Shortly after his death in 1982, a new and unexpected aspect of Philip K. Dick's talent began to appear. And no, I don't mean the tendency of his novels and stories to provide the germ for successful feature films ...
Rather, it was the existence of a whole series of realist novels which he'd written alongside the Sci-fi ones, but been unable to publish during his lifetime. All except two, that is: Confessions of a Crap Artist (1975) and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982).
The first of these, Confessions of a Crap Artist – Jack Isidore (of Seville, Calif.): A Chronicle of Verified Scientific Fact, is certainly a solid piece of work. I guess the arresting title may be one of the reasons it finally saw print, 16 years after he wrote it, but by then it was too late for readers to consider him as anything but a pulp SF writer, rather than an aspiring mainstream novelist - a distinction which still held considerable weight at the time, some fifty years ago.
The titanic success of Blade Runner - based loosely on Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - shortly after the author's death, had the side-effect of making PKD himself into something of a star. Presumably it was this which emboldened his estate to dip a cautious toe in the water of this huge lacuna in his writing career.
The first of his hitherto unpublished "mainstream" novels to be issued posthumously was The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, pictured at the head of this post. It was written in 1960, towards the end of a period of writing mainly realist fiction. Here's a list of all of his experiments in this genre, ordered according to their eventual dates of publication:
- Confessions of a Crap Artist (1975)
- The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
- The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1984)
- In Milton Lumky Territory (1985)
- Puttering About in a Small Land (1985)
- Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1986)
- Mary and the Giant (1987)
- The Broken Bubble (1988)
- Gather Yourselves Together (1994)
- Voices from the Street (2007)
And here they are again, listed - with my notes on each of them - in their actual order of composition:
- Gather Yourselves Together (1950)
This is Dick's very first novel (or the first to survive, at any rate). It's set in China, but the focus is actually on a very claustrophobic group of three people, two men and a woman, left behind at an industrial plant as the Communists move in to take possession of it. The focus is almost entirely on the complex histories and inter-relations of the three - in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Sartre's classic existentialist play Huis Clos [No Exit] (1944). It's a bit overblown in parts, but a very promising beginning.- Voices from the Street (1952)
It's no accident that it was only in 2007, 25 years after Dick's death, that an enterprising independent publisher took on this, his last substantive remaining unpublished work. Voices from the Street is certainly a hard pill to swallow. Its message of rebellion against society's soul-crushing norms is similar to that of John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960), which would enjoy such astonishing success a decade later. Dick's antihero, Stuart Hadley, is no Rabbit Angstrom, however. His general belligerence and misogyny make him a very hard man to empathise with. In structure, though, one can see in it the germs of Dick's later mastery of microcosm and macrocosm: a central protagonist balanced against larger, more cosmic - though similarly personified - forces.- Mary and the Giant (1954)
The choice of a female protagonist, Mary Anne Reynolds, allows Dick to explore a lot of interesting aspects of American life in the 1950s from what was then quite an unusual angle. Her intense sense of frustration seems futile and self-destructive from the outside, but as we get to know her better, her brittle, abrupt demeanour seems more and more plausible. Shorter than his first two mainstream novels, this one is also better paced and more simply constructed.- The Broken Bubble (1956)
This one is a bit harder to characterise. It seems to be examining proto-Beat territory about the 'new generation' of youth and its clash with traditional values, but at the same time there's a paean of disgust at over-the-top commercialism and aggressive advertising. All in all, it's hard to see much of a focus in the flounderings of the four main characters. As usual, the two main female characters are a blonde, Rachael, and a brunette, Pam, prefiguring similar pairings in later PKD novels, such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.- Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)
The protagonist, Roger Lindahl, is a bit of an anti-hero, restless, mendacious, and (occasionally) violent. I think we're meant to prefer him to his rather cold and controlling wife Virginia, but actually I find her the more compelling character. The landscapes of Los Angeles are portrayed with much aplomb. To say what's it all about - except, perhaps, the flounderings of a Hunk Finn-like figure in the post-war world, as he attempts to resist the compulsion to 'light out for the territories' once again - would be quite challenging. Liz Bonner, the neighbour with whom Roger has an affair, is probably the most sympathetic member of PKD's cast.- In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)
Another interesting portrait of a dysfunctional relationship. In this case the dominant partner is a passive-aggressive woman who used to be the elementary school teacher of the protagonist, Skip Stevens! What brings the book to life is the wild-card character Milt Lumky, whose oracular pronouncements seem to foreshadow a series of later visionary bosses and dei-ex-machina in future PKD books. It ends with Skip cowed and subservient, but there's a sense that this may be only a temporary conclusion to this particular battle of the sexes.- Confessions of a Crap Artist – Jack Isidore (of Seville, Calif.): a Chronicle of Verified Scientific Fact (1959)
This, the first of these non-SF novels to see in print in PKD's lifetime, is in many ways the most interesting of the lot. We have the usual unbalanced relationship between predatory woman and passive man, though in this case there's a violent husband to deal with as well. What brings it to life is the voice of the third narrator, Jack Isidore, whose crazy, semi-logical analyses of "scientific fact" throw a completely new light on the incidents at the heart of the story. His wild card ideas add that touch of humanity which lightens up Dick's work in the fantasy and SF genres - otherwise the book would risk being seen as a complete downer from beginning to end. The autobiographical nature of some of its contents is perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the book. Dick could analyse people and situations so well, yet he seemed unable to avoid acting out the same patterns again and again in his own life ...- The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960)
It's a skilfully written novel by anyone's standards. The plot is quite baroque, what with faked fossils, local evolutionary throwbacks with 'clunch' jaws, and a whole series of feuds. I guess what's most disconcerting about is the strong sense of misogyny pervading it. Of the two main female characters, one is an emasculating schemer, and the other a pathetic drunk. True, the male characters don't come out very well either, but one can see why publishers passed it over at the time it was written. It's not that its author lacked talent, or didn't know what he was talking about - it's just that it fell somewhere between the two stools of social comedy and dark satire. Definitely worth reading, though.- Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)
You can see the seeds of greatness in this one. PKD finally harnesses the Kafaesque intricacies of later masterpieces such as Ubik or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and unleashes them on a plot about a used-car salesman, a mechanic, and a record executive. As the blurb has it, there's "a weird menace running throughout," but also "moments of fragile decency." Nor does it end in complete despair, unlike most of his earlier experiments in realist fiction. Certainly it should have seen print at the time, but at least now it can take its proper place in his evolution as a great twentieth-century American novelist.- The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1981)
This last one comes from a quite different place. It's a roman-à-clef inspired by the life of PKD's friend Bishop James Pike, who was tried for heresy by the Episcopalian church in the mid-1960s for espousing unpopular views on the nature of various Church dogmas. Dick's protagonist, Angel Archer, former daughter-in-law of Bishop "Timothy Archer", is critical of his intellectual arrogance and self-serving ethical compass, but the human drama she unfolds - very close to the actual events of Pike's own life - gives Dick a chance to air his deepest moral and philosophical views. It was the last of his novels to be published in his lifetime, and a triumphant return to form after the rather unwieldy plot mechanics of Valis and The Divine Invasion. It's one of the very few first-person narratives he wrote, and it shows how thoroughly he was able to inhabit someone else's skin.
