Philip K. Dick

Winner of the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel, Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly is a semi-autobiographical novel of drug addiction set in a future American dystopia — and the basis for the Hugo Award finalist film starring Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, and Robert Downey, Jr.
"A Scanner Darkly is about a descent into the deep fears of our 24-hour consumer society: the twilight of intellectual and emotional collapse...A...

VALIS is the first novel in a mesmerizing, science-fiction philosophical trilogy by Philip K. Dick, the Hugo Award—winning author of The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the basis for the film Blade Runner. "Dick is one of the ten best American writers of the twentieth century, which is saying a lot. Dick was a kind of Kafka steeped in LSD and rage."* What is VALIS? When a beam of pink light begins giving a schizophrenic...

In The Defenders, the Soviet and American survivors of a nuclear holocaust have created vast underground tunnels, so as to continue the war on the surface via remote control robots. When a robot from the surface is found not to be radioactive, a team of American scientists returns topside to investigate this anomaly. Expecting to see massive devastation, the scientists are unprepared for the shocking truth that awaits them.

In The Gun, a group of space explorers are shot down above a deserted planet. While some of the crew work on repairing the ship, the remainder set out to investigate the planet. Otherwise unpopulated, they discover the huge gun that shot them down sitting atop a trove of cultural artifacts from a bygone civilization. What harm could come of dismantling the gun and taking a few of the artifacts home with them?

Washington, D.C. has been murder-free thanks to astounding technology which identifies killers before they commit their crimes. But when the chief of the Pre-crime unit is himself accused of a future murder, he has just 36 hours to discover who set him up.

Jennings is the best reverse-engineer in the business. He is hired by his friend Rethrick to do a special job, with the promise of a multi-million dollar paycheck when successfully completed. When he is finished, all memory of what he had been working on is erased from his mind. That's when his problem really start to begin. He is hunted by the FBI for something he has no recollection of doing and has little time to work it out. Before his memory...

Hours of great reading await, with tales from some of the 20th century's most renowned science fiction authors, Here are 25 science fiction stories (plus a bonus short-short):

UNKNOWN THINGS, by Reginald Bretnor

CAPTIVES OF THE FLAME, by Samuel R. Delany

EXPEDITER, by Mack Reynolds

ONE-SHOT, by James Blish

SHIPWRECK IN THE SKY, by Eando Binder

ZEN, by Jerome Bixby

LANCELOT BIGGS COOKS A PIRATE, by Nelson Bond

SENTIMENT, INC., by

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