separate buildings! ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (9)

Blade Runner Author Delivers Scary Thriller
"An overwhelming indictment of Los Angeles suburban life in this sensitive and catastrophicstory of two couples and their children.Many of Dick's stories have been produced into very successful movies such as Blade Runner, but this is the frightening society that Dick is warning us about in his other novels."

What Happens on the Road Stays on the Road
Puttering About in a Small LandCritical opinion informs us that in his 1950's and early 1960's non-sf work, Philip K. Dick dealt with suburban life on the west coast.How many besides me automatically assume that any novel from that time, set in the suburbs, must necessarily deal with adultery?Show of hands, please - yeah, most of us.Well, "Puttering About" certainly deals with cheating spouses, to a greater extent than maybe anything else PKD ever wrote.On the other hand, this author never treated classic stories in a classic fashion.Let's see how he handled a story about musical beds.

Here's the setup - Virginia and Roger Lindahl, a squabbling Los Angeles couple who own a television shop, enroll their young son Gregg in an Ojai boarding school.They agree to share weekend driving chores with another set of parents, Chic and Liz Bonner.Ojai is about 70-80 miles from Los Angeles, and the husband of one couple finds himself on a long road trip with the wife of the other couple.Hijincks ensue.

As I hinted above, this is pretty typical stuff for a certain kind of late-50s American storytelling.On the other hand, "Puttering About" does not restrict itself to the story of the affair.You get a wide spectrum of postwar American experience, including some flashbacks to the Lindahls' lives before and after their marriage.They have lived through some big changes, moving with America from a more rural lifestyle to a more urban one, and moving with America through World War II and the postwar economic boom.Like a lot of fictional characters in the same circumstance, and probably a lot of real people, Virginia and Roger find themselves discontented and looking for excitement when the Bonners come along.I'm not entirely sure why this search for meaning seems to involve adultery so often in American letters, but it's one of PKD's gifts that he can make it seem almost sensible.

This is not what makes this novel special, though.PKD made the bizarre seem plausible, and vice versa, in a great many of his writings - that's nothing new for him."Puttering About" stands out in his work for two very particular reasons.

First, although his understanding of women sometimes left something to be desired, PKD made a serious attempt in "Puttering About" to describe a woman's sexuality, from as close to the actual experience as he could imagine.Since he was a master of the imagination pretty nearly all his life, the attempt is a notable success.Mind you, it may not be accurate (I suppose that only a woman could judge), but it's at least plausible, and it may be among the earliest writings to question the idea that a man "gets" a woman in sex.For a man who went through five marriages and God knows how many relationships, PKD deserves some credit for even making the attempt to empathize with a woman's experience, especially since it obviously cost him some effort in the writing of it.

Second, "Puttering About" contains some engaging structural experiments; PKD usually let his stories drift wherever they would, but this novel shows signs of more careful construction.For instance, he uses the scenery between Los Angeles and Ojai, and the behavior of the Ojai birds, to reflect on the characters' sense of liberty or constraint in their lives.And as I said earlier, we get a number of flashbacks, mostly from Roger's point of view, that comment on his actions in the novel's present moment and on the way the other characters react to him.

This experiment doesn't always work; it stops dead about halfway through the book, and there's no clear relationship between the activity of the main plot and the content of the flashbacks.That is, when Roger reminisces about his childhood on an Arkansas farm upon seeing the horses at his son's new school, you can see why; he's on another farm.It's another matter when he recalls the bar fight he got into shortly after his marriage, in which he lost some teeth; this doesn't seem to have any bearing on the main action surrounding it.Loose scenes like that drifting around, well-written though they are, seem like no more than a kind of psychological backdrop to the story, and as such rather unnecessary.Particularly in view of the fact that PKD almost certainly put more work into "Puttering About" than into a good bit of his sf, you would think it would be more effective.

Be that as it may, I remain impressed that the man had the gumption to play around with his work in this manner.What's more, for a novel that starts out like so many suburban-adultery stories and revolves around some frankly unpleasant characters, "Puttering About" gives us a nice ambiguous conclusion.The title comes from the manner in which Virginia characterizes her husband's life and work, and it's fitting; the environment seems to have all these characters pretty well trapped.Then Roger and Virginia take some actions that completely break things open, and the story just doesn't end up the way you expected.But then, as I've said before, this is PKD.

Turns out that this is much more than a story of adultery - most such stories probably are, anyway.In this case, what we actually have is a conflict between two visions of a good life.According to one character's notion, a good life consists of success in a large ambition, a big plan.According to another's, a good life consists of the freedom to do as you please.I'll leave it to you to discover which character pursues which dream, not to mention determining which dream you like better.Figuring that out for yourself is, of course, one reason to read books like this.

Benshlomo says, Choose your road carefully - you never know what you'll find on it.

Underrated PKD
Pretty slow, but full of utterly believable characters that I really cared about (even though they're pretty messed up people).

A strong novel of 1950s manners and morals
The title of this realist novel, written in 1957 but not published until 1985, refers to the "small land" of Roger Lindahl's TV repair shop. His wife, Virginia is ambitious, and ends up taking control of the business and expanding it into a large appliance store; but she, as much as Roger or any of the other characters, exists in the small land of her own mind. California, the land of opportunity which had lured the Lindahls from the East coast, is small in its own way: the deadening conventionality of 1950s manners and morals contract the range of human happiness there as elsewhere. Into this wasteland a fertilizing influence appears in the person of Liz Bonner. Roger finds her refreshingly uninhibited and sensual. In its concentration on the triangle of Roger, Liz, and Virginia, Dick fully develops the psychological dynamics of marital and extramarital relations. His sometimes fantastic descriptions of the wasteland of the "small land" of this novel anticipate the entropic landscapes of his later science-fiction novels such as Martian Time-Slip and Ubik.

Good, but lacks the energy of his S.F.
This book, a story about a TV repairman and his family in 1950's California, contains many of the elements contained in Dick's science fiction novels:bleak emotional landscapes; the aggressive wife; the everyman character stuggling to get by in the world. But it's missing the inventiveness, the creepiness, and also the humor of his SF work.This one dragged for me, a bit, though it does contain some memorable characters.

This is one of several non-science fiction novels Dick wrote in the 1950s in an attempt to gain recognition as a serious writer.It didn't work (while he was still living), and he went back to solid SF at some point.This one is worth reading for sure if you like PKD, but it's not up there with his very best science fiction. ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of short stories from the author of numerous science fiction novels, including early tales written in 1951 and 1952 which have not been published previously. This volume is the first in a series of the collected works of Philip K. Dick. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Must for any Science Fiction fan
The name Philip K Dick emerges quite frequently in any debate over the identity of the world's greatest science fiction author.Consider, then, the claim that Dick short stories are actually a more impressive achievement than his novels.Excessive, you say?I think it's true.Dick's one hundred-odd stories contain at least one mention of most of the ideas that shaped modern imaginative fiction.As such, the five-volume collection of his stories, of which "Beyond Lies the Wub" is the first volume, must be centerpiece of any serious scifi collection.

Dick's prose is never lavish, but always plain and workable.In a sense this merely disarms us, as we don't expect such wondrous invention from apparently normal writing.Aside from that limitation, however, these stories range over everything imaginable: from fantastic to prosaic, from the present time to far future settings, and from horror to tragedy to light-hearted wry humor.Two of the best comedy stories in this volume feature Dr. Labyrinth, a kooky inventor who sees problems and solutions quite differently from the rest of the human race.In "The Preservation Machine", he invents a method for converting musical works to animals, so as the great classical masterpieces can have better odds of survival in a Darwinian world.In "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford", he discovers that inanimate objects will come to life if they are sufficiently irritated."The Preservation Machine" ends with the discovery that the struggles of a dog-eat-dog world have transformed the works of Bach and Schubert into hideous bits of cacophany, a prime example of how even Dick's humorous tales are not without their bite.

On the horror end we have "Colony" and "Meddler".In "Colony", a exploration team on a new planet finds that murderous blobs of protoplasm are capable of imitating any inanimate object.As Dick himself says is the end notes: "The Ultimate in paranoia is not believing that everyone is out to get you, but rather that everything is out to get you."Meddler" tells the tale of reckless engineers who build a mirror scoop for observing the future.Regrettably, their own observations guarantee that the future will be a worse place.How can this be?Dick explains the enigma in high style.

Among the more solid hard sf stories is "Mr. Spaceship".An elderly professor agrees to have his brain donated to a cause; it will be installed as the command unit for a spaceship, where its intelligence will allow it to navigate alien minefields.However, the titular vessel has plans of its own, and may prove capable of outwitting both the humans and the aliens.It's a fine example of Dick's faith in individual cleverness against the mass stupidity of government, bureaucracy and corporatism.

It's hard to pick a best story from such a volume; it's a classic case of 'they're all so good'.Top honors would have to go to "The Little Movement".A bizarre old man sells toy soldiers to unsuspecting children.But who's really in charge of the operation, and how can such a sinister scheme be stopped?In second place comes "Nanny", a triumph of wicked humor and shrewd observations of human nature.Mechanical nannies are sold to suburban families, but (as always) there's more going on than meets the eye.In this one, Dick correctly anticipated how parental obsession with child safety would come to overrule common sense.

