The most visionary, paranoid, and prophetic sci-fi writer who ever lived. Dick asked the questions — what is real? what is human? — before anyone else thought to ask them.
About Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) wrote 44 novels and over 120 short stories in a 30-year burst of incredible productivity. He worked in near-poverty for most of his career, selling stories to pulp magazines for a cent per word. He died just before Blade Runner — the film of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — was released.
Dick's themes are relentlessly consistent: the nature of reality, the definition of humanity, the relationship between technology and consciousness, and the way power structures use both to control people. He was decades ahead of his time.
His legacy is enormous. Films adapted from his work include Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, The Adjustment Bureau, and Amazon's The Man in the High Castle. Almost every serious sci-fi writer since 1970 owes him something.
Start Here
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who "retires" rogue androids. But what makes an android different from a human? The novel behind Blade Runner — and better than the film.
A corporate mercenary and his team are assassinated — but they keep waking up in the past. Reality erodes in real time. One of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? if you have seen Blade Runner and want to compare. The Man in the High Castle if you want something more accessible. Ubik if you want the purest PKD experience.
Most are standalone. VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer form the VALIS Trilogy and should be read in order. Otherwise his novels are independent.
PKD was primarily a pulp sci-fi writer who was commercially undervalued. He received critical attention in France before America, and the mainstream literary world largely ignored him until after his death. Blade Runner transformed his reputation — he died months before it was released.
44 novels and approximately 121 short stories, nearly all science fiction. The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick — 8,000 pages of his private journals — is also available.