As you can see from this list, virtually all of these books were written between 1950 and 1960 - with the sole exception of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
Bishop James Pike, the original of 'Timothy Archer', published a book called The Other Side in 1968. It details a series of supernatural events which followed his son's suicide in 1966. This caused something of a scandal at the time. Pike died in mysterious circumstances in 1969, while hiking with his wife Diane in the Judean Desert outside Jerusalem.
There was therefore a certain topical interest in the book, which made it a good risk for Dick's publishers, who marketed it as the last part of a theological trilogy, alongside VALIS and The Divine Invasion.
This was, however, quite a departure from the earlier mainstream books, which were in a far more socially conscious vein. Interestingly, he stopped writing them after the success of his alternate history novel The Man in the High Castle, which - one could argue, at least - combined many of the purely novelistic virtues of pace, setting, plot and characterisation developed over these years of steady application to the mechanics of his craft, with the expansiveness and visionary vitality which belong to his purely SF writing.
Anyway, whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter - whether the shortsidedness of his agents and publishers cost us another mid-century John Updike or Philip Roth, or whether they ended up steering him in the direction of his true distinction - we have to acknowledge that that's how things panned out.
Personally, I tend towards the second of these opinions, but perhaps that's because I first encountered Phil Dick as an unexpected phoenix in a shelf of otherwise undistinguished SF paperbacks. And for me that will always be part of his magic: that sense of something extra hidden behind what Stanislaw Lem refers to as ‘the whole threadbare lot of telepaths, cosmic wars, parallel worlds, and time travel’ employed by earlier SF writers.
In any case, I'm glad that a succession of publishers have now dared to take on these unpublished novels of Dick's. Reading through them - for the first time - as a group, I'm struck, above all, by the immense talent on display within them. His characters are real characters: complex, empathetic people. His plots, too, are deeply considered and carefully framed.
There's a zany intensity to the best of his SF which doesn't occur here - and I should know: some years ago now I undertook the not inconsiderable task of reading through all of his 35 novels and 118 collected short stories in that genre in chronological order of composition. What these realist fictions do contain in spades, however, is that mysterious quality known as "wu", defined helpfully in The Man in the High Castle as the moment when:
The forces within [a] piece are stabilized. At rest. ... [T]his object has made its peace with the universe. It has separated from it and hence has managed to come to homeostasis.You can read the whole passage in an earlier piece I wrote about Philip K. Dick. For the moment, though, I'll just say that whatever genre he was working in, Dick's work was always "alive in the now", like the piece of jewellery he analyses so painstakingly in this most calmly and beautifully written of all of his books.
Mind you, I'm more likely nowadays to reach for one of his more ramshackle later masterpieces: Ubik, say, or even the terrifying Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. The thing about Philip K. Dick's fictional universe is that it was built on a large enough scale to contain all the multitudes anyone could desire.
Books I own are marked in bold:
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Novels:
- Gather Yourselves Together (1950 / 1994)
- Gather Yourselves Together. Afterword by Dwight Brown. 1994. A Mariner Book: Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.
- Voices from the Street (1952 / 2007)
- Voices from the Street. A Tor Book. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2007.
- Vulcan's Hammer (1953 / 1960)
- Vulcan's Hammer. 1960 / John Brunner. The Skynappers. 1960. Ace Double Novel Books. New York: Ace Books, 1960.
Listing Dick's novels in order of composition, rather than publication, makes it far easier to follow his growth (and eventual decline) as a writer. This, his first full-length SF novel - after a number of well-received short stories - seems crude only in comparison with what was to come. It's a well-structured story, on multiple levels, with the virtues of any fast-paced thriller.
- Dr. Futurity (1953 / 1960)
- Dr. Futurity. 1960. Magnum Books. London: Methuen Paperbacks Ltd., 1979.
- Docteur Futur. 1960. Trans. Florian Robinet & Dominique Defert. 1974. Librairie Générale Française. Ed. Gérard Klein. Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1988.
The immense complexity of the time travel plot, and the many-layered nature of the narrative show the Dick of the short stories beginning to inform the Dick of the novels. There's a slightly paranoid air to the doubled characters as they reenact deeds they imagine to be required by their previous journeys back and forward in time, but the characterisation is otherwise still rather rudimentary.
- The Cosmic Puppets (1953 / 1957)
- The Cosmic Puppets. 1957 / Andrew North. Sargasso of Space. 1955. Ace Double Novel Books. New York: Ace Books, 1957.
This is the first really impressive novel that Dick wrote. It's rather uneasily confined in the Ace double novel format, but its vision of a Manichaean universe, with Ormuzd and Ahriman at perpetual war over a small backwater town in Virginia is both breathtakingly original and completely daft. If it weren't for the fact that impostors, doubles, and a sense of subtle imposture informed every aspect of Dick's life, I'm not sure that it would work at all. As it is, it rings firghteningly true and absolutely impossible at the same time: a strong presage of things to come.
- Solar Lottery (1954 / 1955) [aka World of Chance (1965)]
- Solar Lottery. New York: Ace Books, 1955.
- Solar Lottery. 1955. Rev. ed. as 'World of Chance'. 1956. London: Arrow Books, 1979.
This was Dick's first published novel, even though - as you can see - it's the sixth one he'd written since 1950. His interest in Messianic leaders with feet of clay is beginning to declare itself, as well as his ability to keep a number of diverse plotlines balanced against one another. His characterisation is still a bit weak, but given the (then) constraints on the pulp SF genre, it's remarkable how many interesting ideas he was able to include in so short a compass.
- Mary and the Giant (1954 / 1987)
- Mary and the Giant. New York: Arbor House, 1987.
- The World Jones Made (1954 / 1956)
- The World Jones Made. 1956. Panther Science Fiction. London: Panther, 1970.
This novel was clearly influenced by Dick's musings on the career and lasting influence of Adolf Hitler - a subject he would return to somewhat more thoroughly a few years later in The Man in the High Castle. The interesting subplot of the artificially created Venusians makes the book much richer than it would otherwise be. It's perhaps his first SF novel to be thoroughly and unapologetically readable on its own terms, however.
- Eye in the Sky (1955 / 1957)
- Eye in the Sky. 1957. London: Arrow Books, 1979.
Definitely his most assured and powerful work up to this moment: on the one hand, it's a clever indictiment of McCarthyism; on the other hand, it shows the strange power of monocular visions of the world. It's also very funny in parts: all in all, an SF novel of permanent value.