His Master's Voice
These are the earliest stories PKD wrote, starting with the previously unpublished 1947 story "Stability" and ending with "Prize Ship", written in 1952. There are 25 of them in the lot, most withcomments from the author. Some real gems are collected here (like"King of the Elves" and the pulpy "The Infinites"), butalso some rather, ah, unpolished work.

But the thing is that this isnot just interesting because of the actual stories but it gives a directline to the developing talent of the man and that man at this point in hislife was blossoming with ideas.He just hadn't yet gotten to the pointwhere he knew how to express them.But that really doesn't stop one who iswilling to drop those preconceived notions as to what constitutes goodscience fiction; this is FICTION with a capital letter, imagined from theget-go and heading towards uncharted waters. Reading this stuff made melong for such stuff today - most of what you get these days is pale andboring, closer to science fact and lacking in any true originality. ... Read more

Product Description
Four classic tales by Philip K. Dick! Here are "The Defenders," in which mankind has taken refuge beneath the Earth's surface, leaving all-out war to robots ... "Beyond Lies the Wub," in which a highly philosophical Martian creature finds itself on the wrong end of the dinner table ... "The Crystal Crypt," in which the last Terran ship from Mars finds terrorists aboard ... and "Beyond the Door," a most unusual story in which an abusive husband ends up with more thanhe bargains for! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Way overpriced for 4 public domain short stories
I highly recommend the stories but the price is far too high for a 66 page book containing only public domain stories. Entire novels of copyrighted material are available in paperback for less. Project Gutenberg has these stories and others by Philip K. Dick for free. I think it is unethical for the publisher not to disclose the public domain status of the contents in the description on the site. Unless you think the cover art is worth the cost of this book, give the book a pass and download the stories from Project Gutenberg or other sites that have them. If you want a hard copy to read print them out in the font size appropriate for you (especially important if you need large print to read well). Use the money you saved for something else such as Nick and the Glimmung or The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick 1980-1982.

good stories... but only three total
i bought this expecting four total stories, but there are only three.i am going to contact amazon about a refund. ... Read more

Product Description
Philip K Dick was one of the most prolific science fiction writers of all time.

Now 11 of his first stories are available on the Kindle platform.

This edition features a link table of contents so that you can skip between stories with ease. The text and spacing is formatted in such a way as to be readable on any Kindle device regardless of your settings. The text is totally re-sizable.

Stories Included:
Beyond Lies the Wub
Beyond the Door
The Crystal Crypt
The Defenders
The Gun
The Skull
The Eyes Have It
Second Variety
The Variable Man
Mr. Spaceship
Piper in the Woods

The Superior Formatting Promise:
All of our books will have custom cover art and a title page.
All of our books will have a linked, usable table of contents.
All of our books will be formatted so that they can be read on any Kindle device, regardless of settings.
All of our books are coded, by hand, by an experienced professional.
All of our books will be offered at $0.99 or the lowest price allowed.

Just search Amazon for Superior Formatting Publishing to see all of our classic and exclusive titles. ... Read more

Product Description
This book contains 11 essays and a comprehensive bibliography. The essays reveal the extent to which Philip K. Dick's personal obsessions pre-figured postmodernist concerns with humanity's self-alienation, cultural and personal paranoia, and the politics of simulation, deceit, and self-deception. The contributors reveal how Dick's ontological concerns, stated in his repeated questioning of "What is real?," are also political concerns. Thus, they examine the philosophical and religious foundations on which his work rests, offering much-needed arguments which reveal both his philosophical depth and the extent to which he drew from esoteric and occult religions. His cultural critique also receives significant exposition, as the contributors reveal how Dick's fiction enacts the larger cultural struggles of cold war America, with its conflicting private visions and public realities, and its personal and political loyalties. The contributors argue for the significance of heretofore neglected or marginalized texts of Dick as well, including in their discussions many early short stories from the early 1950s and neglected novels of the mid-1960s, arguing that there is a need to understand how Dick shaped (or misshaped) his fictions so as to reimagine the life of his society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (72)

A delightfully trippy headtrip into a future that in all its essentials resembles the present
In the future, when we've trashed this planet, we'll send off all the undesirables out into space, where they can eke out a miserable existence in the solar colonies.Then, in order to give them something to live for, keep them drugged-out on a fantasy high where they can pretend they live a life of luxury as Perky Pat and her perfect male companion, with an insatiable need for ever more accessories.In effect, when there's no longer hope of living out the "American dream" on Earth, and no longer any room for the traditional neat houses in a row with green lawns and picket fences where the idealized heterosexual couples can make babies and make money and get stuff ... when there's no way to live that dream anymore in the real world, all it will take is for the titans of industry to transplant that dream into a virtual space, manufacturing desires and creating the virtual products that are tailor made for those desires.

Phillip K. Dick's imagined future is in fact just a virtual mirror image of contemporary life, that depicts in its trippy way what Phillip K. Dick sees as the competing gods of the modern world: consumerism and the ideal of technological advance that makes man into an addendum of the machine and sends us into outer space as we render our own planet uninhabitable.In an inversion of the idea that religion is an opium for the masses, here we have the drug that directly delivers the experience of a heaven on earth (or on Mars), where we can all live together as happy heterosexual couples in dream houses and crime-free communities.Can-D, the drug whose use sustains the need for Perky Pat layouts and accessories, can be thought of like the internet and radio and television.We buy the radios and tv's and computers because we want the experiences they deliver, but they sell them for cheap because an integral component of that experience is the advertising that convinces us we need even more in order to be happy.We need to lose weight and look more like the perky Barbie and Ken models on tv; we need to stock our pantries with tasty morsels that will virtually ensure that we won't look like Barbie or Ken; we need to have a better car and a bigger house and more stuff to fill it with; and to do that we need a better job with more money and more credit so we can afford the stuff that will make our dead-end jobs bearable at the end of the day.The "pre-fash" pre-cogs of Phillip K. Dick's future can be thought of like the marketing consultants who aim to find out how to create products whose success will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Into this world enters Palmer Eldritch, someone (or something?) with motives other than mere acquisition, and who therefore appears as something different than an ordinary mortal.At first he seems like he's offering a better version of more of the same, but he turns out to be delivering something else entirely.The dream he delivers contains within itself the marks of its author, and the marks that it is nothing but a dream, and nevertheless one from which it is impossible to escape.That's when we really enter the rabbit hole in this wildly entertaining and twisted mindtrip of a narrative.It's heady stuff, exploring the meaning of God, the universe, freedom, love, and the American dream, in the context of a bizarre and inventive and readable story that could only emanate from the mind of Phillip K. Dick.This is among my favorites of his many excellent novels.Highly recommended.

Trippy???
Can a book mimic the effect of a drug experience? I don't know. I don't have enough experience with hallucinogens. But, I would probably guess not. However, "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" certainly induces some kind of altered state in its readers. Reality keeps shifting, changing like a bunch of Russian nesting dolls - one world inside another inside another. I think this is Phil's best work (though I have yet to read Valis). I don't know if I would make it my first PKD book, however. You might want to read some others to get acclimated to his style of reality-bending. "Time Out of Joint" and the classic "Ubik" might be good points of departure.

SF genius
One of his best.PKD was huge in Europe in the 70's,while barely known in the US.He was star status there.My brother, who has lived in France for 40 years, corresponded with him and met him in the early '70s.According to PKD, "Valis" was actually a more-or-less true story.He said that one day he woke up and saw ancient Rome overlaying his life in Orange Co., CA.Also said that he wrote most of his books in 1 sitting, as much as 3 days straight without sleep.Speed, of course, was involved.That's the reason that I find most of his books are weak in the end.Still, what a classic mind.Too bad he never got the recognition here that he deserved.

Can-D or Chew-Z: Choose Your Way Out!
Last year I've attended a seminar on "Philosophy & Sci-Fi" and was delighted when PKD was chosen the first author to discuss. I plunge into reading and re-reading his works.
Obviously the second step of my renewed PKD-mania is to produce new reviews!

"The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (1965) is a magnificent cogitation about reality and ultimate sense of life packaged in a great sci-fi novel.


The backdrop of the story shares some traits with other ones dear to PKD: forced draft to colonize the Solar System; Earth turning inhabitable (here by heat rising); universal authoritarian government; some kind of shared near religious experience; however no androids show up.

This book, as each of PKD's novels, is unique, captivating and full of action, moral and ethical issues. Characters are not heroes, just human beings doing their best to survive in a hostile environment. They may be selfish and even despicable but within them there is always a spark of altruism trying to emerge.


The story is situated on Earth suffering overheating and forcing UN government to compel people to emigrate as colonist all over the Solar System.
Main characters are Barney Mayerson a pre-cog top executive in P.P. Layouts Company, Leo Bulero head of P.P. Layouts and Palmer Eldritch an interstellar tycoon returning after ten years from Proxima System.

