Five Great Novels (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Martian Time-Slip, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, a Scanner Darkly)

Philip K. Dick

Language: English

Publisher: Gollancz

Published: May 1, 2004

Description:

An omnibus volume of five of the best novels by 'the most consistently brilliant SF writer in the world' (John Brunner). Dick's tales of twisted perceptions and false realities have shaped modern SF and provided the inspiration for numerous blockbuster movies.

'For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplicating realities of the modern world, remember: Philip K. Dick got there first' TERRY GILLIAM

In The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch mankind is offered a permanent shared illusory world when industrialist Eldritch introduces the alien drug Chew-Z.

In Martian time-Slip Arnie Kott and his plumbing union control the entire water supply on Mars. But Arnie is poisoning the lives of everyone around him.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Dick's grim vision of a bounty hunter stalking renegade replicants through a devastated future was made into the film Blade Runner.

Ubik crosses the boundaries of life, death and reality with the story of Glen Runciter. He is dead. Or is he? As reality warps for those he left behind nothing is certain anymore.

A Scanner Darkly is, perhaps uncharacteristically for Dick, about the dangers of drug use, drawing a future plagued by an almost hallucinatory level of drug-induced violence.

Philip K. Dick (1928-82), was born one of twins; his sister died in infancy. He lived most of his life in California and wrote more than fifty books in a career of prodigious productivity and achievement. The films Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report and Paycheck are all based on his stories.

EDITORIAL REVIEW: This volume contains DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? (filmed as BLADERUNNER), MARTIAN TIME SLIP, UBIK, THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH and A SCANNER DARKLY. Taken together they represent the best of Philip K. Dick's unique imagination. In Dick's writing nothing is what it seems, our sense of the world's order is fatally undermined and mass media tells us nothing but artful lies. Films such as THE MATRIX and THE TRUMAN SHOW would not have been made but for Philip K. Dick. His work has never been more timely.