- The Man Who Japed (1955 / 1956)
- The Man Who Japed. 1956. Magnum Books. London: Methuen Paperbacks Ltd., 1978.
The first real appearance of the 'dark-haired girl' who was to become such a feature of future novels by PKD. He paints a grim picture of a puritan future calling out for 'japing' by such as his hero, Allen Purcell - not really a major work, but assured and cleverly put together. The "enforced assimilation" [= cannibalism] motif is amusingly developed.
A Time for George Stavros (1956 / ms. lost)
- The Broken Bubble (1956 / 1988)
- The Broken Bubble. 1988. Paladin. London: Grafton Books, 1991.
- Puttering About in a Small Land (1957 / 1985)
- Puttering About in a Small Land. 1985. Paladin. London: Grafton Books, 1987.
- Time Out of Joint (1958 / 1959)
- Time Out of Joint. 1959. Penguin Science Fiction. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
This is a fascinating externalisation of Dick's persistent feelings of paranoia. For the first time we see the virtues of his mainstream fiction: characterisation, atmosphere, believable dialogue - beginning to manifest themselves in his SF writing. A neglected masterpiece of its kind. The Penguin edition, which I own, manages to misspell the hero's name and get the dates wrong on the blurb: a sign of just how little they must have thought of him at the time ... If only they'd known!
- In Milton Lumky Territory (1958 / 1985)
- In Milton Lumky Territory. 1985. Paladin. London: Grafton Books, 1987.
- Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959 / 1975)
- Confessions of a Crap Artist – Jack Isidore (of Seville, Calif.): a Chronicle of Verified Scientific Fact. 1975. Magnum Books. London: Methuen Paperbacks Ltd., 1979.
- The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960 / 1984)
- The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike. 1984. Paladin. London: Grafton Books, 1986.
- Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960 / 1986)
- Humpty Dumpty in Oakland. 1986. Paladin. London: Grafton Books, 1988.
- The Man in the High Castle (1961 / 1962)
- The Man in the High Castle. 1962. Penguin Science Fiction. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
- The Man in the High Castle. 1962. Penguin Classic Science Fiction. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997.
- Included in: Four Novels of the 1960s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. Library of America, 173. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2007.
This book really is a quantum leap from all that preceded it in Dick's work. The plotting; the clipped, haiku-like prose style; the immensely plausible and impressively detailed historical background - they all come together to forge a strange, quirky masterpiece. Certainly it would have been impossible without all the 'mainstream' fiction he'd worked on for a decade before it was written, but it isn't really like those books anymore than it's like his earlier SF. It reads, literally, as if the I-Ching oracle had decided to write a novel.
- We Can Build You (1962 / 1972)
- We Can Build You. 1972. Fontana Science Fiction. London: Fontana / Collins, 1977.
One can understand the consternation Dick caused his agent by sending him this novel immediately after the successfully 'high-culture' Man in the High Castle. The comedy here is almost slapstick in its intensity, the prose-style as chaotic as his characters - gone are the precision and the gentle irony of its predecessor. And yet, in its own way, it's far more prophetic of Dick's future as a writer than High Castle. I suppose he may have thought that following up a book on WWII with a book touching on the American Civil War - 1961 was, after all, the centennial of that conflict - was a good idea. If so, he was out of luck. It wouldn't appear in print for another ten years.
- Martian Time-Slip (1962 / 1964)
- Martian Time-Slip. 1964. Introduction by Brian W. Aldiss. 1976. London: New English Library, 1983.
- Included in: Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 183. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2008.
This is undoubtedly one of PKD's major works. It's a bleak, depressing vision of the future on a Mars which has failed to transcend mankind's myriad conflicts. The native Bleekmen come out as the winners, but there's a terrifying insistence on the accuracy of a schizophrenic reading of the world as opposed to the destructive "rationality" of the amoral Arnie Kott. It is, in its own way, as brilliant as The Man in the High Castle, but with far less in it for our comfort.
- Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1963 / 1965)
- Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb. 1965. London: Arrow Books, 1977.
- Included in: Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 183. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2008.
The jokey title was presumably imposed on Dick as a nod to the film Dr Strangelove. It's not really applicable to the strengths (and peculiarities) of the book he actually wrote. It's actually an incredibly complex mélange of meditations on the nature of mid-twentieth-century civilisation, in the guise of a post-Apocalyptic Sci-fi narrative. One of his genuine masterpieces.
- The Game-Players of Titan (1963 / 1963)
- The Game-Players of Titan. 1963. Sphere Science Fiction. London: Sphere Books, 1973.
This, on the other hand, constitutes a return to the pulp conventions of his earlier fiction. It also repeats certain motifs from Solar Lottery, but with a greater grasp of their larger implications. His persistent sub-themes of complete mirror worlds staffed with impostors, oracular interactions with alien races (not to mention taxis and other pieces of machinery), and nagging existential self-doubt are all strongly in evidence.
- The Simulacra (1963 / 1964)
- The Simulacra. 1964. Magnum Books. London: Methuen Paperbacks Ltd., 1983.
An interesting but slightly confusing novel. The basic idea of a First Lady so charismatic that her husband, the actual US President, can be replaced by a series of manufactured robots over a period of decades, is as good as it is topical. Jackie Kennedy was, after all, at the height of her incandescent fame at the time it was written. So many other plot-strands get woven up in it, though, that it remains more of a magnificent ruin than a completely unified narrative. Well worth reading, though.
- The Crack in Space (1963 / 1966) [aka Cantata-140 (1966)]
- The Crack in Space. 1966. Magnum Books. London: Methuen Paperbacks Ltd., 1980.
A good, no-frills, slam-bang Sci-fi novel about a rift leading to a parallel earth inhabited solely by Peking Man. On one level, it's an astute satire on American politics, on another level, it's a fascinating set of reflections on racial prejudice and overpopulation.
- Now Wait for Last Year (1963 / 1966)
- Now Wait for Last Year. 1966. A Macfadden Book. New York: Macfadden-Bartell Corporation, 1968.
- Included in: Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 183. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2008.
The blurb of my paperback edition claims that it takes on "the chilling symbolism of the absolute nightmare." That sounds pretty accurate to me. It foreshadows certain aspects of both Ubik - time travel - and Palmer Eldritch - the irrevocable effect of a particular drug - but it has its own insane logic independent of either of them. Not one of his more comforting works, but not without its own moral centre, either.
- Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964 / 1964)
- Clans of the Alphane Moon. 1964. Panther Books. London: Granada Publishing Ltd., 1984.
A wonderfully witty translation of Dick's own experience of mental illness into a series of diverse tribes left behind on an abandoned moon originally occupied by a psychiatric hospital. Combine this with a bitter account of the madness of divorce proceedings, and you have one of his most elegant (and funny) parables: a certified - or certifiable - classic.
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964 / 1965)
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. 1964. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts.: Triad / Panther, 1978.
- Included in: Four Novels of the 1960s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. Library of America, 173. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2007.