P.P. Layouts legal business is selling miniaturized accessories for a couple of dolls: Perky Pat & Walt. Those miniatures are sold all over the Solar Colonies, as colonists fanatically collect them. Why is this occurring? Well... P.P.L. illegal business is selling Can-D drug that allows consumers to evade from their barren lives and enter for a short period into Perky & Walt's glamour world.

The returning Eldritch menaces Bulero's empire with a new drug, Chew-Z, that allegedly allows eternal welfare, even more, the government will declare this new stuff legal, giving Can-D commerce a mortal blow.

Bulero tries to stop Eldritch but he is outsmarted and drugged with Chew-Z. From here on reality is in doubt for Bulero and Mayerson (who by other route has also consumed an overdose of Chew-Z).


The reader is presented with a maze of realities, temporal lines and crisscrossing interaction amongst the characters.

Do not expect a neat "this is real" or "these are the good guys", that's not PKD style. The reader must compromise with the story and choose its own solution to the puzzle.

As usual with PKD writings an unfathomable melancholic undercurrent traverse the whole story, forcing every character to wonder "why am I here?"

This book is real good. Not only sci-fi fans may appreciate it, general inquisitive public too!
Enjoy!

Reviewed by Max Yofre.

Can-D or Chew-Z, You Choose How to Evade!
I've just attended a seminar on "Philosophy & Sci-Fi" and was delighted when PKD was chosen the first author to discuss. I plunge into reading and re-reading his works.
Obviously the second step of my renewed PKD-mania is to produce new reviews!

"The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (1965) is a magnificent cogitation about reality and ultimate sense of life packaged in a great sci-fi novel.


The backdrop of the story shares some traits with other ones dear to PKD: forced draft to colonize the Solar System; Earth turning inhabitable (here by heat rising); universal authoritarian government; some kind of shared near religious experience; however no androids show up.

This book, as each of PKD's novels, is unique, captivating and full of action, moral and ethical issues. Characters are not heroes, just human beings doing their best to survive in a hostile environment. They may be selfish and even despicable but within them there is always a spark of altruism trying to emerge.


The story is situated on Earth suffering overheating and forcing UN government to compel people to emigrate as colonist all over the Solar System.
Main characters are Barney Mayerson a pre-cog top executive in P.P. Layouts Company, Leo Bulero head of P.P. Layouts and Palmer Eldritch an interstellar tycoon returning after ten years from Proxima System.

P.P. Layouts legal business is selling miniaturized accessories for a couple of dolls: Perky Pat & Walt. Those miniatures are sold all over the Solar Colonies, as colonists fanatically collect them. Why is this occurring? Well... P.P.L. illegal business is selling Can-D drug that allows consumers to evade from their barren lives and enter for a short period into Perky & Walt's glamour world.

The returning Eldritch menaces Bulero's empire with a new drug, Chew-Z, that allegedly allows eternal welfare, even more, the government will declare this new stuff legal, giving Can-D commerce a mortal blow.

Bulero tries to stop Eldritch but he is outsmarted and drugged with Chew-Z. From here on reality is in doubt for Bulero and Mayerson (who by other route has also consumed an overdose of Chew-Z).


The reader is presented with a maze of realities, temporal lines and crisscrossing interaction amongst the characters.

Do not expect a neat "this is real" or "these are the good guys", that's not PKD style. The reader must compromise with the story and choose its own solution to the puzzle.

As usual with PKD writings an unfathomable melancholic undercurrent traverse the whole story, forcing every character to wonder "why am I here?"

This book is real good. Not only sci-fi fans may appreciate it, general inquisitive public too!
Enjoy!

Reviewed by Max Yofre.
... Read more

Product Description
Author of more than forty novels and myriad short stories over a three-decade literary career, Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) single-handedly reshaped twentieth-century science fiction. His influence has only increased since his death with the release of numerous feature films based on his work, including Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall (based on “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”), Minority Report (based on “The Minority Report”), and Next (based on “The Golden Man”). In Understanding Philip K. Dick, Eric Carl Link introduces readers to the life, career, and work of this groundbreaking, prolific, and immeasurably influential force in American literature, media culture, and contemporary science fiction.

Dick was at times a postmodernist, a mainstream writer, a pulp fiction writer, and often all three simultaneously, but as Link illustrates, he was more than anything else a novelist of ideas. From this vantage point, Link surveys Dick’s own tragicomic biography, his craft and career, and the recurrent ideas and themes that give shape and significance to his fiction. Link addresses Dick’s efforts to break into the mainstream in the 1950s, his return to science fiction in the 1960s, and his move toward more theologically oriented work in his final two decades. Link finds across Dick’s writing career an intellectual curiosity that transformed his science fiction novels from bizarre pulp extravaganzas into philosophically challenging explorations of the very nature of reality, and it is this depth of vision that continues to garner new audiences and fresh approaches to Dick’s genre-defining tales. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Understanding the Criticism of Dr. Eric C. Link
Let me begin by pointing out that this writer, Dr. Eric C. Link, is a friend, but that is not why my review will be positive. As James Boswell pointed out when he began to review Samuel Johnson's work: "If friends did not review each others' books, there would be precious few reviews." That being said, my review will be positive because Link's book is so good and important to the study of the work of Philip K. Dick, specifically, and to the study of Science Fiction as great literature, in general.

Helpfully divided into five fore-grounding sections that progress pyramidally in their reasoning, "Understanding Philip K. Dick," "Philip K. Dick: Novelist of Ideas," "The Craft and Career of Philip K. Dick," "The Themes of Philip K. Dick," and "Reading Philip K. Dick: Notes on Six Novels," Understanding Philip K. Dick (Columbia: USCP, 2010) moves from a detailed examination of essential tropes and themes to a detailed and selective novel by novel approach, showing the recurring themes in such great works as The Man in the High Castle (1962), Martian Time Slip (1962), Now Wait for Last Year (1966), The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964), Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1970), and VALIS (1978). Link's discussion and biographical examination of the VALIS text and that period in Dick's life, alone, is worth reading the entire book. Indeed, I read Link's book backwards as I often do critical books, looking for proofs of the earlier stated assessments in the conclusions. Link backs up every assertion in the most scholarly of manners and fills a long existent gap in Dick scholarship with an extensive Selected Bibliography with nine major and minor categories listed.

One quoted section from Link's book, I think, really sums up Link's Biographical/Extratextual/Subtextual critical approach to Dick's works: "In his work Dick responded to the climate of his times. In the 1950's, when Dick turned his talent to serious writing, one can find clear reflections of the post-World War II era of cold war politics, atomic scares, bomb shelters, and McCarthyism. In the 1960s, Dick's work is heavily influenced by the Berkeley counterculture scene. Many of Dick's best works from the 1960s directly engage the issue of drugs and drug culture, sometimes as metaphor and symbol, other times as tangible and tragic. One also finds Dick working out implications of the civil rights movement, the rise of the Black Panther Party, the shadowy activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the host of other social issues that the youth counterculture and the Beats gravitated to in their protests and writings ." (9). I would have nominated Link's book for this year's Hugo award in science fiction criticism, but as their website makes clear, a critic's books can only be secretly suggested and selected by those who notice it and who work for the World Science Fiction Society Board. So, respectfully, to the WSFS Board, here is the best book of Dick criticism published in 2010. Please consider it for one of your 2011 awards.

As I was the original African-American Dick fan, I was especially pleased to see how Link examined Dick's views on ethnicity and the future (sometimes aggrandized by Dick into "species-ism"), especially in Chapter 4's "Themes of Philip K. Dick." I would recommend this book to beginning readers of Dick who want more critical windows through which to appreciate Dick's works, but also to Dick-o-philes who want new, deeper examinations of Dick's themes upon which they have already thoughtfully reflected. In Understanding Philip K. Dick, Dr. Eric C. Link has done all Dick fans a favor, and I think his brilliant but easily accessible critique of Dick's works will also begin to build a new fan base among readers who otherwise may have known Dick only via Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1966).
... Read more

Product Description
What if you discovered that everything you knew about the world was a lie? That’s the question at the heart of Philip K. Dick’s futuristic novel about political oppression, the show business of politics and the sinister potential of the military industrial complex. This wry, paranoid thriller imagines a future in which the earth has been ravaged, and cities are burnt-out wastelands too dangerous for human life. Americans have been shipped underground, where they toil in crowded industrial ant hills and receive a steady diet of inspiring speeches from a President who never seems to age. Nick St. James, like the rest of the masses, believed in the words of his leaders.But that all changes when he travels to the surface—where what he finds is more shocking than anything he could possibly imagine.

Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick 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 utlizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Recommended Reading
The essence of the book is there are interests on the surface of the planet falsely imprisoning by misinformation groups of people below ground. Recommended reading for fans and non-fans alike.

4 and 1/2 Stars -- Essential
Near first-rate Philip K. Dick, The Penultimate Truth is essential for fans and a good place to start. It is not his most complex or ambitious novel but comes just a few years before his masterpieces, and we can distinctly see him heading there. This is significantly above early works in style and depth; anyone who likes prior books will be very gratified, and those who have read the more famous ones will see it as a significant milestone on the way.

Like nearly all Dick, this can be enjoyed on a very simple level as a science fiction thrillfest. He has imagined a frighteningly plausible future and makes it seem not only real but compelling; Cold War paranoia, World War II proximity, and other factors surely made it even more so at the time. There is a wealth of suspense and twists; we truly never know what is next and read feverishly to find out. Unlike many Dick works, even the best, the story is fully executed - closely planned and deftly plotted with loose ends tied up in a stunning climax. Even more impressive is how concisely Dick sets up the multi-layered story. Perhaps no other writer better embodies the modern creative writing "show; don't tell" maxim, and this is one of the most astounding examples.

Also as nearly always with Dick, the exciting frame is really a vehicle for serious themes and piercing philosophical speculation. His signature question - "What is reality?" - is here, as are standbys like paranoia and typical SF quandaries involving things like time travel and robots. However, this book focuses more than most on more immediate political issues like government oppression, corruption, and truth manipulation. This is indeed one of his most political novels, with substantial critique of both contemporary events like the Cold War and sadly eternal governmental problems. The Penultimate is not as philosophical as some of his works, but this does much to atone, making the novel as thought-provoking and insightful in its way as some of his more complex writings.

All told, this is one of Dick's most underrated works, required reading for anyone even remotely interested in his genius.

Only Lies without Truth!
Last year I've attended a seminar on "Philosophy & Sci-Fi" and was delighted when PKD was chosen the first author to discuss. I plunge into reading and re-reading his works.
Obviously the second step of my PKD-mania is to produce new reviews!

"The Penultimate Truth" (1964) is a typically PKD novel of this feverish writing period, he publish four novels that year. That implies some minor inconsistencies within the plot that do not diminish the whole story.

The backdrop of the story is one dear to PKD and many sci-fi writers of that time: earth after WWIII. PKD has used this scenery in other novels and short stories, with common elements as androids, wasted land after atomic bombing and authoritarian government; nevertheless he never repeats himself.
Each story is unique, captivating and full of action, moral and ethical issues. Characters are not heroes, just human beings doing their best to survive in a hostile environment. They may be selfish and despicable but within them there is always a spark of altruism trying to emerge.

The story is about a world that has suffered a short and violent atomic war; vast majority of population is kept in underground refuges and deceived by elite that pretend the war is still raging. While this privileged live in enormous countryside villas with armies of serving androids, the overcrowded "ant-tanks" concentrate in producing more and more androids.

The leaders are subject themselves to a dictatorship and struggle in political factions. They are subject to intolerable pressure to maintain the masquerade and live isolated, almost boring, lives.

The tale follows two main lines: one centered in a member of the "ant-tank" that goes to the surface trying to obtain an artificial pancreas for hibernated colleague and the other focused on a speech-writer drafted compulsively into a "special project" by the tyrannical leader.

As usual with PKD writings an unfathomable melancholic undercurrent traverse the whole story.

This book is real good. Not only sci-fi fans may appreciate it, general public too!
Enjoy!

Reviewed by Max Yofre.

No Truth, Only Lies!
I've just attended a seminar on "Philosophy & Sci-Fi" and was delighted when PKD was chosen the first author to discuss. I plunge into reading and re-reading his works.
Obviously the second step of my PKD-mania is to produce new reviews!

"The Penultimate Truth" (1964) is a typically PKD novel of this feverish writing period, he publish four novels that year. That implies some minor inconsistencies within the plot that do not diminish the whole story.

The backdrop of the story is one dear to PKD and many sci-fi writers of that time: earth after WWIII. PKD has used this scenery in other novels and short stories, with common elements as androids, wasted land after atomic bombing and authoritarian government; nevertheless he never repeats himself.
Each story is unique, captivating and full of action, moral and ethical issues. Characters are not heroes, just human beings doing their best to survive in a hostile environment. They may be selfish and despicable but within them there is always a spark of altruism trying to emerge.

The story is about a world that has suffered a short and violent atomic war; vast majority of population is kept in underground refuges and deceived by elite that pretend the war is still raging. While this privileged live in enormous countryside villas with armies of serving androids, the overcrowded "ant-tanks" concentrate in producing more and more androids.

The leaders are subject themselves to a dictatorship and struggle in political factions. They are subject to intolerable pressure to maintain the masquerade and live isolated, almost boring, lives.

The tale follows two main lines: one centered in a member of the "ant-tank" that goes to the surface trying to obtain an artificial pancreas for hibernated colleague and the other focused on a speech-writer drafted compulsively into a "special project" by the tyrannical leader.

As usual with PKD writings an unfathomable melancholic undercurrent traverse the whole story.

This book is real good. Not only sci-fi fans may appreciate it, general public too!
Enjoy!

Reviewed by Max Yofre.

great read
I loved this book!It was the first I've read by PKD and was surprised by how engaging and relevant it was.A must read! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Keep The People Entertained
Philip K. Dick's first novel, "Solar Lottery" was published in May of 1955.It is a relatively short novel, at around 190 pages, but it is not short on ideas or concepts. The reader is faced with a society in the year 2203 where the highest political position (Quizmaster) is chosen by a lottery which is supposed to give each person an equal chance at the position.That is coupled with sanctioning assassins which are chosen by convention to kill the Quizmaster.Another key to the society is the oaths which one gives and receives to and from people, and to organizations.

There are two significant storylines, the first is centered on Ted Benteley, a man released from his job due to some unexplained fires decides to get a position working directly for the Directorate and the Quizmaster, Reece Verrick.What he doesn't realize is that Reece has lost his position and that a new Quizmaster, Leon Cartwright, has been selected.Reece is now concerned with choosing an assassin to eliminate the new Quizmaster and regain power.The second storyline is that of Leon Cartwright, a member of the Preston Society, a kind of cult which is seeking the Flame Disc, a planet at the edge of our solar system which Preston wrote about.

The blending of the two storylines is handled in a rather odd fashion.The book focuses almost entirely on the first storyline for an extended period after introducing the second storyline in the second chapter.The reader knows the second storyline is important, but it doesn't develop until much later.In addition to the two storylines, there are quite a number of concepts dealt with in this novel.There are the Telepathic Corps who guard the Quizmaster, and the development of the special assassin to deal with Leon Cartwright.The society as a whole generates a lot of questions as well, but these are only touched on slightly.

Overall the telling of this story feels a bit clumsy, but it is still worth reading.Dick's society robs people of their individuality and their ambition, and the Prestonites are treated as cranks and oddballs, largely because they still display these attributes.This is far from Dick's best work, but as his first published novel it holds interest for those who enjoy his writings.

Not Dick's best but prescient and meaningful
What I like most about Philip K Dick (arguably one of my favorite authors) is the message behind the story -- social and political commentaries, even outright warnings about things like totalitarianism, religious cults, the aftermath of nuclear holocaust, and especially technology leading social structure and dynamics in rather odd directions. Most of Dick's writings are prescient and timeless.

Solar Lottery (I think this was Dick's first full-length novel) clearly shows Dick is learning the craft in moving from SF short story writer to novelist. If anyone has read any of the interview type books, Dick was really not making anything close to a livable income off of SF writing and felt pressured to crank out stories at a prolific rate (one of Dick's colleagues supposed that the stress of producing at anything close to producing a livable income was one of the major factors in Dick's early death).

Solar Lottery is a story about a rather bizarre form of government that has evolved where a "spin-the-bottle" process is used to select the leader of the solar system, and then assassins are selected by the same process to try to liquidate the new leader. I won't spoil the story. It's good, but not, as I said, Dick's best effort. Dick improved over time like fine wine (sorry) and produced much finer and better written classics like 'The Penultimate Truth', 'The Man in the High Castle', 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep', 'Flow My Tears the Policeman Said', 'Valis', 'The Divine Invasion', 'The Transmigration of Timothy Archer'. Still, if you're a rabid PKD fan (like me), go ahead and get this one. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

An exciting, fast-paced novel
Since this was Dick's first novel, it is lowered in value to his great ones.In fact, I did not even read it until I had read the good reviews on Amazon and realized that I had been skipping a very exciting, fast-paced novel.I am giving it 5 stars just on the chance that others may have followed my faulty line of reasoning.Solar Lottery CAN indeed be read in a couple of days, and it is well worth your time.I was reminded of Ludlum's "Bourne" novels and of course A.E. van Vogt.It is a bit slow at first, but once it gets cooking, the chase to the end makes for some gripping hours of entertainment.Yes, all of the later Dickian elements come into play -- even identity -- although the protagonist thinks he is aware of the real situation.Don't skip it!

