Philip K. Dick,Jonathan Lethem
Known in his lifetime primarily to readers of science fiction, Philip K. Dick is now seen as a uniquely visionary figure, a writer who, in editor Jonathan Lethemâ€™s words, â€œwielded a sardonic yet heartbroken acuity about the plight of being alive in the twentieth century, one that makes him a lonely hero to the readers who cherish him.â€,This ,Library of America, volume brings together four of Dickâ€™s most original novels. ,The Man in the High Castle, (1962), which won the Hugo Award, describes an alternate world in which Japan and Germany have won World War II and America is divided into separate occupation zones. The dizzying ,The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, (1965) posits a future in which competing hallucinogens proffer different brands of virtual reality, and an interplanetary drug tycoon can transform himself into a godlike figure transcending even physical death.,Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, (1968), about a bounty hunter in search of escaped androids in a postapocalyptic society where status is measured by the possession of live animals and religious life is focused on a television personality, was the basis for the movie ,Blade Runner,. ,Ubik, (1969), with its future world of psychic espionage agents and cryonically frozen patients inhabiting an illusory â€œhalf-life,â€ pursues Dickâ€™s theme of simulated realities and false perceptions to ever more disturbing conclusions, as time collapses on itself and characters stranded in past eras search desperately for the elusive, constantly shape-shifting panacea ,Ubik,. As with most of Dickâ€™s novels, no plot summary can suggest the mesmerizing and constantly surprising texture of these astonishing books.,Posing the questions â€œWhat is human?â€ and â€œWhat is real?â€ in a multitude of fascinating ways, Dick produced worksâ€”fantastic and weird, yet developed with precise logic, marked by wild humor and soaring flights of religious speculationâ€”that are startlingly prescient imaginative anticipations of 21st-century quandaries.
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Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik