Author Guide · Science Fiction
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Philip K. Dick, born in Chicago in 1928, published his first novel, Solar Lottery, in 1955 and died in 1982 at the age of 53, having written 45 novels and about 121 short stories. In his lifetime he won one Hugo Award, for The Man in the High Castle in 1963. The films came afterwards: Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006). In 2007 he became the first science fiction writer published by the Library of America. His books keep returning to two questions: what is real, and what makes someone human. This guide covers his ten key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 key books · 1959–1982 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Philip K. Dick wrote 45 novels. The best known are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), the basis of Blade Runner, The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won the Hugo Award, Ubik (1969) and A Scanner Darkly (1977). Start with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; the list below shows where each of the others leads.
Where to Start with Philip K. Dick
If you want his defining book
→ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) — the novel behind Blade Runner.
If you want alternate history
→ The Man in the High Castle (1962) — the Hugo-winning novel of a world where the Axis won.
If you want reality coming apart
→ Ubik (1969).
If you want his most personal novel
→ A Scanner Darkly (1977) — drugs, surveillance and his own friends.
10 Philip K. Dick Books, in Order
Time Out of Joint
Ragle Gumm lives in a quiet American town in 1959 and earns his living by winning a newspaper puzzle, “Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next?” When objects start to glitch, he escapes and learns that the town is a construction: the real year is about 1998, Earth is at war with colonists on the Moon, and his puzzle answers are predictions of nuclear strikes. Lippincott published it in hardcover.
The Man in the High Castle
In 1962, fifteen years after the Axis won the Second World War, the west coast of America is the Japanese-ruled Pacific States. The story moves between a trade official, Mr. Tagomi, the jewellery maker Frank Frink, the antiques dealer Robert Childan and Frink’s ex-wife Juliana, while a banned novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, imagines an Allied victory. Characters consult the I Ching, as Dick did while writing. Amazon adapted it as a series from 2015 to 2019.
Martian Time-Slip
A struggling colony on Mars, short of water, where the repairman Jack Bohlen has emigrated to escape his schizophrenic episodes. Arnie Kott, head of the Water Workers’ Union, wants to use Manfred Steiner, an autistic boy who seems to see the future, for business. As the plot turns on Manfred’s perception of time, scenes repeat in increasingly hallucinatory forms. It was serialised in 1963 as All We Marsmen.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
In 2016, colonists on Mars escape their lives with an illegal drug, Can-D, and Perky Pat doll layouts that let them share a fantasy of life on Earth. Leo Bulero runs the layouts business, with Barney Mayerson as his precognitive consultant, until the industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from another star system with a rival drug, Chew-Z. It was nominated for the Nebula Award.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
After a war has left Earth in ruins and most animal life gone, the bounty hunter Rick Deckard “retires” androids who have escaped to Earth, and longs to own a live animal instead of his electric sheep. A job to eliminate six Nexus-6 androids, which are hard to tell from humans, pays enough to buy one. Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner (1982) is based on it.
Ubik
In 1992, telepaths are used for corporate espionage and the dead can be kept in “half-life”. After a bomb on the Moon apparently kills their boss, Glen Runciter, the technician Joe Chip and his team find objects decaying and the world sliding back towards 1939; only a spray called Ubik halts it for a while. Time included it in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Jason Taverner, a famous singer and television host, wakes up in a world where no record of him exists. The America of 1988 is a police state after a second civil war, and without papers he is hunted, crossing paths with the police general Felix Buckman. The title comes from John Dowland’s song “Flow, my tears”. It was also nominated for the Nebula and Hugo Awards.
A Scanner Darkly
In a barely futuristic southern California of 1994, Fred is an undercover narcotics agent posing as Bob Arctor, a user of Substance D, and is ordered to watch Arctor — himself. Hidden in a “scramble suit”, even his supervisors do not know who he is, while the drug splits his mind in two. Dick’s author’s note dedicates the book to friends from his own drug-using years who died or were damaged, and puts his own name on the list. Richard Linklater filmed it in 2006.
VALIS
The narrator, Phil, tells the story of Horselover Fat, his own alter ego, who in March 1974 is struck by a pink beam of light he takes as a divine revelation. Fat and his friends investigate, from a film that seems to mirror their experiences to a two-year-old girl they believe is an incarnation of Holy Wisdom. It draws directly on what Dick called his “2-3-74” experiences, and was followed by The Divine Invasion (1981).
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
Angel Archer, who runs a record shop in Berkeley, looks back on the Episcopal bishop Timothy Archer, her father-in-law, and the deaths around him: his son Jeff, his lover Kirsten and finally Tim himself, in the Israeli desert. The bishop is loosely based on Dick’s friend James Pike. Written in 1981, it was published shortly after Dick died and was nominated for the Nebula Award.
In What Order to Read Philip K. Dick
Almost all of Dick’s novels stand alone, so you can read by premise rather than by date. The one exception is the late group: VALIS and The Divine Invasion form the first two parts of an unfinished trilogy, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer shares their questions. Read those three in that order and after some of the earlier books.
Publication order does show a shift. The novels of the 1960s use science fiction plots — Mars colonies, androids, psychic agents — to make reality unreliable. From A Scanner Darkly onwards, the material comes closer to his own life: his friends, drugs, and the experiences of February and March 1974.