Kind of a mess -- shows promise, but he got a lot better
Solar Lottery was Philip Dick's first novel, published in 1955. It seems to be reasonably well regarded but I must say I found it a mess. It's set in a future in which the leader of the Solar System is chosen by lottery. The current leader, Quizmaster Verrick, has held the position for 10 years, even though assassins are selected by lot to try to kill him. Most of society is controlled by corporations that rate people, theoretically according to their abilities. People swear allegiance to individuals or corporations. As the novel opens, Ted Benteley is at last able to legally escape his allegiance to his corporation, and he travels to Batavia (now Djakarta, of course) in Indonesia, seat of the government, to try to work for the Quizmaster. Unbeknownst to him, however, a new Quizmaster has just been selected, an "unclassified" named Leon Cartwright. Benteley is fooled into swearing direct allegiance to the old Quizmaster.

Cartwright has long been a Prestonite, devotee of the mad theories of John Preston, who believed in a tenth planet beyond Pluto called Flame Disc. Cartwright has just supervised the launch of a spaceship intended to reach Flame Disc, and his only hope of his new Quizmaster position is to buy time for the ship to reach Flame Disc before Solar authorities stop it. As soon as he becomes Quizmaster, Verrick sets in place a plan to fix the lottery for the assassin, and to use a remote controlled android as the next assassin. This, along with a clever scheme to sequentially control the android with different people, will allow his assassin to evade the telepathic protectors of the Quizmaster.

So it's kind of a wild, uncontrolled, mix of elements, some clever, some interesting, some just loony. The plot sort of reels along, as Ted is shanghaied to being one of the assassin's controllers, and also as he fools around with an ex-telepath girl now working for Verrick, while his true destiny, natch, is to work with Cartwright and become the next Quizmaster, hopefully in so doing restoring sanity to Earth's government. Everywhere traces of Dick's impressive imagination, as well as various of his obsessions, are clear -- but nowhere do things cohere, nowhere to they make even the weird sense that Dick made in his better novels.

It's all about power
Dick's first published novel, Solar Lottery (1955) is impressive and original. It was much influenced by several famous sf novels--A. E. van Vogt's complexly plotted World of Null-A, Kurt Vonnegut's dystopian black comedy Player Piano, and Alfred Bester's pyrotechnic novel of telepathic police The Demolished Man. Solar Lottery is not unworthy of being mentioned in their company. It is not quite a typical Dick novel: it lacks the humor of the later works, as well as the theme of reality breakdown, but it is quite effective on its own terms. Dick foresaw a world where all power is concentrated in the hands of the government and private corporations. A great quiz game which decides the leader, but it is rigged against the powerless. Furthermore, the system, with its built-in structure of killing its own leaders, decrees that nothing lasts or should last. In its dark, complex picture of power relationships, this novel is totally relevant today. ... Read more

Product Description
In the world of The Minority Report, Commissioner John Anderton is the one to thank for the lack of crime. He is the originator of the Precrime System, which uses "precogs"--people with the power to see into the future--to identify criminals before they can do any harm. Unfortunately for Anderton, his precogs perceive him as the next criminal. But Anderton knows he has never contemplated such a thing, and this knowledge proves the precogs are fallible. Now, whichever way he turns, Anderton is doomed--unless he can find the precogs's "minority report"--the dissenting voice that represents his one hope of getting at the truth in time to save himself from his own system.

A film version of The Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, will be released this summer–further proof of the enduring appeal of Philip K. Dick's visionary fiction.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Different editions
There is some confusion with this title, Volume Four of The Collected Short Stories of P.K.D. Originally published in 1987 as "Vol. 4: The days of Perky Pat", it was changed to "Minority report" to benefit of the movie. I have the 2000 Gollancz edition, with an uncredited cover by Chris Moore (that appears in a Moore book as "The days of Perky Pat"), and in the copyrights page says: previously published as "The little black box", which must be a mistake, as that is the original title of Vol. 5 of the collected short stories, changed to "We can remember it for you wholesale" after the Total Recall movie.
There are 19 short stories, and it reads as a book should. Contents:
Autofac
Service Call
Captive Market
The Mold of Yancy
The Minority Report
Recall Mechanism
The Unreconstructed M
Explorers We
War Game
If There Were No Benny Cemoli
Novelty Act
Waterspider
What the Dead Men Say
Orpheus with Clay Feet
The Days of Perky Pat
Stand-By
What'll We Do with Ragland Park?
Oh, to Be a Blobel!
All this refers to the Underwood-Miller and Millenium-Gollancz editions. There is another five-volume collection by Citadel-Twilight, with basically the same stories.

Innovative Story, Terrible Design
First of all, who on earth thought to do a verticle reading, hard bound book? It's really a poor decision. This is my first P.K. Dick story. I thought the plot was innovative and well laid out for the most part, but found the exposition very lacking! There is little to no background on the characters- it was more like a screenplay than a typical short story. It was a very easy read. I was not a great fan of the movie- so this (along with the ridiculous format) probably clouded my enjoyment of the book. I admire his imagination and will defintely read more.

Julie

Get it on bargain price
I was lucky to get this one on a bargain price. I don't mind it only focuses on 1 short story. The book design is peculiar and unique which I appreciate as a source of idea.

The story itself is lesser in action than the movie but obviously the movie managed to bring the main frame of it, Precrime System, with its 3 precogs. Aside from the action, the differences lay in the event which started the whole thing and the origin understanding of what a minority report is. Food for the mind.

Mind-boggling Short
Reading this book is like watching a short film. It takes about two hours to finish and each minute is filled with heart-thumping situations. There are so many suspects in the story that the mind works overtime in such a short span. It is very interesting and a good detection exercise. Philip K. Dick was a marvelous science fiction author and this particular tale of his is captivating. A police commissioner finds himself in trouble on the day his new assistant arrives at the office. He starts suspecting everybody due to his age and politics but eventually answers his own questions. At the end, with a little bit of twists and turns here and there, he gets what he wants. The book layout is different from a normal design. At times it is difficult to hold it and turn the pages. But, that doesn't change the beauty of the narration.

Story: 5 stars;Book Layout: 1 star;Book Price: 1 star
+++++

This short science fiction story was published in 1956 and written by Philip K. Dick (1928 to 1982).

In the future, murderers are caught before they actually commit the murder.How is this achieved?By harnessing the extraordinary power of mutant humans who have the ability of precognition (the perception of an event, a murder in the story's case, before it occurs).These mutant humans are called "precogs."

The police force utilizes these precogs (there are three) by developing a "Precrime" unit where the precogs are connected to a bank of computers that reads the precog visions and processes the future murders that will happen.The only part of the story that is dated is that punch cards are used in the computers.Otherwise, this story could have been written for the present (2005).

Police Commissioner John Anderton finds that this new Precrime system is working well until the precogs have a prevision that the commissioner himself will commit a murder.The rest of the story is about the commissioner running from the Precrime unit and trying to find proof of his innocence.

Now that you know what the story is about you might ask why it has such a strange title.When two or all three precogsagree on a prevision of murder, a "majority report" is generated.If one precog disagrees, then a "minority report" is generated.As we are told in the story:

"Unanimity of all three precogs is a hoped for but seldom-achieved phenomenon...It is much more common to obtain a collaborative majority report of two precogs, plus a minority report of some slight variation, usually with reference to time and place, from the third mutant.This is explained by the theory of multiple-futures.If only one time-path existed, precognitive information would be of no importance, since no possibility would exist, in possessing thisinformation, of altering the future."

It is this minority report that the commissioner is after to prove his innocence.

The story is an interesting and fast read.It can be appreciated not only by science fiction fans but mystery fans as well.

The movie "Minority Report" directed by Steven Spielberg expands this short story.Spielberg and friends effectively create a futuristic society only hinted at in Dick's short story.

Finally, there are two main problems with the book.First, the layout.It flips like a legal pad when read.I found this unnatural and distracting since I'm used to book pages flipping from right to left not up and down.Second, the price.This book costs just over $10.00.And you get only one story!An anthology of Dick's works that I found sells at a higher price but has twenty-one of his short stories (including this one).The price works out to 80 cents per story.

Thus my recommendation is to not buy this book new (unless you have money to burn).Instead:

(1) Buy this book used.As of the date of this review, used copies are selling for 1 cent!!
(2) Check out a Dick anthology (that contains this short story) from the library.Then photocopy this short story.

In conclusion, this short story is a very interesting and forms the basis of a good science fiction movie.However, the book itself is laid out badly and is too expensive.

** 1/3

(book first published 2002;short story published 1956;other Philip K. Dick short stories;10 chapters;105 pages)

+++++
... Read more

Product Description
Edited and selected by noted scholar Gregg Rickman, The Early Work of Philip K. Dick, Volume One: 1952-1953, and Volume Two: 1953-1954, encompasses a total of twenty-six stories from the early years of Philip K. Dick. With extensive story notes and introductions by Rickman, and packaged to belong on any shelf, The Early Work of Philip K. Dick promises an early peek into the many worlds created by one of the acclaimed masters of science fiction and fantasy. ... Read more

Product Description
Blackstone Audio presents this collection of two stories by Philip K. Dick, the only science-fiction writer to be included in the Library of America.

In Martian Time-Slip, a ten-year-old schizophrenic boy named Manfred Steiner lives on the arid colony of Mars. Although the UN has slated such children for deportation and destruction, some suspect that Manfred's disorder may be a window into the future.