One of Dick's two or three supreme masterpieces, along with The Man in the High Castle and Ubik. It's certainly a dark tale, with little room for hope or happiness in the dark universe presided over Palmer Eldritch. The zany inventiveness of the 'Perky Pat' layouts, together with the powerfully suggestive stigmata - steel arm, eyes, teeth - of the risen Eldritch together suggest a scarcely endurable vision of what lies in store for all of us. Dick said that it came to him in a vision, as he trudged one morning towards the distant pottery / writing shack to which his wife had exiled him.
- The Zap Gun (1964 / 1967)
- The Zap Gun. 1967. Panther Science Fiction. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts.: Granada Publishing Limited, 1978.
At this stage in his career, even the more routine PKD performances show a zany inventiveness difficult to parallel in anyone else's work. This tale of alien invasion, faked détente, West African comics artists, toymakers in parallel dimensions, and God knows what else, ends up making a kind of crazy sense: not to mention exhibiting a certain emotional depth.
- The Penultimate Truth (1964 / 1964)
- The Penultimate Truth. 1964. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts.: Triad / Panther, 1978.
There are so many ideas competing for our attention in this book that it feels, at times, just a little too packed for comfort. There's a time-travelling Native American doubling as an Eisenhower-like president-in-perpetuity; there's a set of two hoax documentaries about the Second World War which have persuaded the world's population that the whole thing was a set-up; and (finally) there's an imaginary war which is being protracted to keep most of the population out of sight in huge underground ants' nests. What it may lack in elegant simplicity, though, it makes up for in intriguing and original trains of thought. Well worth reading, despite its breathless pace.
- The Unteleported Man (1964 / 1966) [aka Lies, Inc. (1984)]
- The Unteleported Man. With the Author’s Previously Unpublished Original Ending. 1966. Rev. ed. New York: Berkley Books, 1983.
- Lies, Inc. 1966. Rev. ed. 1983. Gollancz SF. London: Victor Gollancz Limited, 1984.
- Lies, Inc. 1966. Rev. eds. 1983 & 1984. Panther Books. London: Granada Publishing Limited, 1985.
This is one of the oddest and most complex of all PKD's novels. It began as a 1964 novella about "a future in which a one-way teleportation technology enables 40 million people to emigrate to a colony named Whale's Mouth on an Earth-like planet, which advertisements show as a lush green utopia. When the owner of a failing spaceship travel firm tries to take the 18-year flight to the colony to bring back any unhappy colonists, powerful forces try to stop him from finding out the truth." When Ace books decided to reprint it in book-form, Dick wrote another 30,000 words of content to make it up to the length of a full novel. Ace didn't like the new, LSD-saturated second part about the multiple hallucinatory worlds on the other side of the teleporter, so they simply reprinted the existing novella. Many years later Berkley Books asked to see the original ending, with a view to publishing the novel in its entirety for the first time. Dick died before he could complete the further revisions he wished to do to the ms., though, so they were left with at least three page-long lacunae in the version they published in the USA in 1983. Before this text could be reprinted in the UK, though, Dick's executors located an almost complete typescript of the revised novel, now retitled Lies, Inc.. They duly published it, with the addition of two missing pages of material supplied by John Sladek. The most satisfying of these texts is probably the first, the original novella. The extra material written in 1966 greatly complicates the basic situation, and heralds some of the plot devices Dick would later use to greater advantage in such works as Ubik and A Scanner Darkly. The completely revised version, Lies, Inc., is even more difficult to follow, and seemingly self-contradictory in parts (Rachmael ben Applebaum is in a spaceship heading for Famalhaut at the end of one chapter, and waiting to teletransport there at the beginning of the next). These various loose ends can all be reconciled with each other if one accepts that the reality transformations which take place in the second part of the novel affect the established time-line of the first section, but it takes considerable effort on the reader's part. It is - to put it mildly - not an easy read in either of its 'complete' versions.
- Counter-Clock World (1965 / 1967)
- Counter-Clock World. 1967. Grafton Books. London: Collins, 1990.
There's possibly a bit too much going on in this novel for simple coherence. Dick's ongoing fascination with heretical Anglican Bishop James Pike is elided into the central figure of the 'Anarch Peak', who comes back from the dead with news from beyond as a result of the time reversal process which shapes the overall narrative. This also enables Dick to indulge his fascination with the ideas of medieval scholastics such as John Scotus Eriugena. The working out of the basic plot machinery threatens, at times, to dwarf the human drama at its centre, but it remains a valuable part of the Dick canon, and perhaps the best time reversal book ever written (far more ingenious than Martin Amis's preachy Time's Arrow).
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966 / 1968)
- Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). 1968. A Del Rey Book. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982.
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968. Introduction by Paul McAuley. Gollancz 50. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2011.
- Included in: Four Novels of the 1960s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. Library of America, 173. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2007.
Forty years after the movie Blade Runner, it's finally possible to read Dick's novel again without worrying about plot divergences between the two. It's a wonderfully empathetic tale, which examines the 'android theme' from all angles. It avoids the simplistic narrative resolution of the film in favour of a far more nuanced and philosophically vibrant idea of the nature of empathy for all things living and unliving, embodied in the transcendental - albeit fraudulent - figure of the martyr Mercer. Definitely among his greatest achievements.
- Ubik (1966 / 1969)
- Ubik. 1969. Panther Science Fiction. London: Granada Publishing Limited, 1984.
- Included in: Four Novels of the 1960s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. Library of America, 173. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2007.
This is certainly one of the greatest - if not the greatest - of all Dick's novels. Are most of the main characters dead (or, rather, caught in half-life)? It would appear so, yes. But in that case, what exactly is the substance in the Ubik spray-can meant to represent? Just when the plot threatens to resolve itself into a more-or-less satisfactory paradigm, we get an unsettling intimation - at the very end - of another level of reality above the life / death barrier, as the first "Joe Chip" currency appears in Glen Runciter's pocket. It's the perfect illustration of Stanislaw Lem's point that Dick's writing could no longer be regarded simply as SF at this point, despite all its obvious surface resemblances to that genre: rather, it's philosophical writing of the highest order.
- Galactic Pot-Healer (1968 / 1969)
- Galactic Pot-Healer. 1969. Grafton Books. London: Collins, 1987.
Dick does an expert job of portraying a soulless, nightmarish bureaucratic hellscape in the opening passages of the novel. Shifting locations to Plowman's Plaet hardly seems to resolve Joe Fernwright's central dilemma, however. There are interesting rhymes with Dick's one published children's book, Nick and the Glimmung. Once again, an easy resolution confirming the eternal values of art and creativity at the end is resisted by Dick's statement that Joe's first original piece of pottery, prototype for all those he would ever create, was "awful." A teasing and ludic tale, rich in interesting side-characters and plot divagations.
