Philip K. Dick - Three novels

Since his untimely death at age 53, there has been an extraordinary growth of interest in his writings, which during his lifetime were largely ignored by serious mainstream critics and readers. Such is no longer the case, and the novels of Philip K. Dick frequently appear on university curricula devoted to modern American literature. But that is only the beginning of the transformation. Since 1982, when Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (based on Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) made its debut, eight feature films based on Dick's fiction have appeared, the other seven being Total Recall, The Minority Report, Screamers, Impostor, the French film Confessions d'un Barjo (based on Dick's mainstream novel, Confessions of a Crap Artist), Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly and the upcoming Next (April 2007). That's an average of roughly one movie every three years since Dick's passing - a rate of cinematic adaptation exceeded only by Stephen King. And there are other big-money film options currently held by Hollywood studios.

Philip K. Dick has done more than arrive. He has become a looming and illuminating presence not merely in American but in world culture, with his works translated into major European and Asian languages. There is even a bastard adjective - "phildickian "- that makes its way into print now and then to describe the baffling twists and turns of our times. An understanding of the basic facts of Dick's life not only casts light on the themes that predominate in his writings, but also brings to view a fascinating story in its own right.

Second Variety
"Second Variety" occurs in the aftermath of an extensive nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United Nations. Early Soviet victories forced the North American government and production to flee to a Moon Base, leaving the majority of their troops behind. To counter the almost complete Soviet victory, U.N. technicians develop robots, nicknamed claws - the basic models are "a churning sphere of blades and metal" that ambush their unsuspecting victims "spinning, creeping, shaking themselves up suddenly from the gray ash and darting toward... [any warm body]." U.N. forces are protected from the claws by a special radiation-emitting wrist tab. Within six years, the sophisticated and independent claws have destroyed the Soviet forces, repairing and redesigning themselves in automated underground factories run without any human oversight...

Do androids dream of electric sheep
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? takes place in 1992 (2021 in later editions), years after the radioactive fallout of World War Terminus destroyed most of Earth. The U.N. encourages emigration to off-world colonies, in hope of preserving the human race from the terminal effects of the fallout. One emigration incentive is giving each emigrant an "andy" — a servant android.The remaining populace live in cluttered, decaying cities wherein radiation poisoning sickens them and damages their genes. Animals are rare, so most people turn towards the much cheaper synthetic, or electric, animals. The protagonist, Rick Deckard, owned a sheep, but it died of tetanus, and he replaced it with a synthetic sheep.The main Earth religion is Mercerism, in which Empathy Boxes link simultaneous users into a collective consciousness based on the suffering of Wilbur Mercer. The television appearances of Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends represent a second religion, designed to undermine Mercerism and allow androids to partake in a kind of consumerist spirituality...

Minority report
In the future society murders are prevented through the efforts of three mutants who can see the future. The story mainly concerns the paradoxes and alternate realities that are created by the precognition of crimes when the chief of police intercepts a precognition that he is about to murder a man he has never met. Like many stories dealing with knowledge of future events, "The Minority Report" questions the existence of free will.