Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) remains one of the most influential and prophetic voices in science fiction. His work relentlessly interrogates the nature of reality, identity, and what it means to be human in a world increasingly saturated with technology and corporate power. While a handful of his stories have become blockbuster films, the sheer volume of his output—comprising dozens of novels and over 120 short stories—can be daunting for newcomers.
This guide provides a comprehensive overview of his major published works, organized chronologically by their original publication date. It covers his reality-bending science fiction novels, his posthumously published mainstream fiction, and his essential short story collections. Each summary distills the core narrative and thematic concerns of the book, offering a clear entry point into the strange and brilliant universe of Philip K. Dick.
In a future society governed by logic and probability, the world leader is chosen through a complex lottery. The story follows Ted Benteley, who is sworn to protect the current leader from a highly skilled assassin who has been psychically selected to kill him. The novel explores themes of political intrigue, psionic powers, and the struggle for control in a seemingly random universe.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world where a new social order called Relativism has outlawed absolute beliefs, this novel follows a man named Floyd Jones, who has the ability to see one year into the future. He rises to power by challenging this doctrine but is haunted by the foreknowledge of his own inevitable assassination.
A man returns to his idyllic hometown only to find that it has mysteriously changed and no one remembers him. He discovers the town is the battleground for two ancient, god-like entities engaged in a cosmic struggle, and that reality itself is a fluid, manipulable illusion. He must uncover the town's secrets to restore his world and his own existence.
After an accident involving a particle accelerator, a group of eight people are thrown into a series of bizarre, overlapping subjective realities. Each universe they inhabit is a manifestation of the inner world of one of the group members—from a simplistic religious caricature to a paranoid nightmare—forcing them to navigate each other's psyches to find their way back to objective reality.
Ragle Gumm lives a quiet suburban life in the late 1950s, his only claim to fame being his consistent ability to win a local newspaper contest. He begins to experience bizarre reality slips that suggest his world is not what it seems and gradually discovers that his idyllic town is an elaborate, constructed reality designed to mask a much darker truth about his own role in a future war.
In a future world governed by a powerful AI supercomputer named Vulcan 3, humanity lives in a stable but controlled society. A faction known as the "Healers" seeks to overthrow the computer's rule, believing it has become tyrannical. A security director must stop them but begins to suspect that Vulcan 3 is developing its own dangerous agenda.
This Hugo Award-winning novel is set in an alternate history where the Axis powers won World War II. The United States is partitioned and occupied by Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. The story follows a diverse cast of characters whose lives are intertwined by a mysterious, subversive novel that depicts a world in which the Allies were victorious.
In a post-apocalyptic future where Earth is sterile and depopulated, the remaining citizens are addicted to a complex board game called "Bluff," which they play for high stakes, including property and spouses. The game is orchestrated by the slug-like aliens from Titan who now own the planet. A group of players discovers the game may be a tool of manipulation and control.
The novel is set on a moon colonized by the descendants of former lunatic asylum inmates, who have formed a society of specialized clans based on their psychiatric conditions. A CIA agent is sent to this strange world, becoming entangled in its bizarre politics and a conflict with a powerful alien telepath, all while his own sanity is put to the test.
On a colonized Mars, people grapple with a harsh environment and mental illness. The story follows several characters, including a repairman and an autistic boy who perceives time differently. Their lives intersect around a powerful union boss's scheme to exploit the boy's abilities to see the future, leading to a complex exploration of schizophrenia, temporal paradoxes, and the subjective nature of reality.
In a future ravaged by war, the majority of humanity lives in vast underground bunkers, believing the surface is a radioactive wasteland. They toil to produce war machines for a conflict they watch on television, orchestrated by a ruling elite who actually live in luxury on a peaceful surface world. A group of rebels threatens to expose this massive deception.
In a dystopian future United States, the government is a complex illusion. The country is ruled by a synthetic, android First Lady who is perpetually replaced, while real political power is held by a shadowy cabal. The novel follows multiple characters as they navigate this society of deception, where psychotherapy is mandatory and reality is manufactured.
In a future where humanity has colonized the solar system, desolate colonists escape their grim reality by taking a drug that allows them to inhabit the idealized world of a Barbie-like doll. A mysterious and powerful industrialist, Palmer Eldritch, returns from deep space with a new, more potent drug that offers a twisted form of immortality and threatens to permanently trap its users in a reality of his own making.
This novel portrays a post-nuclear holocaust community of survivors in Northern California. The story weaves together the lives of various characters, including a phocomelus with psychic powers, a disgraced scientist responsible for the war, and a disc jockey orbiting Earth in a satellite, as they attempt to rebuild society and contend with mutations and new forms of power.
Dr. Eric Sweetscent is the physician for the tyrannical but ailing leader of a galactic war effort. He becomes entangled in his boss's use of a hallucinogenic drug that causes the user to travel through time. Sweetscent finds himself unstuck in time, encountering multiple versions of the future and the past, and must navigate these shifting realities to save himself.
In a future Cold War, weapons designers on both sides of the Iron Curtain psychically create increasingly bizarre and elaborate weapons systems that are never actually used. When aliens invade, these "plowshare" designers must come up with a real, working weapon but find their creative abilities are only geared towards illusion and deception.
In a future where time has begun to run backward, the dead are resurrected from their graves in a reverse-aging process. The story follows Sebastian Hermes, owner of a vitarium that cares for the newly "de-aded," who finds himself in danger after the resurrected body of a hugely influential religious leader, Anarch Peak, go missing, sparking a frantic search by rival religious and political factions.