- A Maze of Death (1968 / 1970)
- A Maze of Death. 1970. Pan Science Fiction. London: Pan Books, 1973.
- Included in: VALIS and Later Novels. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 193. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2009.
Theology was clearly becoming more and more important to Dick at this point in his career. The world he creates here is (on the one hand) a projection of the combined minds of the crew of a doomed spaceship; on the other hand, it's a blank slate where he can try out a new religion he's invented, with the Mentufacturer (God-the-Father?), the Intercessor (the Holy Spirit?), the Walker-on-earth (Christ?), and the Form Destroyer (Satan?). In plot terms, it resembles Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, which also inspired the 2003 film Identity. A bleak but still rather compelling novel.
- Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969 / 1970)
- Our Friends from Frolix 8. 1970. Panther Science Fiction. London: Granada Publishing Limited, 1984.
This is an ambitious and multifaceted novel which seems to break down into a set of not easily reconcilable themes. There's a traveller, Thors Provoni, who's returning from a far-off star system with an alien who may (or may not) be benevolently inclined towards humanity: or rather, the bulk of them, the "Old Men", who are ruled over by a few mutated humans, the hyper-intelligent "New Men" and the psychically gifted "Unusuals". This part is reminiscent of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Then there's the protagonist, Nick Appleton, who falls in love with a teenage girl subversive, in the midst of a society as repressive as those portrayed in older novels such as The Man Who Japed. Then there's the literal "death of God": the large entity found floating in space who may (or may not) be the God of the Creation, but who is now unequivocally dead. That recalls the theological conundrums of novels such as Counter-Clock World. The result is intriguing and certainly very readable, but not as satisfying as masterpieces such as Ubik or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1970 / 1974)
- Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. 1974. Newton Abbott: Readers Union, 1975.
- Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. 1974. Panther Science Fiction. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts.: Granada Publishing Limited, 1976.
- Included in: Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 183. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2008.
This is perhaps the closest thing to a classical thriller that Dick ever wrote. Singer and TV star Jason Taverner wakes up alone in a hotel room, only to discover himself in a world where he's never existed. His attempts to extricate himself from this existential - and practical - dilemma occupy most of the rest of the narrative. It may lack the philosophical depth of much of Dick's later fiction, but it's a splendid example of his plotting genius. The final 'explanation' of these events is more of a Hitchcockian McGuffin than a real answer to the questions raised along the way, but it serves to round off the story nicely. One can't help thinking that it would make a great film.
- A Scanner Darkly (1973 / 1977)
- A Scanner Darkly. A Del Rey Book. New York: Ballantine Books, 1977.
- Included in: Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 183. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2008.
Though ostensibly SF, this novel appears to offer a fairly accurate picture of the lives of drug addicts in California in the late 1960s, based on PKD's own personal experiences. Ingeniously plotted, and striking in the accuracy with which it reproduces the decaying thought processes of the brain damaged, it makes hard reading for the outsider. So, while I certainly wouldn't recommend it for light entertainment, it's certainly a vital part of his oeuvre as a whole. Richard Linklater made it into an innovative animated film in 2006, with Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder in the leading roles.
- Radio Free Albemuth (1976 / 1985)
- Radio Free Albemuth. 1985. A Grafton UK Paperback Original. 1987. London: Grafton Books, 1988.
It's a strange novel: a metafiction, with 'Phil Dick' as one of the two protagonists, sharing narrator duties with a fictional alter-ego named Nicholas Brady. The cat Pinky, pictured at the bottom of this post, also makes an appearance. Much of this material is familiar from the later Valis trilogy, as well as his posthumously published Exegesis (2011), about the mysterious events experienced by Dick in 1974. There's really too much here for any one novel, which may explain a certain stiltedness and lack of spontaneity in the writing. It actually resembles some of his earlier "mainstream" fictions more than his other SF books. And, like most of the former, it didn't appear until after his death.
- VALIS (1978 / 1981)
- Valis. Corgi Books. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd., 1981.
- Included in: VALIS and Later Novels. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 193. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2009.
This is a very odd book indeed. It's autobiographical, in that it concerns the mystical events which Dick believed had occurred to him in 1974, but it's also metafictional, in that he splits himself into two characters: the 'real' PKD, and 'Horselover Fat', a rough translation of his own name's meaning. Part of the plot is driven by an imaginary movie, Valis, written and directed by a rock-star called Mother Goose, which covers many of the same events as his previous - and still, at that point, unpublished - novel Radio Free Albemuth. The book attempts to maintain distance from the increasingly bizarre material on offer via a kind of deadpan irony, but Dick's own view of the plausibility of his revelations was not consistent enough for the novel itself to maintain an even tone. It's hard to read at times, but there's no denying that it's a fascinating experiment, and certainly an improvement on its immediate predecessor.
- The Divine Invasion (1980 / 1981)
- The Divine Invasion. 1981. Corgi Books. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd., 1982.
- Included in: VALIS and Later Novels. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 193. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2009.
The plot begins with an adaptation of Dick's late short story "Chains of Air, Web of Aether". From there it turns into a curious amalgam of the complex, multi-layered storytelling characteristic of his Ubik period with the philosophical and theological concerns of his long-meditated prose work The Exegesis, and its fictional embodiment Valis. Does it all hang together? Nor really, no. But it's certainly a most ambitious novel, and is far more readable than either Valis or Radio Free Albemuth.
- The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1981 / 1982)
- The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1982.
- The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. 1982. Panther Books. London: Granada Publishing Limited, 1983.
- Included in: VALIS and Later Novels. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 193. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2009.
- [with Roger Zelazny] Deus Irae (1964 / 1976)
- [with Roger Zelazny] Deus lrae. 1976. Sphere Science Fiction. London: Sphere Books, 1982.
If you set to one side the obvious resemblances to A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) and Dick's own Dr. Bloodmoney (1963 / 1965), this would seem like a pretty original novel. Even as is, it remains a well-crafted and engrossing story, full of interesting conceits: the idea of the Servants of Wrath who worship Deus Irae, the God of wrath, embodied in Carleton Lufteufel, who set off the atmospheric bomb that devastated the world, is an especially good one. The pilgrimage frame-story is also vividly depicted. All in all, a very successful piece, if not an outright masterpiece.
- [with Ray Nelson] The Ganymede Takeover (1965 / 1967)
- [with Ray Nelson] The Ganymede Takeover. 1967. London: Arrow Books, 1980.
There are a lot of interesting ideas in this novel, but the execution seems unusually perfunctory. None of the characters are really properly developed, even though their interactions would seem to offer a lot of scope for development. Ray Nelson was a boyhood friend of PKD, and it's possible that their collaboration was intended to offer the former a bit of a leg-up as an SF writer. Certainly the explorations of altered consciousness in the novel seem to have Dick's signature stamped all over them.
- Nick and the Glimmung (1966 / 1988)
- Nick and the Glimmung. 1988. Illustrated by Phil Parks. 2009. Gollancz. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2015.
