Автор - Philip Dick

A Maze of Death

Fourteen strangers came to Delmak-O. Thirteen of them were transferred by the usual authorities. One got there by praying. But once they arrived on that planet whose very atmosphere seemed to induce paranoia and psychosis, the newcomers found that even prayer was useless. For on Delmak-O, God is either absent or intent on destroying His creations.

A Scanner Darkly

British Science Fiction Award (1978)Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D—which Arctor takes in massive doses—gradually splits the user’s brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn’t realize he is narcing on himself.

Le maître du Haut Château

C’est en 1947 qu’avait eu lieu la capitulation des Alliés devant les forces de l’Axe. Cependant que Hitler avait imposé la tyrannie nazie à l’est des États-Unis, l’ouest avait été attribué aux Japonais. Aujourd’hui, quelques années plus tard, la vie avait repris son cours normal dans la zone occupée par les Nippons. Ceux-ci se mon­traient des maîtres fermes mais corrects. Ils avaient apporté avec eux l’usage du Yi-king, le livre des transformations, le célèbre ora­cle chinois dont l’origine se perd dans la nuit des temps. Sa consul­tation permettait de régler toutes les affaires, qu’elles soient com­merciales, politiques ou même sen­timentales. Pourtant, dans cette nouvelle civili­sation, une rumeur étrange cir­culait. Un homme vivant dans un Haut Château, un écrivain de science-fiction, avait écrit un ou­vrage qui racontait la victoire des Alliés en 1945…

Nanny

La svastica sul sole

In questo romanzo di fantascienza, considerato uno dei più autentici classici della science fiction americana, Philip K. Dick ci descrive il quadro di come potrebbe essere un mondo in cui il nazismo avesse vinto la guerra mondiale. Parlare di nazismo e delle sue colpe potrebbe sembrare un tema troppo importante e doloroso per farne oggetto di un romanzo di fantascienza, ma Dick, nella Svastica sul sole, ci dimostra come invece la fantascienza possa diventare un modo assai efficace per ritrarre sotto un aspetto nuovo la lucida, razionale follia del nazismo e il tumulto di pensieri confusi e malati che porta con sé e trasmette alle persone ad esso asservite: nel mondo descritto da Dick, l’Asse ha vinto la guerra, l’Italia ha preso le briciole, e l’Africa è stata distrutta in un “esperimento”, Giappone e Germania si sono spartiti il mondo, e il credo della superiorità razziale “Ariana” si è talmente compenetrato nelle altre nazioni da togliere loro ogni volontà. Vincitore del premio Hugo per il miglior romanzo in 1963.

Mary And The Giant

CANTATA-141

Martian Time-Slip

Warning: Although this the action of this book is set on Mars, it could just as easily have taken place in one of the desert communities around Los Angeles. The real action takes place inside the minds of the characters. If you're looking for all the external trappings of interplanetary Sci-Fi, you will be deeply disappointed. Approach it with an open mind, and you will be richly rewarded. What happens when one of the most powerful men on the planet Mars finds that real-estate speculators are intent on gobbling up the remote and seemingly worthless Franklin D Roosevelt mountains? Naturally he wants to find out why. A casual conversation with a psychologist followed by a chance encounter with a master repairman leads to one of those Dickian leaps: Since (1) autistic children do not respond to others because they are living in the future, (2) just build a machine to slow down time and (3) maybe even use it to go back in time and retroactively post a claim on the land before the speculators do. Well, the mechanism works, in a way. The speculators were proposing to build giant apartment blocks to help relieve overcrowding on polluted Earth. The autistic boy, Manfred Steiner, sees much further, however, to the time the apartment block would become a warehouse for the sick and dying, a "tomb world," of which he himself is a denizen. Manfred's visions have a way of bending the reality of those around him; he persistently retreats to a vision of reality as "gubble" -- entropy seen as large wormlike constructs that underlie reality, leading to pure "gubbish." MARTIAN TIME-SLIP is one of my favorite Philip K Dicks. (The problem is that I like all 15 or so I've read more or less equally.) Reading Philip K Dick tends to bend your sense of reality much as Manfred Steiner does. And one can't help looking over one's shoulder for a few hours after reading him. I see Dick as not so much a science fiction writer as a creator of disturbing and eerily plausible futures.

Martian Time Slip

Complete Stories 3 - Second Variety and Other Stories

Confessions of a Crap Artist

Confessions of a Crap Artist is one of Philip K. Dick’s weirdest and most accomplished novels. Jack Isidore is a crap artist—a collector of crackpot ideas (among other things, he believes that the earth is hallow and that sunlight has weight) and worthless objects, a man so grossly unequipped for real life that his sister and brother-in-law feel compelled to rescue him from it. But seen through Jack’s murderously innocent gaze, Charlie and Juddy Hume prove to be just as sealed off from reality, in thrall to obsessions that are slightly more acceptable than Jack’s, but a great deal uglier.

Coulez mes larmes, dit le policier

Jason Taverner est un homme comblé : toutes les semaines, 30 millions de Fans regardent son show télévisé. Mais il se réveille un matin dans une chambre d'hôtel sordide pour s'apercevoir que son identité s'est évanouie sans laisser de trace : même sa maîtresse, la belle Heather Hart, ne se souvient plus de lui. Une situation pour le moins inconfortable, dans un Etat ultra-policier où tout défaut de papiers d'identité suffit à vous faire expédier dans un camp de travail… Seulement voilà : ce n'est pas un homme comme les autres. Produit d'une expérience secrète, Taverner est un six, un mutant aux nerfs d'acier qui mènera une lutte sans merci, sous les yeux d'un pol sentimental, contre la folie où vient de basculer le monde…