In a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, bounty hunter Rick Deckard is tasked with "retiring" six escaped Nexus-6 androids, the most advanced models yet. As Deckard hunts the androids, who are nearly indistinguishable from humans, the lines between human and artificial blur, forcing him to question his own empathy and the nature of life itself.
Joe Fernwright, a man with the specialized and now useless skill of repairing broken ceramics, is hired by a mysterious and powerful alien entity named Glimmung. He joins a team of other specialists from across the galaxy on a bizarre quest to raise a sunken cathedral from the depths of an alien ocean, a task that delves into themes of creation, purpose, and reality.
After a corporate sabotage mission goes wrong, a team of anti-psychics finds themselves in a state of regressing reality, where the world around them decays into earlier and earlier historical periods. Their only hope is a mysterious spray-can product called Ubik, which seems to temporarily restore reality, but its true nature and source are unknown.
A diverse group of fourteen colonists arrives on a desolate planet called Delmak-O, summoned for an unknown purpose. They find themselves trapped in a mysterious and deadly environment where reality is unstable and a god-like entity may be manipulating their fate. The colonists must decipher the nature of their bizarre world before they are all killed.
In a future society rigidly stratified between the hyper-intelligent "New Men" and the "Unmodified" masses, a resistance movement awaits the return of a powerful alien from Frolix 8 who they believe will be their savior. The story follows a lowly tire regroover who gets caught between the ruling elite and the revolutionary underground, with the fate of humanity at stake.
A small electronics company creates highly realistic android replicas of famous Civil War figures, including Abraham Lincoln. As they attempt to market their creations, they become entangled with a powerful and manipulative businessman who wants to use the technology for his own vast and dangerous real estate schemes on the Moon.
Jason Taverner, a genetically engineered pop star and TV host, wakes up one day to find that he has no identity. In a totalitarian police state, he is a complete unknown, and all records of his existence have vanished. His desperate journey to reclaim his past brings him into contact with a high-ranking police official and uncovers a reality-altering secret.
Set in a near-future dystopian Orange County, California, the novel follows Bob Arctor, an undercover narcotics agent assigned to infiltrate a group of drug users. As he becomes more involved with the highly addictive and perception-altering Substance D, his own identity begins to fracture, blurring the line between his two lives and leading to a devastating loss of self.
A deeply philosophical and semi-autobiographical novel, this is the first book in the VALIS trilogy. The story follows Horselover Fat, a fictionalized version of Dick himself, as he grapples with a series of divine visions and mystical experiences. He theorizes that a Vast Active Living Intelligence System (VALIS) from space is communicating with him, leading to a profound and obsessive search for the nature of God and reality.
The second book in the VALIS trilogy, this novel is a complex theological science fiction story. It re-imagines the second coming of Christ, where the divine entity Yah is smuggled back to a future Earth controlled by a sinister alliance of the Catholic Church and the Communist party. The story follows Herb Asher as he must protect the unborn savior from a totalitarian world.
The final novel in the VALIS trilogy, this book moves away from science fiction to tell a more realistic story. Narrated by Angel Archer, the story explores the life and death of her father-in-law, a charismatic and controversial Episcopal bishop, as he becomes obsessed with ancient Gnostic texts and grapples with faith, suicide, and the nature of human existence.
A semi-autobiographical novel that serves as a precursor to the VALIS trilogy. It follows Nicholas Brady, a record store clerk in Berkeley, who begins to receive divine revelations from a satellite entity he calls VALIS. This information leads him to believe the U.S. is controlled by a corrupt, secret government, and he becomes involved in a conspiracy to expose the truth.
While known for sci-fi, Dick wrote several realistic novels early in his career. These were largely unpublished until after his death and explore themes of suburban discontent, adultery, and the fragile nature of the American Dream in 1950s California.
The story of Jack Isidore, a socially awkward man who becomes entangled in the dysfunctional marriage of his sister, leading to a darkly comedic and tragic exploration of suburban life.
Follows the intertwined lives of two teenage couples and a cynical radio DJ, exploring themes of alienation, media manipulation, and the fragility of relationships in post-war America.
A detailed character study of a troubled marriage and business struggles in Southern California.
A young man is drawn into the chaotic life of his unstable boss and her scheme to buy out a rival company, in a bleak examination of ambition and failure.
A young woman in a small town becomes involved with a much older, charismatic African-American man, exploring themes of race, relationships, and the search for identity.
Dick was a master of the short story, and many of his most famous ideas first appeared in this format. While numerous collections exist, the definitive compilation is The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, a five-volume set that gathers 118 stories chronologically.
Compiles his earliest stories from 1952, including the title story about a telepathic, pig-like alien.
Features tales from 1952-1953, including the classic post-apocalyptic novelette where self-replicating robots evolve to perfectly mimic humans.
Gathers stories from 1953-1954, many of which deal with paranoia, invasion, and the horrifying realization that reality is not what it seems.
Collects fiction from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, including the title story where post-apocalyptic adults obsess over a Barbie-like doll to escape their bleak lives.
Contains his later short fiction (1963-1981), including the story that inspired the film Total Recall, in which a man buys a memory implant and discovers he may have been a secret agent.
Other notable collections, which largely overlap with the five-volume set but are widely available, include The Minority Report (featuring the story that inspired the film), Paycheck, and The Golden Man.
From the shifting realities of Ubik to the dystopian futures of A Scanner Darkly and the profound theological questions of VALIS, Philip K. Dick’s work is a map of the anxieties and possibilities of the 20th century, one that feels more relevant than ever in the 21st. His stories are not just about androids and alternate universes; they are a deep, empathetic, and often darkly humorous investigation into the essence of the human soul. This guide is merely a starting point—the true adventure begins when you open one of his books and question reality for yourself.