A reading path
1. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
2. The Man in the High Castle (1962)
3. Ubik (1969)
4. A Scanner Darkly (1977)
5. VALIS (1981)
Everything Else Philip K. Dick Published
Beyond the 10 key books: 10 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other novels
8
8 books · 1955–1981
- 1955Solar Lotteryhis first novel
- 1957Eye in the Skynovel
- 1965Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bombnovel
- 1966Now Wait for Last Yearnovel
- 1969Galactic Pot-Healernovel
- 1970A Maze of Deathnovel
- 1975Confessions of a Crap Artisthis only mainstream novel published in his lifetime
- 1981The Divine Invasionthe second book of the VALIS trilogy
Published after his death
2
2 books · 1985–2011
- 1985Radio Free Albemuthwritten in 1976
- 2011The Exegesis of Philip K. Dickselections from the journal he kept from 1974 until his death
The years · 1928–1982
Quick facts about Philip K. Dick
- Known for
- Philip K. Dick is known for science fiction in which reality proves unreliable and the line between human and machine blurs, much of it later filmed, from Blade Runner to Minority Report.
- 1928
- Born in Chicago, with a twin sister who died in infancy
- 1955
- First novel, Solar Lottery
- 1982
- Dies in Santa Ana, California, aged 53
- Born
- 16 December 1928, Chicago, Illinois
- Died
- 2 March 1982, Santa Ana, California, after a stroke
- Education
- Berkeley High School (1947); briefly the University of California, Berkeley, in 1949
- Output
- 45 novels and about 121 short stories
- Awards
- Hugo Award (1963), John W. Campbell Memorial Award (1975), BSFA Award (1978)
- Legacy
- First science fiction writer in the Library of America (2007); the Philip K. Dick Award, since 1983
The red mark is 1968: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the novel behind Blade Runner.
How Philip K. Dick Writes: Worlds That Glitch
Dick’s plots usually begin with an ordinary-seeming world and then let it fail. A soft-drink stand in Time Out of Joint dissolves into a slip of paper; in Ubik objects age backwards towards 1939; in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said a famous man wakes up without any record of existing. The question is less what happens next than what was ever real.
His people are rarely heroes. They are repairmen, technicians, small businessmen and bounty hunters with debts, failed marriages and mental illness, often shown from several points of view in turn, as in The Man in the High Castle. He also built real things into the fiction: he used the I Ching while writing that novel, and in VALIS he appears as both narrator and his own alter ego.
From 1974 until his death he kept a private journal, the “Exegesis”, of about 8,000 pages, trying to explain his experiences of February and March 1974. Its ideas run through VALIS, The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which is why the late novels read more like philosophy and memoir than the science fiction of the 1960s.
Frequently asked questions about Philip K. Dick’s books
How many books has Philip K. Dick written?
45 novels and about 121 short stories, according to the usual count; several novels and his journal, the Exegesis, were published only after his death. Ten of the novels are the key books on this page, from Time Out of Joint (1959) to The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982).
What are Philip K. Dick’s books in order?
The key books are Time Out of Joint (1959), The Man in the High Castle (1962), Martian Time-Slip (1964), The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Ubik (1969), Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974), A Scanner Darkly (1977), VALIS (1981) and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982). His first novel was Solar Lottery (1955).
Where should I start with Philip K. Dick?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), the novel behind Blade Runner. If you prefer alternate history, start with The Man in the High Castle; if you want his strangest reality-bending plot, Ubik.
What is Philip K. Dick’s most famous book?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, through the film Blade Runner (1982). The Man in the High Castle (1962) is his most honoured: it won the Hugo Award in 1963, and the Amazon series ran from 2015 to 2019.
Which films and series are based on Philip K. Dick?
Blade Runner (1982), from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; Total Recall (1990 and 2012), from the story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”; Minority Report (2002), from the short story; Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly (2006); the Amazon series The Man in the High Castle (2015–2019); and the Channel 4 anthology Electric Dreams (2017).
Do you need to read Philip K. Dick in order?
No. Nearly every novel stands alone. The exception is the late group: VALIS and The Divine Invasion (both 1981) are the first two books of a trilogy he did not finish, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) shares their themes.
What awards did Philip K. Dick win?
The Hugo Award for The Man in the High Castle (1963), the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1975) and the BSFA Award for A Scanner Darkly (1978). Since 1983 the Philip K. Dick Award has been given to the year’s best science fiction paperback original.
What were Philip K. Dick’s “2-3-74” experiences?
In February and March 1974 Dick reported a series of visions, including a “pink beam” of light, and a sense of living two lives at once. He called the presence behind them VALIS, “Vast Active Living Intelligence System”, wrote about it for the rest of his life in his journal, the Exegesis, and turned it into the novel VALIS (1981).
Did Philip K. Dick write letters to the FBI?
Yes. In a 1972 letter he reported that the science fiction writer Thomas Disch had been linked to a covert anti-American organisation, and in 1974 he accused several people, including the critic Fredric Jameson, of being agents of Warsaw Pact powers, and claimed that Stanisław Lem was probably a name used by a Communist-controlled committee.
When did Philip K. Dick die?
On 2 March 1982 in Santa Ana, California, aged 53, from complications of a stroke. Blade Runner and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer both appeared later that year.
Footnotes
- Philip K. Dick — Wikipedia
- Bibliography: novels by publication dates — philipdick.com
- The Man in the High Castle — Wikipedia
- Ubik — Wikipedia
- Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said — Wikipedia
- How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later (1978)
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
— Philip K. Dick, “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” (1978)
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