In The Golden Man, as monstrous mutants roam freely in post-nuclear America, a government agency, the DCA, is formed to get rid of them. But also targeted is eighteen-year-old Cris Johnson. He is a perfect specimen of young manhood, an icon of masculine beauty. He is the golden man. The DCA's fear that he might reproduce a new race of golden men with super-human survival skills makes his destruction paramount. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Martian Time-Slip and The Golden Man [Audio CD]
In Martian Time-Slip, I found no single sympathetic character. I listened to the CDs on my commute. It was easy to sink back into the world the author created. It was easy to analyze each character especially because they were all flawed in some way. He did a terrific job of playing the setting on Mars into the plot. It was such a layered piece. He tackled several themes/issues head on. I did not sink into The Golden Man as deeply. Still, it was enjoyable.

what is reality? take a look inside a troubled mind
At one point in this book, I said to myself, If anyone was in doubt as to whether Philip K. Dick took drugs, here is confirmation.But I was just mixed up in the time slips.

It is the future.Humans have colonized Mars but life is hard on the colony with little water and scant employment.The native Martians are a low class.Jack is a repairman whose path crosses that of Arnie Cott, a corrupt local power broker.There are time warps and visions of the future, schizophrenics who live in a different time realm, and Martians with special powers.

But really this book is about people dealing with fear and with suffering, about power and its misuses.And it asks the question, What is reality?What do we really know about it?

Not much.

I enjoyed it.I listened to the audiobook narrated by Grover Gardner and published by Blackstone Audiobooks.Good reading.[Note on content: one character uses profanity regularly, and there are one or two brief, not-particularly-graphic sex scenes.]

The audiobook includes an additional CD with the story The Golden Man, ostensibly the basis for the Nicholas Cage movie Next.In fact, the two have nothing in common except the idea that a person can see the future, but I enjoyed both.

Compelling Book
This was my first read of a Philip K. Dick book.Dick was a prolific writer of Science Fiction writing 30+ books over his life.

This book (Martian Time-Slip) reminded me of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles in the way human society on Mars carried on its same practices of bigotry, greed, betrayal and other human foibles.Another grand experiment seemingly doomed.

Where this book really shined was in Dick's description of a schizophrenic and what goes on in their mind.Dick used an interesting writing method in one place to show a particular scene from the perspective of two characters with normal minds, one autistic child, an aboriginal Martian, and a schizophrenic.The method, though originally a little annoying in the beginning was very effective in creating a window to understanding and experiencing how a schizophrenic feels.

The reader of this book does a good job of creating the speech rhythm and sound of someone from the 60's and handles the various voices quite well.I liked him very much and will seek other books he might have read.

The Golden Man is a short story that is interesting, amusing, and a little disturbing.It is about a time on earth after some type of horrific war where many human mutations have been born with the world policy to destroy all the mutations before they can reproduce.The story focus is about a boy/man of 18 who cannot speak but is tall, golden, muscular - basically a perfect physical specimen, but cannot communicate verbally and sees the world from a different time perspective than normal humans.Obviously, woman find him irresistible and men see him as the ultimate danger.
... Read more

Product Description
Jim Parsons is a talented doctor, skilled at the most advanced medical techniques and dedicated to saving lives. But after a bizarre road accident leaves him hundreds of years in the future, Parsons is horrified to discover an incredibly advanced civilization that zealously embraces death. Now, he is caught between his own instincts and training as a healer and a society where it is illegal to save lives. But Parsons is not the only one left who believes in prolonging life, and those who share his beliefs have desperate plans for Dr.Parsons' skills, and for the future of their society. Dr. Futurity is not only a thrilling rendition of a terrifying future but it is also a fantastic examination of the paradoxes of time-travel that could only have come from the mind of Philip K. Dick.


Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick 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 utlizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Back to the Futurity
DR. FUTURITY was published in 1960 and concerns a medical doctor from 2012 pulled from his normal timeline and abruptly deposited in the dystopic future of 2405.You can tell right from the opening bell that this story is going to be fairly heavy in time travel paradoxes and it certainly delivers on that initial promise.Despite all the obvious effort that Philip K Dick put into his twisted plot, I felt that the complexity and the convoluted nature of his story-line ultimately ended up hurting his book.

The world that PKD creates is a triumph of genetic engineering horror.His protagonist, Dr Jim Parsons, is dumbfounded to learn that his own profession is outlawed and that the sick and disabled immediately choose death in order to keep their society and race pure.While the story has its usual science fiction gang of rebels who wish to upset the apple cart, this crowd of malcontents are aiming a little higher than the usual kill-the-leaders-and-install-a-democracy cliché.Instead, they want to unravel eight centuries of history and rid the world of even the memory of white European dominance.

The meat of the plot revolves around the various timelines and the way in which the rebels try multiple times to alter history.The mystery around why certain events cannot be changed and how the various time-streams fit together is all very clever.However, at times it can be a bit too clever which gives the book an almost clinical feel.This is a pity because the motivations, the plans and the schemes of the various characters are given a lot of time to mature during the course of the story, yet the conclusion seems more mechanical than organic in its unveiling.It's a logical puzzle to be solved, not a discovery to be made.And this feels very much at odds with the flow of the beginning and the middle of the story.

Still, while DR. FUTURITY to me felt less than the sum of its parts, the parts that are good definitely make it an interesting read.The horrorshow of a future gone over to the dark sideis classic PKD.It's certainly much more ambitious in its scope than the average science fiction novel.It doesn't really hold together as well as it could, but that shouldn't be a surprise given how early on this appeared in PKD's career.

Leave This One in the Past
Authors, like all other humans, need some time to develop their own styles.That was certainly true of Philip K. Dick."Dr. Futurity" was only the second novel he ever wrote, although it wasn't published until seven years later, and he seems to have tried to stuff everything he wanted to communicate into its 150 pages, all before he had grown into his own man.You have to admire his ambition, but with all due respect he should have called this book "Dr. Futility".

Leaving aside for the moment the novel's place in PKD's body of work, though, it just isn't very good.Its flaws are those of a lot of writers' early work - much of the dialogue is way too expository to seem realistic, the plot jumps around beyond any possibility of coherence, and the characters are either heroes or villains of the deepest stripe.Not to mention that the whole thing lacks any sort of humor or subtext; it's a Twilight Zone temporal puzzle and leaves little emotional impact.Good thing it's so short.

The cover of my edition refers to this as a "chilling time travel classic".It's got time travel in it, to be sure.Dr. Jim Parsons, driving to work, finds himself abruptly yanked into a far future where humans belong to totemic tribes and look forward to death as their greatest opportunity to contribute to the advancement of both humanity and their own tribes.Just why Dr. Parsons has been thus kidnapped and what he's supposed to do relates to this societal attitude, but it takes his arrest, exile to a prison colony on Mars, rescue, association with a highly sensual tribal mother and travel to sixteenth-century California to prevent the assassination of Sir Francis Drake.

Got all that?Well, if you read this novel, don't fret, you'll come to understand.The writing is clear enough.Unfortunately, it's got so much to do in conveying the incidents of the plot that it hasn't got time to do anything else.

Now, in all fairness, "Dr. Futurity" asks some interesting questions about the efficacy of time travel.Even more unusual, it asks whether time travel is a moral activity.The first question has been asked before, but I'm not sure about the second.In fact, it's that last question that gives this novel some relationship to PKD's later work - he was always considering new aspects of old science fictional notions.

The old question asks us to suppose that we went back in time to right an old wrong - could we do it?Or, in changing the past, would we perhaps change things so as to prevent our own existence?And if we did that, since we would not be around to make the change, would the change be made?Writers have been pointing that out for eighty years or so.

The new question asks us to suppose that we went back in time to right an old wrong - have we the right to do it?Suppose that in doing so, we endangered ourselves.If we defended ourselves, what might the consequences be?What about those we left back in our own time?What consequences would they have to endure if we changed the past, even in a way they might approve of?Something tells me that PKD was the first, and maybe the only, writer to ask his readers to consider anything of that sort.

It's just too bad that he wasn't skillful enough as yet to work those ideas into a fictional context.His characters actually ask them, in so many words, and sometimes out loud.Surely I need not tell you that people don't actually talk like that to each other.They may talk like that to themselves, of course, but not in well-crafted sentences, and usually with some overlay of emotional turmoil included.

Ironically, in the year that "Dr. Futurity" was published, PKD had recently completed the classic "Time Out of Joint", and would shortly produce his Hugo-Award winner "The Man in the High Castle".In those works, he showed conclusively that his lack of craft in "Dr. Futurity" was a thing of the past.

Benshlomo says, There's a time to reach back into the past and a time to leave it alone.

