Philip K Dick

A masterpiece ahead of its time, a prescient rendering of a dark future, and the inspiration for the blockbuster film Blade Runner

By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built...

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick contains twenty-one of Dick's most dazzling and resonant stories, which span his entire career and show a world-class writer working at the peak of his powers. In "The Days of Perky Pat," people spend their time playing with dolls who manage to live an idyllic life no longer available to the Earth's real inhabitants. "Adjustment Team" looks at the fate of a man who by mistake has stepped out of his own time. In...

The final book in Philip K. Dick's VALIS trilogy, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer brings the author's search for the identity and nature of God to a close. The novel follows Bishop Timothy Archer as he travels to Israel, ostensibly to examine ancient scrolls bearing the words of Christ. But, more importantly, this leads him to examine the decisions he made during his life and how they may have contributed to the suicide of his mistress and son....

Named one of Time's 100 Best Books, Ubik is a mind-bending, classic novel about the perception of reality from Philip K. Dick, the Hugo Award-winning author of The Man in the High Castle. Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in "half-life," a dreamlike...

In The Hanging Stranger, TV salesman Ed Loyce is a practical man who, when he sees something wrong tries to correct it. Then one day he sees a lifeless body hanging in the town square. What he can't figure out is, why nobody seems to care.

In Tony and the Beetles, ten-year old Tony Rossi, an Earthman growing up on Betelgeuse, becomes aware that the natives, known as the Pas-Udeti, are driving out the Earthmen colonists on nearby Orion. His father, a staunch believer in the superiority of Earthmen, describes Tony's native friends as Beetles. A trip into town to meet his native friends leads to awkward encounters with a Pas-Udeti cab driver and a fellow bus passenger. When his newly aggressive...

In The Skull, a convict is offered his freedom if he agrees to travel back in time and kill someone. He learns that the assassination target was the founder of a religious sect that grew in strength and influence from its inception in 1960. Carrying his target's skull so he can identify the religious leader, the convict comes to learn a terrible secret about why he was chosen to find its owner.

In Second Variety, UN forces have retreated to a moon base in the aftermath of early Soviet victories in a nuclear conflict. In response, the UN forces developed special robots, called Claws, which feature spinning blades and rudimentary artificial intelligence. Six years later, the Soviet leadership asks for negotiations to end the war. A UN officer travels back to earth to discover that not only have the Claws learned to replicate themselves, they...

In The Crystal Crypt, Earth and Mars are poised on the verge of war. On the last spaceship to leave Mars for Earth, law enforcement officials are looking for three fugitives who somehow made a great Martian city disappear. Unable to find the perpetrators, the officials allow the ship to disembark for Earth. A businessman named Thacher strikes up a conversation with a young woman and two men who reveal a very interesting secret to him about the mysterious...

In Piper in the Woods, an army doctor is asked to treat a soldier from Asteroid Y-3 who claims he is a plant. This wouldn't be a problem, but the soldier is incapable of any physical activity, preferring to stand still and point himself towards the sun. When more soldiers return from Asteroid Y-3 also claiming to be plants, Dr. Harris travels there to investigate. While there, he learns about a mysterious indigenous people living in the woods called...