Twisted Worlds of Philip K. Dick

Umberto Rossi is an Italian independent scholar and literary journalist. He has published essays on science fiction, postmodernist fiction, war literature and the 20th century U.S. novel.

“Offers a comprehensive, provocative, and useful exploration of Dick’s fictional oeuvre...insightful...excellent...may well become a standard reference...Twisted Worlds, due to its happy convergence of exemplary research and good writing, is that rarest of specimens: a scholarly book that meets its publisher’s hype...splendid study...is the new decade’s best academic study of Dick’s fiction, as well as one of the great critical works published about Dick’s writing...Rossi deserves our thanks, our respect, and our admiration”—Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts; “a clear demonstration of the effect of intensity that Dick’s novels can produce”—Science Fiction Studies.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Game of the Rat (and Its Players): The Cosmic Puppets and The Game­Players of Titan2. “The Enemy That’s Everywhere Around Us”: Alternate Worlds in Eye in the Sky and Time Out of Joint3. Obscure Admixtures: The Man in the High Castle Considered as a (Cold) War Novel4. A Maze of Lives: Martian ­Time-­Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney, and Clans of the Alphane Moon5. Time Travels and Historical Manipulation: The Simulacra, Now Wait for Last Year and The Penultimate Truth6. The Android Cogito: We Can Build You and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?7. Psychedelic Demiurges: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik, A Maze of Death and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said8. Amateur Questers: VALIS and Its Quandaries9. The God from Outer Space: Reconsidering the Divine Invasion10. A Counterfactual Counterculture: The Transmigration of Timothy ArcherNotesBibliographyIndex