In one era and out the other
This 1960 effort starts with Dr. Parsons being swept up from his home time, something in the near future, to a strange culture of the farther future. His life-saving skills turn out not to be needed in that distant day. In fact, those who suffer day to day injuries (lots of them, they're a careless bunch) are much more likely to call for a "euthanor" than for a medic. He's convicted of saving someone's life, with charge filed by the one he saved. All of which makes the question even more impenetrable? Who, in that death-crazed era, would go through such effort to hire a doctor? Well, we find out, and then the time-hopping begins. Remember those time-travel stories where one guy could be a heck of a crowd, and where future events impose a duty on some guy to make them happen? One of them.

Not too much of this story has aged. In fact, only the doctor with black bag would seem anachronistic to today's reader, nearly half a century after the book was written. The fact that the bag contains things like a cardiac bypass pump, which can be installed under field conditions with just an hour's work, leaves one wondering: just what kind of house call was he making? "It's OK Mrs. Hausfrau, I gave little Johnny two aspirin and a cardiac bypass. He'll be fin in the morning - just don't forget to change his batteries."

I don't see this as one of Dick's finest efforts. Parts of the story seem bolted together, and individuals' motivations in the second half get murky. Lots of SF stories get off the ground using reversal of some social assumption, but the death cult seems a bit ham-handed. "Dr. Futurity" is a fun ride, but not part of the ouvre that earned Dick his reputation as master.

-- wiredweird

A very minor Dick book...near the bottom
This is one of the last Dick novels to be reprinted, which should tell you something.It's one of Dick's weaker novels although probably not his worst (Vulcan's Hammer anyone?)

Basically, save your money and time and read something else by Dick like Ubik, Man in the High Castle, etc...

Not his best, but good for Dick fans to read
This short PKD novel is not at the top of the list in execution but for Dick completists, it is an interesting time travel/paradox story.Many of us are now searching out more obscure stories by PKD, having read all his "classsics," and this novel certainly deserves a reading to compare it to his more fleshed-out novels. ... Read more

Product Description
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 recognize his hallmark themes of life in a security state, conspiracy, and the blurring of reality and illusion.This publication marks its first complete appearance in the United States.

In this wry, paranoid vision of the future, overpopulation has turned cities into cramed 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 comeback.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 scapeship on the eighteen-year journey there to see if anyone wants to return. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

alice-in-trippy-land gone wrong
so far i have read "do androids dream of electric sheep" and "eye in the sky" both were good, i liked 'eye' better but both were good. then came this one, "lies, inc" and wow, have i had a hard time getting through it. it's not that it's bad, i like the idea of it, it's just so darn confusing!
the first 20 pages i was super confused as to what was going on, lots of spacy-sci-fi made up terms that weren't explained too well and a bucket full of characters taht were only mentioned alittle. many showed up later but still.

and there their were the trippy scenes. wow. lost me there. parts where they were on lsd and the world was expanding and going nuts and earlier in the bk there was something with a dude eating a turkey leg and then they end up in this house after the lsd and you're kinda like uhhhhhh, where'd this come from, what's going on. i'm on page 140 and i've only stuck with it because i like the author and keep hoping it will get less confusing and i do really want to know what's going on. i got it by page 30 or so but it lost me again around pg 80.

i don't recommend this one to people unlessyou're a die-hard philip k dick fan which i'm not yet since i've only read 2 1/2 of his, or if you like confusing stuff. i recommend 'eye in the sky' instead.

Written by editors, not by Philip K. Dick
I am a huge fan of Philip K. Dick (PKD). I purchased "Lies, Inc." because I did not recognize the title, and I thought I was buying a novel previously unknown to me.

By page 2 of this novel (Lies, Inc.), I realized that I was reading "The Unteleported Man," a novel I previously read back in 1972. When I got to Chapter 8 of "Lies, Inc." it suddenly turned into an acid-head-in-wonderland writing experiment (which was obviously, by my recollection, not part of "The Unteleported Man."). A few chapters later, I put "Lies, Inc." aside and then re-read "The Unteleported Man" (as printed in the 1972 Ace Double, along with "Dr. Futurity"). After completing that, I returned to and finished "Lies, Inc."

"The Unteleported Man" is rather good. I would rate it four out of five stars. The problem with "Lies, Inc." is this: Philip K. Dick did not complete it. "Lies, Inc." was pasted together after his death by folks who thought they understood his intentions. In the process, they really screwed it up. The editorial history of "Lies, Inc." is explained in the novel's afterward, has been repeated in reviews here, and can also be found on the PKD website.

In short, a stand-alone novelette of some 100 pages has been pasted between pages 72 and 172 of "Lies, Inc.," with most of the text from "The Unteleported Man" occurring before and after these pages. This new section is essentially one big acid trip (if you like that sort of thing). While this inserted novelette uses character names from "The Unteleported Man," there is very little connection between the two sections. In fact, the added material essentially ruins "The Unteleported Man." Also, in the process of merging these two sections, gross problems were introduced at the first transition (not described here to avoid a spoiler). I am sure, PKD (if he had lived) would have fixed these problems.

I would have preferred to have "The Unteleported Man" re-printed as originally published, with the second novelette included as a stand alone entity at the end. Shame on publishers and editors who try to make a buck by vitiating the works of dead artists.

If you have not previously read "The Unteleported Man," I would recommend that you find and read a copy of THAT novel and skip "Lies, Inc."

Even PKD fans should skip this one
I am a lifelong PKD fan, but this is just awful. Two different and incomplete versions of the story that Dick started to develop are just pasted together in a totally incoherent way. On top of that, one of the story developments is at best mediocre and the other is worse. I don't understand how anyone can give this a good review. I would love to know how the person who edited this atrocity ever got to be an editor for a major publishing house.

All messed up
Some good writing here but the story is all messed up. If you know the history of how this book was written you can understand why it makes very little sense. Half the book is just not worth reading. I had to struggle to get to the end and was happy it was over.

What Might Have Been
Before we get into the text here, it's worth taking a moment to point out that this novel had probably the most disorganized publication history of any of Philip K. Dick's work.That's saying something.

It started out as a novella for Amazing-Fantastic Magazine.Ace Books commissioned PKD to expand it to a novel, but didn't like the expansion material, so they reprinted the original novella in book form.Some years later, Berkeley Press wanted to publish the expanded novel, but some of the new material had been lost.PKD prepared to write some replacement pages and rework the piece, but died before he got through, alas, so Berkeley published what it had, gaps and all.Gollancz in England published it again with new connective material written by John Sladek.Finally, PKD's literary executor found the missing pages, reworked the piece again, gave it to Vintage Books, and here it is.Whew.

Let's face it, folks - with that kind of chaos surrounding this title, it would be foolish to expect a finished, polished work, and indeed that's not what we have here.The thing is confused and confusing, awkward and misshapen in spots.It lurches from scene to scene, from theme to theme, changes plotlines at least three separate times, and leaves some important questions unanswered.But it's PKD.Which is also saying something.

Rachmael ben Appelbaum, we learn, has got some serious problems.His business, a large interstellar shipping firm, can't compete anymore - another company, Trails of Hoffman, owns teleportation technology.It can get people and goods quickly to the only viable human colony of another star, a place called Whale's Mouth.It looks awfully good to the people of miserable, overcrowded Earth.Rachmael's business is in the tank and his major creditor is all over him.Looks like he's finished, except that for some odd reason, the teleportation technology only allows for one-way trips - no one can come back.So as our story begins, Rachmael has decided to take his last remaining interstellar ship on an 18-year voyage to Whale's Mouth and see what's really going on there.He needs protection from his creditors while preparing for the journey, and that's where Lies, Inc., Earth's largest private security firm, comes in.

Anyone familiar with PKD's work knows that things are not going to progress in the expected ways from this point onwards.We are not going to get a huge space battle between Rachmael's ship, the Omphalos, and his enemy's ships.We are not going to follow him on board and read all about how the voyage plays out.We're not even going to watch him land at Whale's Mouth and learn the truth.What are we going to get?Well, that's a good question.

If the story continued in the expected manner, it would be a little-guy-fights-the-system tale or something like that.Nope.About a third of the way through it turns into another of PKD's patented treatises on the unreliability of our reality perceptions.Then, hey presto, there are aliens all over the place, of a particularly disgusting variety, not to mention a precisely accurate oracle in book form that predicts dialogue, emotion, and even the narration to accompany it all.Finally, Rachmael gets his act together, heads off to rescue the girl, and suddenly the story is over.

Now look, no one ever said a story has to follow any rules, especially in science fiction, but how many loose ends can you tolerate?PKD sets up murderous confrontations and never resolves them, he introduces important characters and plot points well over two-thirds of the way through, he has people and things in two or three places at once for no reason at all.Come on, already.

If this was anyone other than PKD I'd say that makes "Lies, Inc." a lousy mess.Even with PKD at the wheel, the thing still runs off the road.On the other hand, despite the errors in logic and organization, it makes a kind of sense, if only because of the main character's point of view.Rachmael ben Appelbaum finds himself at the receiving end of enormous, worldwide agencies from the very start and never really gets a handle on the conflict's true nature - you expect a story about this guy to wrap itself up neatly?What are you, nuts?

