"Exhibit Piece" is a 1954 science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. [1] The story is an early exploration of the concept of shifting realities, a common theme in Dick's subsequent works. The protagonist is a future historian of the 20th century who finds himself shifting in time from the future to that time period. At first, it is unclear whether he is merely a man from the past imagining a future life, or vice versa.
The ending of the story remains ambiguous, as it is revealed that with the use of a "time gate", [2] the man may have actually traveled through time. After a confrontation with his boss from the future through the time gate, they advise him that he needs to be euthanized and that they will deconstruct the exhibit, as they believe he has gone mad. The man, confident that they cannot travel via the time gate to get him and that destruction of the exhibit will simply close the time gate, returns to his home in the 20th century, only to read in the newspaper that Russia has created a bomb that will result in the destruction of the world.
It remains unclear whether the man has indeed traveled in time or has simply suffered from a mental collapse that has completely distorted his view of reality.
This is similar to Dick's later fiction, in which the concept of a fixed "reality" became increasingly ambiguous.
The plot was considerably modified when used as the basis for the episode "Real Life" in the TV series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams . [3]
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when writers like Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison examined the impact of technology, drug culture, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction.
Philip Kindred Dick, often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer and novelist. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. His fiction explored varied philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. He is considered one of the most important figures in 20th-century science fiction.
Ubik is a 1969 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The story is set in a future 1992 where psychic powers are utilized in corporate espionage, while cryonic technology allows recently deceased people to be maintained in a lengthy state of hibernation. It follows Joe Chip, a technician at a psychic agency who begins to experience strange alterations in reality that can be temporarily reversed by a mysterious store-bought substance called Ubik. This work expands upon characters and concepts previously introduced in the vignette "What the Dead Men Say".
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a 1968 dystopian science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, where Earth's life has been greatly damaged by a nuclear global war, leaving most animal species endangered or extinct. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who has to "retire" six escaped Nexus-6 model androids, while a secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-par IQ who aids the fugitive androids.
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966. It features a melding of reality, false memory, and real memory. The story was adapted into the 1990 film Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the story's protagonist; that film was remade in 2012 with Colin Farrell as the protagonist.
"The Variable Man" is a science fiction novella by American writer Philip K. Dick, which he wrote and sold before he had an agent. It was first published in the British magazine Space Science Fiction Vol. 2 No. 2, July 1953, and in the American version in September 1953, with the US publication illustrated by Alex Ebel. Despite the magazine cover dates it is unclear whether the first publication was in the UK or in the United States where magazines tended to be published farther ahead of their cover dates than in the UK. The Variable Man can be found in several collections of Dick's short stories, including The Variable Man and The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford.
"Null-O" is a 1958 science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It examines the concept of totally unempathic and 'logical' humans ("Null-Os") in a parody of the plot and concepts of The Pawns of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt. These beings view individual collections of matter, i.e. any object, as subjective structures and see the true state of reality as an 'undifferentiated world of pure energy'. They can also move their ears independently, giving them excellent hearing. After attaining positions of power they proceed with a plan to ultimately return everything in the universe to this state. This is to be done by the construction of successively more powerful bombs, ultimately resulting in the rather improbable 'U-bomb' that will homogenise the whole universe. The Null-O plan is halted, however, when the 'ordinary' people of the world, who have survived the nuclear destruction of Earth's surface in the shelters built by their employers, rise up in drilling machines to stop the construction of an 'E-Bomb' designed to destroy Earth, and succeed in destroying both the E-Bomb prototype and the Null-O's themselves.
"Strange Eden" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published in Imagination magazine during 1954, found under Second Variety and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick in pp. 111–121.
"The Electric Ant" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine in October 1969.
"War Veteran" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published in If magazine in March 1955.
Despite the initial appearance and marketing of an action film, Blade Runner operates on an unusually rich number of dramatic levels. As with much of the cyberpunk genre, it owes a large debt to film noir, containing and exploring such conventions as the femme fatale, a Chandleresque first-person narration in the Theatrical Version, the questionable moral outlook of the hero—extended here to include even the literal humanity of the hero, as well as the usual dark and shadowy cinematography.
Rick Deckard is a fictional character and the protagonist of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Harrison Ford portrayed the character in the 1982 film adaptation, Blade Runner, and reprised his role in the 2017 sequel, Blade Runner 2049. James Purefoy voiced the character in the 2014 BBC Radio 4 adaptation.
We Can Build You is a 1972 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. Written in 1962 as The First in Our Family, it remained unpublished until appearing in serial form as A. Lincoln, Simulacrum in the November 1969 and January 1970 issues of Amazing Stories magazine, re-titled by editor Ted White. The novel was issued as a mass market paperback original by DAW Books in 1972, its final title provided by publisher Donald A. Wollheim. Its first hardcover edition was published in Italy in 1976, and Vintage issued a trade paperback in 1994.
The bibliography of Philip K. Dick includes 44 novels, 121 short stories, and 14 short story collections published by American science fiction author Philip K. Dick during his lifetime.
"The Commuter" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in the August-September 1953 issue of Amazing Stories. It has been reprinted over 20 times, including Croatian, Dutch, French, German and Italian translations. As with much of Dick's fiction, it is an exploration of the boundary of existence.
Martian Time-Slip is a 1964 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The novel uses the common science fiction concept of a human colony on Mars. However, it also includes the themes of mental illness, the physics of time and the dangers of centralized authority.
"The Unreconstructed M" is a science fiction novelette by Philip K. Dick, first published in the January 1957 issue of Science Fiction Stories and later in The Minority Report. The story is in the public domain. In it, an independent researcher uncovers a plot to falsify evidence in a world where the technology used to solve crimes has advanced.
Isa Dick Hackett is an American producer and writer for Amazon who helped produce The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, and The Adjustment Bureau, all of which are based on works by her father, Philip K. Dick.
"The Hanging Stranger" is a science fiction-horror short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, originally published in December 1953 in the magazine Science Fiction Adventures. It has been reprinted in several anthologies, and published in French, Italian and German. It was adapted by Dee Rees into the episode "Kill All Others" or "K.A.O." for the 2017 television series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams. A book was also released to republish "The Hanging Stranger" along with the nine other stories on which the Electric Dreams episodes were based.
"The Impossible Planet" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in the October 1953 issue of Imagination. It has been reprinted over 30 times, including Brian Aldiss's 1974 Space Odysseys anthology. It was also published in Dutch, French, German and Italian translations. The writer originally submitted it to the Scott Meredith Literary Agency on February 11, 1953, with the title "Legend."