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Five Great Novels book cover
Five Great Novels
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Martian Time-Slip / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik / A Scanner Darkly
2004
First Published
4.34
Average Rating
841
Number of Pages

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.

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Author

Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Author · 199 books

Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. In 1952, he began writing professionally and proceeded to write numerous novels and short-story collections. He won the Hugo Award for the best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Philip K. Dick died on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California, of heart failure following a stroke. In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten of his stories have been adapted into popular films since his death, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

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