No doubt PKD would have polished up the story's roughest edges, given time.The fact that we lost him beforehand is no reason to ignore "Lies, Inc." - it's just a shame that he didn't get his chance to work out some of these ideas.You don't get a coherent plot or a shapely narrative, but you do get a lot of other good stuff.

How about creditor balloons that hover over people day and night screaming about what deadbeats they are, for instance?Or time travel, drugs and wireless telephony used as weapons of war?Or a hallucinogen that produces the same delusion in everyone who takes it - does that mean the delusion is the true reality?(Check out PKD's novella "Faith of Our Fathers" for a cleaner examination of that one.)

You even get some weighty linguistic games.The hero's name is Rachmael ben Appelbaum ("God's mercy, son of the apple tree" in Hebrew and Yiddish); he's up against UN Secretary General Horst Bertold ("bright ruler of the forest" in German), not to mention Trails of Hoffman CEO Theodoric Ferry ("ruler of the people and transporter" in German and English).And his love interest is named Freya, after the Norse goddess of love.No wonder his ship is called Omphalos, Greek for "navel" - with all that going on, I'd want to climb back into the womb, too.

So "Lies, Inc." doesn't quite work, largely because its author died too soon.Hardly a tragedy, but plenty sad enough.

Benshlomo says, Could have been a contender. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

A TREASURE
If Philip K. Dick could have endorsed a book commensurate with the scope of his literary achievement, it would be Rickels' "I Think I am." No, you don't need a PhD to read this book, only your curiosity, a genuine interest in your own psyche, an intelligent approach to literature, a stomach for the intensity of the cultural milieu of California, and a taste for German thought. Alas, Philip K. Dick's legacy is currently in the hands of a hysterical widow who one can only hope understood her husband better than she did his books. This is not your average tedious study of an author; the book is a literary achievement on its own. Only for cool people.

Reads like a thesis.
I find this book impossible to read.I've been out of grad school too long to go back to the classroom.

But if this is your thing than go for it...I think.I really can't tell because I refuse to read this book. ... Read more

Product Description
'Strange, fascinating man, and this is a strange, fascinating book.'-The San Diego Union-Tribune For his many devoted readers, Philip K. Dick is not only one of the 'one of the most valiant psychological explorers of the 20th century' (The New York Times) but a source of divine revelation ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

PKD Devotees Will Love This
If you've read 10 or 20 Dick novels and been enthralled by Dick's delightfully twisted take on things; if you've read one of Lawrence Sutin's, Paul Williams' or Gregg Rickman's bios of the man; if you think you know all you need to about PKD-- well, you need to read this book.Carrere goes places and asks questions I'd never thought of in my 30-year dalliance with Dick's fiction.This book made me laugh out loud a dozen times and has rekindled my fascination with the major novels-- I'l be rereading my favorites all over again thinking of Carrere's clever melding of PKD's life and work.Sutin's exemplary bio dabbled in these waters.Carrere plunges in and-- with great creativity and humor-- renders a brilliant narrative that stands on its own while enriching one's understanding of Dick's oeuvre.

So: if you've got a row of PKDs on your bookshelf, this belongs with them.It's as witty and confounding as any of Dick's best.

Wondering about Carrere's "facts" presented in this biography.
I just started reading this book, and on page 23 Carrere locates Orange County " a few hundred miles south of Berkeley."Well, L.A. is 400 miles south of Berkeley, and Orange County is even farther south.Nitpicking, maybe, but it makes one wonder about Carrere's other "facts" presented in this biography of one of the greatest SF writers of all time.This kind of "mistake" of fact is inexcusable in a biography.

Footnote: Got to page 48 and stopped reading it, too much intricate, intrepid, vague factual "details" of PKD's life, while unable to locate the distance between Berkeley and Orange County; and page 48: "She took him down to the cliffs to show him a secret cove- the most westerly point in the United States, she said."Obviously a reference to either Point Reyes or Bodega Bay, which in the vicinity of Point Reyes Station, and no where near the "most westerly point" in the U.S, which in fact is Cape Mendocino, south of Eureka, CA.One star, because I could not give it NO STARS.

Demented or Inspired, Perhaps Neither or Both
My readings of Philip K. Dick's fiction spans 40+ years.I am one of the dedicated science fiction readers that Carrere views with some derision in this book. Even though he is not complimentary of the genre, he accepts the fact that Dick could not have been published as a mainstream author.I would go further to say that most "mainstream" readers would not have understood any of Dick's ideas.This expressed, "I Am Alive and You Are Dead" is an amazing achievement.I am not sure if it is not in part a fictional biography in that there are thought processes and conversations Carrere had to have created rather than documented.But... the picture of Dick's mind holds together so amazingly well and Carrere's exceptional command of facts and language makes the biography transcend any that I have read before. Carrere's treatise follows events in Dick's life chronologically and is easy to follow.What is not so easy to follow are the amazing machinations of Dick's brilliant and disturbed mind. But I feel I know Philip K. Dick much better for having read Carrere's probing and insightful biography.And reading this biography makes me want to read Dick's works again because I believe wholeheartedly that now I might delve deeper and understand more for having read Carrere's work.There is nothing superficial about this book.It is quite obviously a labor of love and the subject a man of deepest interest to the author.He has done the subject proud, in my estimation.Now, I am off to read "VALIS" for the second time feeling that what was obscure will now be revealed. Highly recommended.

Horselover Facts
Quarter of a century after his death, Philip K. Dick's reputation and status is beginning to transcend mere founding fatherhood of modern science fiction and drift towards a more general greatness within the broader pastures of modern American literature.

Dick was exasperated about the perceived limitations of his genre while he was alive but before his untimely death in 1982 he had received industry acclaim for The Man in the High Castle in the sixties, but otherwise had garnered only cult following. Broader recognition beckoned - Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, based on Dick's altogether more complex Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was in post-production. Fame and fortune beckoned, but by this stage, as Emmanuel Carrere makes plain, even if he had not suffered massive stroke, Philip K Dick was in no state, mental or physical, to enjoy or capitalise on it.

That Dick was a troubled soul is relatively well known, but Carrere's biography explores and extrapolates Dick's unstable mental state into his literature and life choices, which became increasingly bizarre as the Seventies wore on. Carrere sources Dick's discord in the death in infancy of his twin sister Jane, and was compounded by Dick's hypochondria - and has produced an effervescent and fascinating portrait. Carrere, perhaps by taking some licence, gives us a close and personal view into his subject's unusually complex psyche which is rare in a contemporary biography (the only other comparable example I can recall is the Gilmans' excellent Alias David Bowie). Because of Carrere's aproach, Philip K. Dick is made very real on the page.

Some will complain that Carerre's approach crosses a sacred line into fictionalising, but philosophically I don't have a problem with that (I'm not sure there even is such a line in fact): particularly since Philip K Dick is long dead, outside the content of his oeuvre we don't have any "facts" against which Carrere's story can be measured - which will give pause in some quarters - but it doesn't feel to me that Carrere has breached the poetic licence he undoubtedly as as a biographer. That the complaints, such as they are, have mostly been "in principle" and not on substance seems to confirm that. These are fair fictionalisations, that is, and they paint a vibrant and fascinating picture of the man and an excellent introduction to his major works which are analysed and contextualised in a good amount of detail.

The implication, never actually made, is that Dick's hypochondria transcended simple pharmaceutical dependence and evolved into paranoia and ultimately genuine psychiatric illness. One might wonder what effect the cinematic success of Blade Runner and the many subsequent Dick dramatisations might have had on his mental state and subsequent writing career, but not for long: on Carrere's account he was a burnt-out husk by the end so, most likely, none.

Carrere is a novelist himself, and he writes well - as, it should be said, does his translator. This didn't feel at all like a translated book.

Well recommended.

Olly Buxton

Fascinating Book, Great Read
I don't know much about Philip K. Dick.I'm not a fan.But surfing the web, I came across some articles about him that intrigued me enough to want to learn more.I found myself spending about an hour on Amazon's Search Inside the Book, reading through as much of this book as I could (i.e., the first 3 or 4 pages of each chapter).Well, that wasn't enough to quench my thirst.So I bought it, and it was a book that I swallowed in one gulp -- I couldn't put it down.Fascinating stuff.

Carrère is a very good writer, and this is a book that works on several levels.First, he brings to life the various phases of Dick's personality, from his nerdy adolescence, to his semi-straight 20s, to his drug-drenched 30s and 40s.The book is also very good at evoking the three distinctive eras of American culture Dick lived through: the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s.Too, Carrère limns with great clarity the complex twists and turns of Dick's spiritual journey, and also offers thoughtful commentary on Dick's prolific body of writing (with some especially interesting observations on how the details of Dick's life were reflected and transformed in his fiction).

All in all, a great introduction to Dick.He was a fascinating man, and this is a fascinating book.Carrère is clearly a fanboy, but he's also a very smart and talented writer, so this book far transcends typical fanboy biographies.Indeed, it's a first-rate work of literature.

By way of a postscript, I liked this book so much I picked up Carrère's The Adversary -- which is a superb non-fiction thriller, another mind-blowing great read (that appears to be Carrère's specialty). ... Read more

Product Description