This is a truly charming book. Reading it with a commercial eye, I think it's no mystery why it didn't achieve publication when it was first written, in 1966. It's just a little too dark and threatening, with numerous deaths and a strong sense of entropy pervading the whole. Nick himself is a very satisfactory protagonist, however: not too heroic, and not too cowardly. His love for his cat is inspiring - but then the cat himself is so accurately portrayed as to be also quite realistic. An excellent addition to the PKD canon.
- Four Novels of the 1960s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. Library of America, 173 (2007)
- Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik. 1962, 1964, 1968, 1969. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 173. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2007.
- Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. Library of America, 183 (2008)
- Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s: Martian Time Slip / Dr. Bloodmoney / Now Wait for Last Year / Flow My Tears the Policeman Said / A Scanner Darkly. 1964, 1965, 1966, 1974, 1977. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 183. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2008.
- VALIS and Later Novels. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. Library of America, 193 (2009)
- VALIS and Later Novels: A Maze of Death / VALIS / The Divine Invasion / The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. 1970, 1981, 1981, 1982. Ed. Jonathan Lethem. The Library of America, 193. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2009.
- A Handful of Darkness (1955) [Handful]
- Colony (1953)
- Impostor (1953)
- Expendable (1953)
- Planet for Transients (1953)
- Prominent Author (1954)
- The Builder (1953)
- The Impossible Planet (1953)
- The Indefatigable Frog (1953)
- The Turning Wheel (1954)
- Progeny (1954)
- Upon the Dull Earth (1954)
- The Cookie Lady (1953)
- Exhibit Piece (1954)
- A Handful of Darkness. 1955. Panther Science Fiction. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing, 1980.
- The Variable Man And Other Stories (1957) [Variable]
- The Variable Man (1953)
- Second Variety (1953)
- The Minority Report (1956)
- Autofac (1955)
- A World of Talent (1954)
- The Variable Man and Other Stories. 1957. New York: Ace Books, Inc., 1957.
- The Preserving Machine (1969) [Preserving]
- The Preserving Machine (1953)
- War Game (1959)
- Upon the Dull Earth (1954)
- Roog (1953)
- War Veteran (1955)
- Top Stand-By Job (1963)
- Beyond Lies the Wub (1952)
- We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1966)
- Captive Market (1955)
- If There Were No Benny Cemoli (1963)
- Retreat Syndrome (1965)
- The Crawlers (1954)
- Oh, to Be a Blobel! (1964)
- Pay for the Printer (1956)
- The Preserving Machine and Other Stories. 1969. Pan Science Fiction. London: Pan Books, 1972.
- The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973) [Book]
- Nanny (1955)
- The Turning Wheel (1954)
- The Defenders (1953)
- Adjustment Team (1954)
- Psi-Man (1955)
- The Commuter (1953)
- A Present for Pat (1954)
- Breakfast at Twilight (1954)
- Shell Game (1954)
- The Turning Wheel and Other Stories [aka 'The Book of Philip K. Dick']. 1973. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977.
- The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977) [Best]
-
John Brunner: Introduction: The Reality of Philip K. Dick (1977)
- Beyond Lies the Wub (1952)
- Roog (1953)
- Second Variety (1953)
- Paycheck (1953)
- Impostor (1953)
- Colony (1953)
- Expendable (1953)
- The Days of Perky Pat (1963)
- Breakfast at Twilight (1954)
- Foster, You're Dead (1955)
- The Father-Thing (1954)
- Service Call (1955)
- Autofac (1955)
- Human Is (1955)
- If There Were No Benny Cemoli (1963)
- Oh, to Be a Blobel! (1964)
- Faith of Our Fathers (1967)
- The Electric Ant (1969)
- A Little Something for Us Tempunauts (1974) Philip K. Dick: Afterthoughts by the Author (1977)
- The Best of Philip K. Dick. Ed. John Brunner. Classic Science Fiction. New York: Ballantine, 1977.
- The Golden Man (1980) [Golden]
-
Mark Hurst: Foreword (1980)
- The Golden Man (1954)
- Return Match (1967)
- The King of the Elves (1953)
- The Mold of Yancy (1955)
- Not by Its Cover (1968)
- The Little Black Box (1964)
- The Unreconstructed M (1957)
- The War with the Fnools (1964)
- The Last of the Masters (1954)
- Meddler (1954)
- A Game of Unchance (1964)
- Sales Pitch (1954)
- Precious Artifact (1964)
- Small Town (1954)
- The Pre-Persons (1974) Philip K. Dick: Story Notes (1980)
Philip K. Dick: Introduction: The Profession of Science Fiction (1980)
Philip K. Dick: Afterword (1980)- The Golden Man. 1980. Magnum Books. London: Methuen Paperbacks Ltd., 1983.
- Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick. Ed. Patricia S. Warrick & Martin H. Greenberg (1984)
- I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985) [Hope]
-
Philip K. Dick: Introduction: How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (1985)
- The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1954)
- Explorers We (1959)
- Holy Quarrel (1966)
- What'll We Do with Ragland Park? (1963)
- Strange Memories of Death (1984)
- The Alien Mind (1981)
- The Exit Door Leads In (1979)
- Chains of Air, Web of Aether (1980)
- Rautavaara's Case (1980)
- I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon [aka 'Frozen Journey'] (1980)
- I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon. Ed. Mark Hurst & Paul Williams. 1985. Grafton Books. London: Collins, 1988.
- The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987)
- Beyond Lies the Wub (1988) [CS1]
-
Philip K. Dick: Preface (1982)
- Stability (1987)
- Roog (1953) [Preserving] [Best]
- The Little Movement (1952)
- Beyond Lies the Wub (1952) [Preserving] [Best]
- The Gun (1952)
- The Skull (1952)
- The Defenders (1953) [Book]
- Mr. Spaceship (1953)
- Piper in the Woods (1953)
- The Infinites (1953)
- The Preserving Machine (1953) [Preserving]
- Expendable (1953) [Handful] [Best]
- The Variable Man (1953) [Variable]
- The Indefatigable Frog (1953) [Handful]
- The Crystal Crypt (1954)
- The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1954) [Hope]
- The Builder (1953) [Handful]
- Meddler (1954) [Golden]
- Paycheck (1953) [Best]
- The Great C (1953)
- Out in the Garden (1953)
- The King of the Elves (1953) [Golden]
- Colony (1953) [Handful] [Best]
- Prize Ship (1954)
- Nanny (1955) [Book] Philip K. Dick: Notes
Steven Owen Godersky: Foreword (1987)
Roger Zelazny: Introduction (1987)- Beyond Lies the Wub. The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, 1. Introduction by Roger Zelazny. 1987. London: Grafton Books, 1990.
