About the author

Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928, but has lived most of his life on the West Coast, primarily in San Francisco and in Marin County. He has long been regarded by connoisseurs of science fiction as one of the major writers in the field. He has published one hundred and ten short stories over a period of some twenty-five years, beginning with his sale of "Roog" to Anthony Boucher at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fic­tion in 1952. In 1953 alone, Philip K. Dick had twenty-eight stories published in S. F. magazines of all sorts- from Planet Stories to Space Science Fiction. In 1954, Dick repeated his success with another twenty-eight stories published, this time in publications ranging from Startling to Thrilling Wonder Stories. Although many of these publications went out of business over the years, Philip K. Dick's stories remain in print-in anthologies in the United States and in Europe, particularly England and France, where Dick is even more popular than he is here. Several short story collections contain the finest of Dick's short stories: A Handful of Darkness (published in England), The Variable Man, The Preserving Ma­chine, The Book of Philip K. Dick and The Best of Philip K. Dick. In 1955, Dick began to devote more time to writing novels. Solar Lottery, which was published that year and is Dick's first novel, is still in print here and abroad, and remains to this day his best selling title. Over the next few years, Philip K. Dick concentrated on producing novels, but continued to write a few short stories as well. This early period saw such successes as The World Jones Made, The Cosmic Puppets, Eye in the Sky and Time Out of Joint. In 1962, Dick won the Hugo Award for best novel for The Man in the High Castle- enhancing his reputation as a writer on both sides of the Atlantic. From 1964 to 1969, which many experts feel is his finest period, Philip K. Dick was as prolific a novel

Writer as he was a short story writer in the fifties. Dur­ing this time, he wrote Martian Time-Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Simulacra, The Penul­timate Truth, Clans of the Alphane Moon (all published in 1964!); Dr. Bloodmoney, The Crack in Space, Now Wait for Last Year, The Unteleported Man, Counter-Clock World, The Zap Gun, The Ganymede Takeover (written with Ray Nelson), Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, Ubik, Galactic Pot-Healer and A Maze of Death-sixteen novels written and published in just five years. In 1972, We Can Build You was published, fol­lowed in 1974 by Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. In 1975, Dick's first "mainstream" novel, Confessions of a Crap Artist, saw print for the first time. His second collaboration (with Roger Zelazny), Deus Irae, appeared in 1976, and A Scanner Darkly in 1977. As Norman Spinrad has said, "He has produced the most significant body of work of any science fiction writer." Philip K. Dick has been praised by critics, writ­ers and fans alike as the most unpredictable of writers, whose control of existential humor and complex plotting remains unchallenged in the field of science fiction. Philip K. Dick died in 1982.