Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (1968)
The basis for the movie, Blade Runner, this novel explores the concept of humanity
and to whom it applies. Rick Deckard is a cop sent to track down a group of rogue androids
and retire them.
Along the way, he falls in love and discovers that being human doesn't necessarily mean
being born of woman.
Doctor Bloodmoney (or How We Got Along After the Bomb) (1965)
Dr. Bluthgeld is a deranged and paranoid scientist who believes he has the
power to destroy the world with his mind. While visiting his therapist his paranoia increases.
Walt Dangerfield and his wife are on the first launch of human colonists to Mars.
Later that day Bluthgeld drops the bombs and, above Earth, the launch of the Mars
colonists has failed. The ship is stuck in orbit around Earth. Dangerfield,
with his wife dead and a ship full of supplies, begins broadcasting to the
survivors now left on earth. His voice and music give hope to those surviving.
But one isn't amused. His power grows
until he has the ability to kill the last hope of mankind, Dangerfield.
Dr. Futurity (1960)
Jim Parsons, doctor, leads a typical life. In the morning he gets up,
kisses his wife goodbye and leaves for work. But one morning something goes
wrong. His car is thrown from the road by a radiant beam. Parson
awakens in a strange city where the peoples' values about life and death are very different.
Parsons soon learns that his profession of saving lives is unwelcome.
Arrested, he is sent to a labour camp where he is saved by a splinter group
of full-blooded American Indians. This group has mastered time travel and
are responsible for bringing him into the future.
They require his skills as a doctor to save the life of one of their leaders.
Eye In The Sky (1957)
While strolling on an overcast day, a group of lab visitors are affected by a particle-light
beam. Each enters a dream-odyssey that exposes their innermost hopes and fears. Emergency
workers scramble to reuse their bodies but their souls begin a journey from one nightmare
world to another. One of them, Jack Hamilton, realizes that they may be trapped, never to return.
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974)
One day Jason Taverner is a TV star, the toast of millions. The next day, he isn't
just a has-been but rather a never-was. All proof of his existence disappears overnight.
Taverner races across a US in which everyone is a police informant from the waif-like
identity card forger to the surgically altered pleasure queen. He's trying to discover what happened
to him but he's forced to deal with everyone who has something to hide.
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Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928. While attending UC at Berkeley,
he dropped out rather than take ROTC training. There he stayed to write some 36
novels and 5 short story collections. He won the 1962 Hugo for The Man in the High Castle
and the 1974 John W. Campbell Award for Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.
He died of heart failure caused by a stroke in 1982.
Over the years, Philip K. Dick's novels and collections have slipped in and
out of print. However, in 1991, Vintage, a division of Random House, the
folk who bring us Ballantine and Del Rey titles, began an ambitious project
to reprint many of his novels. While not all of them have reappeared, a fine
selection have. It is their covers (for the most part) which supplement this list
(© date appears in brackets).
Philip K. Dick Reading List
Installments
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1 | 2 | 3 |
4 | 5 | 6 |
7 | 8 | 9 |
10 |
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Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (1968)
