Phillip K Dick

To me, this is the high mark to which all "future / alternate history" books need to be judged by and is a testament to Dick's brilliance/ Positing a "what if" scenario around the allies losing the second world war we see a frightening plausibility that Dick spins into a virtual framework of paranoia and oppression. Throw in a fair smattering of eastern philosophy and you have one of the best science fiction novels ever written.

Philip K Dick, like Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker, travelled on the very edges of sanity. With Gaiman and Barker their chosen fields are fantasy and horror, respectively, where they traverse the very boundaries where dreams and nightmares cross over into reality - such is the stuff of Dick's science-fiction.

Always one to wander the boundaries between paranoid fantasy and science fiction, Martian Timeslip is no exception. Jack Bohlen is a repairman on Mars, inhabited by the dredges of society and the remnants of the poorer native population, the Bleekmen. Jack's bored wife is addicted to barbiturates. His father is a ruthless land speculator and Arnie Kott, who has a virtual monopoly on the available water on Mars and who wants to exploit Manfred, an autistic who has untapped paranormal abilities.

More hallucinatory than his other novels; this travels along the same lines as "A Scanner Darkly" and "Minority Report". Published at the same time as JG Ballard's "The Terminal Beach"; Burrogh's "Naked Lunch" and Brian Aldiss' "Grey Beard" this helped science fiction discover its roots as well as pave the way forward for the new generation.

This is another in Philip K. Dick's stories of paranoia and mind-warping reality (others include "A Scanner Darkly" and "Maze of Death"). This is one man trying to come to terms with his altered reality - in the way that we all are in one way or another. No one could tell a science-fiction story like Dick with all his prose having an hallucinogenic quality to them. It's probably not as strong as "The Man In The High Castle" and is quite depressing and bleak at times but is certainly still one of the highpoints of the sci-fi genre and an a wonderful expose of the human character.

Total Recall, Screamers, Blade Runner and Minority Report - all these are films that have been taken from stories written by Philip K. Dick, one of the masters of science fiction. The short stories that are collected are at turns funny, scary and inspiring. "2nd Variety" became the basis for the film "Screamers" and "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" became "Total Recall". ..read more

Most people will have heard of a Science Fiction film called Bladerunner, I wonder just how many know that it was based on a book called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I have seen the film and read the book, in that order too, and I have to say that I enjoyed both of them for different reasons.

When I started to read this I kind of made the mistake fo reading the foreword and in the process of doing so I spoiled the ending, so readers beware!

I found myself to be pleasantly surprised by how easy the book was to read, the story flowed in many ways, what I would call hardcore science fiction novels do not. I've tried to read Peter F. Hamilton (What is it with the initial in the middle, we have Arthur C. Clarke too) and found him far too dry.