NCW Libraries

A masterpiece ahead of its time, a prescient rendering of a dark future, and the inspiration for the blockbuster film Blade Runner

By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built...

From Philip K. Dick, the Hugo Award—winning author of The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the basis for the film Blade Runner Clans of the Alphane Moon explores the meaning of mental illness through the actions of people with clinical disorders and those of the doctors tasked with curing them. For years, the third moon in the Alphane system was used as a psychiatric hospital. But when war broke out between Earth...

In Second Variety, UN forces have retreated to a moon base in the aftermath of early Soviet victories in a nuclear conflict. In response, the UN forces developed special robots, called Claws, which feature spinning blades and rudimentary artificial intelligence. Six years later, the Soviet leadership asks for negotiations to end the war. A UN officer travels back to earth to discover that not only have the Claws learned to replicate themselves, they...

The discovery of mysterious gateway leads to a new world full of dangerous possibilities in this science fiction tale from an iconic author.

 When a repairman accidentally finds a parallel universe, everyone sees it as an opportunity, whether as a way to ease Earth’s overcrowding, set up a personal kingdom, or hide an inconvenient mistress. But when a civilization is found already living there, the people on this side of

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"I have never seen [its] theme handled with greater technical dexterity or given more psychological meaning."—Fantasy and Science Fiction
When a routine tour of a particle accelerator goes awry, Jack Hamilton and the rest of his tour group find themselves in a world ruled by Old Testament morality, where the smallest infraction can bring about a plague of locusts. Escape from that world is not the end, though, as they plunge into a Communist...

Following an inexplicable urge, Ted Barton returns to his idyllic Virginia hometown for a vacation, but when he gets there, he is shocked to discover that the town has utterly changed. The stores and houses are all different and he doesn't recognize anybody. The mystery deepens when he checks the town's historical records ... and reads that he died nearly twenty years earlier. As he attempts to uncover the secrets of the town, Barton is drawn deeper...

This early work by Philip K. Dick was originally published in 1954 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Meddler' is a short story about time travel and possibilities of dire consequences. Philip Kindred Dick was born on December 16 1928, in Chicago, Illinois. Dick and his family moved to the Bay Area of San Francisco when he was young, and later on to Washington DC following his parents divorce. Dick attended Elementary...

The final book in Philip K. Dick's VALIS trilogy, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer brings the author's search for the identity and nature of God to a close. The novel follows Bishop Timothy Archer as he travels to Israel, ostensibly to examine ancient scrolls bearing the words of Christ. But, more importantly, this leads him to examine the decisions he made during his life and how they may have contributed to the suicide of his mistress and son....

This early work by Philip K. Dick was originally published in 1954 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Turning Wheel' is a novelette about the state of society in a post-apocalyptic future. Philip Kindred Dick was born on December 16 1928, in Chicago, Illinois. Dick and his family moved to the Bay Area of San Francisco when he was young, and later on to Washington DC following his parents divorce. Dick attended...

"Philip K. Dick knew better than anyone how to recognize the disturbances of exile."-Roberto BolañoWhen catastrophic overpopulation threatens Earth, one company offers to teleport citizens to Whale's Mouth, an allegedly pristine new home for happy and industrious émigrés. But there is one problem: the teleportation machine only works in one direction. When Rachmael ben Applebaum discovers that some of the footage of happy settlers may have been...