- Second Variety (1989) [CS2]
-
Norman Spinrad: Introduction
- The Cookie Lady (1953) [Handful]
- Beyond the Door (1954)
- Second Variety (1953) [Variable] [Best]
- Jon's World (1954)
- The Cosmic Poachers (1953)
- Progeny (1954) [Handful]
- Some Kinds of Life (1953)
- Martians Come in Clouds (1953)
- The Commuter (1953) [Book]
- The World She Wanted (1953)
- A Surface Raid (1955)
- Project: Earth (1953)
- The Trouble with Bubbles (1953)
- Breakfast at Twilight (1954) [Book] [Best]
- A Present for Pat (1954) [Book]
- The Hood Maker (1955)
- Of Withered Apples (1954)
- Human Is (1955) [Best]
- Adjustment Team (1954) [Book]
- The Impossible Planet (1953) [Handful]
- Impostor (1953) [Handful] [Best]
- James P. Crow (1954)
- Planet for Transients (1953) [Handful]
- Small Town (1954) [Golden]
- Souvenir (1954)
- Survey Team (1954)
- Prominent Author (1954) [Handful] Philip K. Dick: Notes
- Second Variety. The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, 2. Introduction by Norman Spinrad. 1987. London: Grafton Books, 1990.
- The Father-Thing (1989) [CS3]
-
John Brunner: Introduction (1987)
- Fair Game (1959)
- The Hanging Stranger (1953)
- The Eyes Have It (1953)
- The Golden Man (1954) [Golden]
- The Turning Wheel (1954) [Handful] [Book]
- The Last of the Masters (1954) [Golden]
- The Father-Thing (1954) [Best]
- Strange Eden (1954)
- Tony and the Beetles (1953)
- Null-O (1958)
- To Serve the Master (1956)
- Exhibit Piece (1954) [Handful]
- The Crawlers (1954) [Preserving]
- Sales Pitch (1954) [Golden]
- Shell Game (1954) [Book]
- Upon the Dull Earth (1954) [Handful] [Preserving]
- Foster, You're Dead (1955) [Best]
- Pay for the Printer (1956) [Preserving]
- War Veteran (1955) [Preserving]
- The Chromium Fence (1955)
- Misadjustment (1957)
- A World of Talent (1954) [Variable]
- Psi-Man Heal My Child! [aka 'Psi-Man'] (1955) [Book] Philip K. Dick: Notes
- The Father-Thing. The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, 3. Introduction by John Brunner. 1987. London: Grafton Books, 1991.
- The Days of Perky Pat (1990) [CS4]
-
James Tiptree, Jr.: Introduction (1987)
- Autofac (1955) [Variable] [Best]
- Service Call (1955) [Best]
- Captive Market (1955) [Preserving]
- The Mold of Yancy (1955) [Golden]
- The Minority Report (1956) [Variable]
- Recall Mechanism (1959)
- The Unreconstructed M (1957) [Golden]
- Explorers We (1959) [Hope]
- War Game (1959) [Preserving]
- If There Were No Benny Cemoli (1963) [Preserving] [Best]
- Novelty Act (1964)
- Waterspider (1964)
- What the Dead Men Say (1964)
- Orpheus with Clay Feet (1964)
- The Days of Perky Pat (1963) [Best]
- Stand-By [aka 'Top Stand-By Job'] (1963) [Preserving]
- What'll We Do with Ragland Park? (1963) [Hope]
- Oh, to Be a Blobel! (1964) [Preserving] [Best] Philip K. Dick: Notes (1987)
- The Days of Perky Pat. The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, 4. Introduction by James Tiptree, Jr. 1987. London: Grafton Books, 1991.
- The Little Black Box (1990) [CS5]
-
Thomas M. Disch: Introduction
- The Little Black Box (1964) [Golden]
- The War with the Fnools (1969) [Golden]
- A Game of Unchance (1964) [Golden]
- Precious Artifact (1964) [Golden]
- Retreat Syndrome (1965) [Preserving]
- A Terran Odyssey (1987)
- Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday (1966)
- Holy Quarrel (1966) [Hope]
- We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1966) [Preserving]
- Not by Its Cover (1968) [Golden]
- Return Match (1967) [Golden]
- Faith of Our Fathers (1967) [Best]
- The Story to End All Stories for Harlan Ellison's Anthology Dangerous Visions (1968)
- The Electric Ant (1969) [Best]
- Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked (1987)
- A Little Something for Us Tempunauts (1974) [Best]
- The Pre-Persons (1974) [Golden]
- The Eye of the Sibyl (1987)
- The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out of Its Tree (1987)
- The Exit Door Leads In (1979) [Hope]
- Chains of Air, Web of Aether (1980) [Hope]
- Strange Memories of Death (1984) [Hope]
- I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon [aka 'Frozen Journey'] (1980) [Hope]
- Rautavaara's Case (1980) [Hope]
- The Alien Mind (1981) [Hope] Philip K. Dick: Notes (1987)
- We Can Remember It For You Wholesale [aka 'The Little Black Box']. The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, 5. Introduction by Thomas M. Disch. 1987. London: Grafton Books, 1991.
It could easily be argued that his short stories are where Dick's talent shines out most irrefutably. True, many of them were later expanded into novels, but in their original, well-crafted form, they show his genius in its most unclouded light. A set of these five books should be in every SF-lovers library. Jonathan Cowie's useful comparison of their contents with that of the 2023 4-volume Gollancz Collected Stories can be found here at Fiction Reviews.
