"War Veteran" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. [1] It was first published in If magazine in March 1955.
The plot concerns an old man who claims to have travelled back in time from a future in which Earth has lost a devastating war to its own Martian and Venusian colonies. The man turns out to be a synthetic human, designed to trick the Earth people into believing they could never win the war, forcing them to make peace. This type of android is a forerunner of the type appearing in Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and its film adaptation.
A similar, supposedly time-displaced "war veteran" character appears in Dick's novel The Zap Gun .
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.
Time Out of Joint is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in novel form in the United States in 1959. An abridged version was also serialised in the British science fiction magazine New Worlds Science Fiction in several installments from December 1959 to February 1960.
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.
The Man in the High Castle is an alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in 1962, which imagines a world in which the Axis Powers won World War II. The story occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the war in 1947, and depicts the life of several characters living under Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany as they rule a partitioned United States. The eponymous character is the mysterious author of a novel-within-the-novel entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a subversive alternative history of the war in which the Allied Powers are victorious.
Science fiction is a film genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, mutants, interstellar travel, time travel, or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition.
Valis is a 1981 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, intended to be the first book of a three-part series. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of God. Set in California during the 1970s, the book features heavy auto-biographical elements and draws inspiration from Dick's own investigations into his unexplained religious experiences over the previous decade.
Total Recall 2070 is a science fiction television series influenced by the work of Philip K. Dick. It was first broadcast in 1999 on the Canadian television channel CHCH-TV and later the same year on the American Showtime channel. It was later syndicated in the United States with some editing to remove scenes of nudity, violence and strong language.
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in the December, 1963 issue of Galaxy magazine with illustration by Lutjens.
The Simulacra is a 1964 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The novel portrays a future totalitarian society apparently dominated by a matriarch, Nicole Thibodeaux. It revolves around the themes of reality and illusionary beliefs, as do many of Dick's works. Additionally, it touches on Nazi ideology.
The Zap Gun is a 1967 science fiction novel by American author Philip K. Dick. It was written in 1964 and first published under the title Project Plowshare as a serial in the November 1965 and January 1966 issues of Worlds of Tomorrow magazine.
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 Unteleported Man is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published as a novella in 1964. It is about a future in which a one-way teleportation technology enables 40 million people to emigrate to a colony named Whale's Mouth on an Earth-like planet, which advertisements show as a lush green utopia. When the owner of a failing spaceship travel firm tries to take the 18-year flight to the colony to bring back any unhappy colonists, powerful forces try to stop him from finding out the truth.
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.
Vulcan's Hammer is a 1960 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was released originally as an Ace Double. This has been considered to be the final outing of Dick's 1950s style pulp science fiction writing, before his better-received work such as the Hugo Award-winning Man in the High Castle, published a year later.
The Android's Dream is a 2006 science fiction novel by American writer John Scalzi.
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick is a collection of 118 science fiction stories by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published by Underwood-Miller in 1987 as a five volume set. See Philip K. Dick bibliography for information about the mass market reprints.
The Father-Thing is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published by Gollancz in 1989 and reprints Volume III of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. It had not previously been published as a stand-alone volume. Many of the stories had originally appeared in the magazines If, Science Fiction Adventures, Science Fiction Stories, Orbit, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Imagination, Future, Galaxy Science Fiction, Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Satellite, Science Fiction Quarterly and Imaginative Tales.
Second Variety is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published by Citadel Twilight in 1991 and reprints Volume III of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick with the addition of the story "Second Variety". Many of the stories had originally appeared in the magazines If, Science Fiction Adventures, Science Fiction Stories, Orbit, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Imagination, Future, Galaxy Science Fiction, Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Satellite, Science Fiction Quarterly, Imaginative Tales and Space Science Fiction. There is huge overlap with the 1997 The Philip K. Dick Reader: stories 1–20 and 24 are identical.
The Philip K. Dick Reader is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published by Citadel Twilight in 1997. Many of the stories had originally appeared in the magazines If, Science Fiction Adventures, Science Fiction Stories, Orbit, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Imagination, Future, Galaxy Science Fiction, Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Satellite, Imaginative Tales, Fantastic Universe and Space Science Fiction. It is identical in content and order to the edition of volume 3 of the Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick produced by the same publisher apart from the substitution of three stories in positions 21-23 of 24 and the omission of the end notes in the Collected Stories edition. At press time, stories 21 and 24 had already been made into successful movie adaptations and stories 22 and 23 had been optioned.
Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1949–1984 is a nonfiction book by David Pringle, published by Xanadu in 1985 with a foreword by Michael Moorcock. Primarily, the book comprises 100 short essays on the selected works, covered in order of publication, without any ranking. It is considered an important critical summary of the science fiction field.