A Scanner Darkly

The best book of the year - extraordinary – BrianAldissOne 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 *My literary hero * Fay Weldon *The most brilliant SF mind on any planet * Rolling Stone Magazine *For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplicating realities of the modern world, remember: Philip K. Dick got there first * Terry Gilliam *The most consistently brilliant SF writer in the world – John BrunnerDick is Thoreau plus the death of the American dream – Roberto BolañoDick quietly produced serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise – Michael MoorcockIn all his work he was astonishingly intimate, self exposed, and very dangerous. He was the funniest SF writer of his time, and perhaps the most terrifying. His dreads were our own, spoken as we could not have spoken them * Encyclopedia of Science Fiction *

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.