Where to start with Philip K. Dick: 5 award-recognized books
Philip K. Dick wrote about unreliable realities, paranoia and what makes someone human. His novels are short, strange and endlessly adapted for film and television.
If you read just one: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, because it is his most acclaimed novel and the easiest way in.
Start here
1. The Man in the High Castle
Won the Hugo Award (1963) ·
An America divided between the Axis powers that won the Second World War, and a novel that imagines they lost.
2. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Finalist for the Nebula Award (1969) ·
A bounty hunter tracks androids in a ruined world. The basis for Blade Runner.
Then
3. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Finalist for the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1975) ·
A famous television star wakes up in a police state where no one has ever heard of him.
4. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Finalist for the Nebula Award (1966) ·
Colonists escape their misery with drugs, until a mysterious industrialist returns from the stars with a new one.
5. Dr. Bloodmoney
Finalist for the Nebula Award (1966) ·
A small community in California rebuilds after a nuclear war.
How we chose
Every book in this guide won or was a finalist for at least one of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus or Arthur C. Clarke awards. Each book page lists its full award history with sources. Page counts come from English print editions and vary by edition. 5 books in all.