Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Much as I love the final scenes with Rutger Hauer in the movie, much of what I love in the book is what isn't in the film: the religion, the reason for the interest in animals, the empathy, the mystery around what is reality. The doubts about identity and what it means to be human are fascinating ( Read more... )

Philip K. Dick - The Variable Man

One of my favourite collections of stories ever. They are longish, 5 in 220 pages, and three are magnificent. The title story is about an odd-job man from 1913 being accidentally pulled into the midst of a 22nd Century interstellar war - and suddenly the computed stats and odds go wild. The next two have something ( Read more... )

Philip K. Dick - Ubik

Probably his most bewildering novel, in which a bunch of anti-psi ops are attacked and find themselves in time-slips in a decaying world where they seem to be dying, complete with a woman with time-changing abilities and their boss, who may be dead (or maybe they are, and he's alive?), manifesting in strange ways. It defies ( Read more... )

Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle

Perhaps his most renowned novel, an alternate history tale where the Axis won WWII. The West Coast of the US is now run by Japan. Somewhere in the neutral central zone, an author has written an alternate history tale where the Allies won the war. There's lots of I Ching, plus suggestions that this reality ( Read more... )

Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

His best title ever, for me: Dick was second to Wodehouse in numbers on what I hope is only my first pass at a before-I-die selection, and I wouldn't necessarily have guessed in advance that this was the one I most urgently wanted to reread. It's still wonderful: less for the SF stuff (a TV star ( Read more... )