In the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late twenty-first century, tedium can be endured through the use of the drug Can-D, which enables the user to inhabit a shared illusory world.
But when industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z, which is far more potent than Can-D. But could the permanent state of drugged illusion it induces be part of something much more sinister?
Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was born in Chicago but lived in California for most of his life. He went to college at Berkeley for a year, ran a record store and had his own classical-music show on a local radio station. He published his first short story, 'Beyond Lies the Wub' in 1952. Among his many fine novels are The Man in the High Castle, Time Out of Joint, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.
One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction, Dick made most of the European avant-garde seem like navel-gazers in a cul-de-sac
Sunday Times
For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplicating realities of the modern world, remember: Philip K. Dick got there first
Terry Gilliam
Dick quietly produced serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise
MICHAEL MOORCOCK
One of the genuine visionaries that North American fiction has produced
L.A. WEEKLY
One of the genuine visionaries that North American literature has produced.
L.A.WEEKLY