#3: Our Friends from Frolix-8 by Philip K. Dick

In a dystopian future run by telepaths and evolved humans, a lone dissenter reaches out to an alien force in Philip K. Dick's Our Friends from Frolix-8.

Dick is one of my favorite sci-fi writers, but I know his work is finite so I have been reading his novels slowly.  I would consider this a more minor of his works, although it's full of his usual themes of drug-fueled paranoia surrounding everyday joes and their dead-end jobs and marriages.  

Even a lesser Dick novel brims with ten times the ideas of somebody else's, so I enjoyed this one after finding it on goodbye prices for my Kindle.

#32: The Game-Players of Titan by Philip K. Dick

A Chinese nuke depopulates Earth, leaving it ripe for an alien invasion; mankind's new overlords then set forth a complex series of rules and games to govern everyday life.  But, as in a lot of Philip K. Dick's work, this plot is just a mere backstory for his usual brew of lackluster schlubs, shrewish wives, psychedelic experimentation, mental health issues, and generally unhappy marriages in The Game-Players of Titan.

After a youth full of reading about lantern-jawed sci-fi heroes I have found a midlife enjoyment of Dick's trippy novels, but have been doling them out to myself slowly as I know the list is finite.

I would say Titan is a good mid-range Dick novel, certainly not an entry point for new readers but enjoyable for fans.  Not everything adds up, and there are some shifts in plotting, but Dick's overflowing font of ideas is always admirable.

I got this for my beloved Kindle and read it quickly.

#8: The Man Who Japed by Philip K. Dick

In a post-apocalyptic future, the world has come under the rule of a rigid, moralistic system of rules and regulations; but a man who produces morality plays for television begins to act out in interesting ways in Philip K. Dick's The Man Who Japed.

This is an early, minor work of Dick's from the late 1950s, but features most of his long-running themes, including flailing marriages, dead-end jobs, and a young woman who galvanizes the main character into action.  But although it is far more straightforward (and thus less psychedelic) than his later works, I still found it enjoyable.

I am a huge fan of Philip K. Dick and, knowing that his output is finite, have been doling out reading his books a little at a time even as I am compelled to finish them all at one go.  I enjoyed this one and believe fans would as well.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond Indiana and read it at a good clip.

#14: Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick

A small moon used as a mental hospital is lost behind enemy lines during a galactic war; now Earth wants to reclaim it, only to find it has developed its own culture based on the different mental illnesses of those who were left behind.  A counselor, a CIA agent, a TV comedian, various robots, and a telepathic slime mold all converge there, for various reasons, in Philip Dick's trippy Clans of the Alphane Moon.

I've read a lot of Philip Dick in the last few years, and you have to admire him for never running out of ideas.  I thought this outing had more strange notions than most, as my brief description hardly scrapes the surface.  What I like about Dick's work is how he is able to take star-spanning stories and put them in the hands of everyday people; in this case, the counselor and the secret agent, whose marriage is crumbling, the details of which weigh as heavily in the storytelling as the planet-hopping spies and aliens.

A very free-wheeling and imaginative sci-fi story with grounding in the minutiae of daily life; one of my favorites of his books to date.  Recommended for fans.

I nabbed this one from www.paperbackswap.com.

#6: The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick

In the far-flung future of 2010, the Earth has been devastated by nuclear war; below ground, humans continue to build robots to keep fighting on the surface, cheered on via video screen by the patriarchal leader Talbot Yancy. But Yancy is a robot, and the pleasant surface of the planet is now being held by a handful of clever marketing execs, in Philip K. Dick's post-apocalyptic outing The Penultimate Truth.

Longtime readers of this blog know I am a fan of Dick's trippy sci-fi; but though still worth reading, this ragged, raging story would probably be in my second tier of his work. Others fans of Philip K. Dick will find his usual interests in alternate histories, precognition, time travel, faceless corporations, belligerent robots and shrewish spouses all on display.

Dick never runs out of ideas, and The Penultimate Truth is no exception; though I don't think all of the details hang together quite as tightly as some other works. Good food for thought, as always.

I snagged this one off of www.paperbackswap.com and carried it with me everywhere until I finished it.

#6: Now Wait for Last Year by Philip K. Dick

A doctor sets his marital problems aside to help the Earth get out of an unwinnable galactic war in Philip K. Dick's mind-boggling Now Wait for Last Year.

I find The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to be milestone science fiction novels, not just of Dick's work but of the genre, but the more I read of Dick the more I realize how deep his body of work goes. I finished 2008 reading Martian Time-Slip and found it to be one of Dick's finer works as well, and A Scanner Darkly remains a favorite.

Although Now Wait for Last Year treads a lot of Dick's familiar trails--everyday people caught up in huge events, time travel, drug abuse, paranoid government conspiracies, p-whipping shrews, odd robots and aliens--I found the writing to be denser and more downbeat than some of his funnier, freer works; and thus somehow more rewarding.

I read this in a very fine edition from the Library of America in their second volume of Dick's collected works. With biographical notes and comments from Jonathan Lethem (whom I am realizing, the more I read of Lethem, is a stylistic follower of Dick's), the Library of America volumes are worth picking up. I have been giving them as gifts in that way that you kind of want them for yourself. This one I checked out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.