- Beyond Lies the Wub (1988) [CS1]
- The Philip K. Dick Reader (1997)
- Minority Report (2002)
- Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)
- Paycheck (2004)
- Vintage PKD (2006)
- The Early Work of Philip K. Dick, Volume One: The Variable Man & Other Stories (2009)
- The Early Work of Philip K. Dick, Volume Two: Breakfast at Twilight & Other Stories (2009)
- The Best of Philip K. Dick (2013)
- The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. 4 vols (2023)
- Beyond Lies the Wub [CS1]
- The Gun [CS1]
- The Little Movement [CS1]
- The Skull [CS1] 1953
- The Builder [CS1]
- Colony [CS1]
- The Commuter [CS2]
- The Cookie Lady [CS2]
- The Cosmic Poachers [CS2]
- The Defenders [CS1]
- Expendable [CS1]
- The Eyes Have It [CS3]
- The Great C [CS1]
- The Hanging Stranger [CS3]
- The Impossible Planet [CS2]
- Impostor [CS2]
- The Indefatigable Frog [CS1]
- The Infinites [CS1]
- The King of the Elves [CS1]
- Martians Come in Clouds [CS2]
- Mr. Spaceship [CS1]
- Out in the Garden [CS1]
- Paycheck [CS1]
- Piper in the Woods [CS1]
- Planet for Transients [CS2]
- The Preserving Machine [CS1]
- Project: Earth [CS2]
- Roog [CS1]
- Second Variety [CS2]
- Some Kinds of Life [CS2]
- Tony and the Beetles [CS3]
- The Trouble with Bubbles [CS2]
- The Variable Man [CS1]
- The World She Wanted [CS2] 1954
- Adjustment Team [CS2]
- Beyond the Door [CS2]
- Breakfast at Twilight [CS2]
- The Crawlers [CS3]
- The Crystal Crypt [CS1]
- Exhibit Piece [CS3]
- The Father-thing [CS3]
- The Golden Man [CS3]
- James P. Crow [CS2]
- Jon's World [CS2]
- The Last of the Masters [aka "Protection Agency"] [CS3]
- Meddler [CS1]
- Of Withered Apples [CS2]
- A Present for Pat [CS2]
- Prize Ship [CS1]
- Progeny [CS2]
- Prominent Author [CS2]
- Sales Pitch [CS3]
- Shell Game [CS3]
- The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford [CS1]
- Small Town [CS2]
- Souvenir [CS2]
- Strange Eden [CS3]
- Survey Team [CS2]
- Time Pawn [expanded into Dr Futurity (1960)]
- The Turning Wheel [CS3]
- Upon the Dull Earth [CS3]
- A World of Talent [CS3] 1955
- Autofac [CS4]
- Captive Market [CS4]
- The Chromium Fence [CS3]
- Foster, You're Dead! [CS3]
- The Hood Maker [CS2]
- Human Is [CS2]
- The Mold of Yancy [CS4]
- Nanny [CS1]
- Psi-man Heal My Child! [CS3]
- Service Call [CS4]
- A Surface Raid [CS2]
- War Veteran [CS3] 1956
- The Minority Report [CS4]
- Pay for the Printer [CS3]
- To Serve the Master [CS3]
- Vulcan's Hammer [expanded into Vulcan's Hammer (1960)] 1957
- Misadjustment [CS3]
- The Unreconstructed M [CS4] 1958
- Null-O [CS3] 1959
- Explorers We [CS4]
- Fair Game [CS3]
- Recall Mechanism [CS4]
- War Game [CS4] 1963
- The Days of Perky Pat [CS4]
- If There Were No Benny Cemoli [CS4]
- Stand-by [aka "Top Stand-by Job"] [CS4]
- What'll We Do with Ragland Park? [CS4] 1964
- Cantata 140 [expanded into The Crack in Space (1966)]
- A Game of Unchance [CS5]
- The Little Black Box [CS5]
- Novelty Act [CS4]
- Oh, to Be a Blobel! [CS4]
- Orpheus with Clay Feet [CS4]
- Precious Artifact [CS5]
- The Unteleported Man [expanded into The Unteleported Man (1966) / Lies, Inc. (1984)]
- Waterspider [CS4]
- What the Dead Men Say [CS4] 1965
- Retreat Syndrome [CS5] 1966
- Holy Quarrel [CS5]
- We Can Remember It for You Wholesale [CS5]
- Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday [CS5] 1967
- Faith of Our Fathers [CS5]
- Return Match [CS5] 1968
- Not by Its Cover [CS5]
- The Story to End All Stories for Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions [CS5] 1969
- The Electric Ant [CS5]
- The War with the Fnools [CS5] 1974
- The Pre-persons [CS5]
- A Little Something for Us Tempunauts [CS5] 1979
- The Exit Door Leads In [CS5] 1980
- I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon [aka "Frozen Journey"] [CS5]
- Rautavaara's Case [CS5]
- Chains of Air, Web of Aether [CS5] 1981
- The Alien Mind [CS5] 1984
- Strange Memories of Death [CS5] 1987
- Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked [CS5]
- The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out of Its Tree [CS5]
- The Eye of the Sibyl [CS5]
- Stability [CS1]
- A Terran Odyssey [CS5] 1988
- Goodbye, Vincent [Included in The Dark Haired Girl (1988)]
- The Dark Haired Girl (1988)
- The Dark-Haired Girl. Ed. Paul Williams. Willimantic, CT: Mark V Ziesing, 1988.
- The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, ed. Lawrence Sutin (1995)
- The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
- The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, ed. Jonathan Lethem and Pamela Jackson (2011)
- The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. Ed. Pamela Jackson & Jonathan Lethem. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
- The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, 1938–1971 (1996)
- The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, 1972–1973 (1993)
- The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, 1974 (1991)
- The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, 1975–1976 (1992)
- The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, 1977–1979 (1993)
- The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, 1980–1982 (2009)
- Sutin, Lawrence. Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick. 1986. A Paladin UK Paperback Original. London: Grafton Books, 1991.
[date of composition / date of first publication]
Scott Meredith Literary Agency index card: "Long, rambling, glum novel about 65 yr old Greek immigrant who has a weakling son, a second son about whom he's indifferent, a wife who doesn't love him (she's being unfaithful to him). Nothing much happens. Guy, selling garage & retiring, tries to buy another garage in new development, has a couple of falls, dies at end. Point is murky but seems to be that world is disintegrating, Stavros supposed to be symbol of vigorous individuality now a lost commodity."Pilgrim on the Hill (1956 / ms. lost)
Scott Meredith Literary Agency index card: "Another rambling, uneven totally murky novel. Man w/psychosis brought on by war thinks he's murdered his wife, flees. Meets 3 eccentrics: an impotent man who refuses to have sex w/his wife, the wife—a beautiful woman who's going to a quack dr. for treatment, an animalistic worker w/ambition but no talent. Man has affair w/wife, is kicked out by husband, tries to help slob. Finally collapses, is sent to hospital, recovers, returns home. BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?"
The Owl in Daylight (1982 / Unfinished)
"The novel dealt with one Ed Firmley, a composer of scores for B-movie grade sci-fi films, and a race of alien humanoids that had evolved without the development of sound as a basis of communication. The shamans of this alien race would on occasion have visions of Earth and its many sounds. Due to their unique evolution without sound the holy men were incapable of describing these experiences to the rest of their race. They just knew that the place they saw was their heaven. Meanwhile their race was modeled around sight and light, encompassing much more of the electromagnetic spectrum than the limited human vision. In fact, from their perspective, humans were capable of sight but nearly blind, such as a mole appears to a human. Their language involved the telepathic projection of color patterns in precise gradations and following mathematical formulas."
Collaborations:
Children's Books:
Nicholas and the Higs (1958 / ms. lost)
Scott Meredith Literary Agency index card: "Very long, complex story, usual Dick genius for setting. Future society wherein trading stamps have replaced currency and people live hundreds of miles from work (drive at 190 mph), have set up living tracts. Cars often break down, so they have tract mechanic on full-time basis. Mechanic old, has bad liver, seems to be dying. People of tract use general fund to buy pseudo-organ but man is dead for a few days and "comes back" a bit touched. Sub plot concerns man from whom tract got organ (which is illegal), and how his presence causes moral breakdown of people in tract."
Collections:
Short Story Collections:
Short Stories:
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1952
Non-fiction:
Letters:
Secondary:
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