By 2021, the Terminus War had driven mankind off-planet and entire species into extinction. Now only the rich can afford living creatures; others may buy amazingly realistic simulacrae: horses, cats, sheep ... Even humans. These artificial people are so advanced it's impossible to tell them from true men and women--except for their lack of empathy. Without empathy, androids can--and do--kill their owners and blend into society, so they're illegal on Earth. It's Rick Deckard's job to find these rogues and "retire" them. But "andys" tend to fight back--with deadly results.

This book of essays looks at the multitude of texts and influences which converge in Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner, especially the film's relationship to its source novel, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film's implications as a thought experiment provide a starting point for important thinking about the moral issues implicit in a hypertechnological society. Yet its importance in the history of science fiction and science fiction film rests equally on it mythically and psychologically resonant creation of compelling characters and an exciting story within a credible science fiction setting. These essays consider political, moral and technological issues raised by the film, as well as literary, filmic, technical and aesthetic questions. Contributors discuss the film's psychological and mythic patterns, important political issues and the roots of the film in Paradise Lost, Frankenstein, detective fiction, and previous science fiction cinema.

The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick, written by a psychologist, investigates the inner world of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. In 1974, Dick was beset by religious visions, and warned police he was an android. The book explores whether Dick's experience was a spiritual awakening or caused by mental illness.

From New York Times bestseller and Hugo Award-winner John Scalzi, a wild-and-woolly caper novel of interstellar diplomacy A human diplomat creates an interstellar incident when he kills an alien diplomat in a most . . . unusual . . . way. To avoid war, Earth's government must find an equally unusual object: a type of sheep ("The Android's Dream"), used in the alien race's coronation ceremony. To find the sheep, the government turns to Harry Creek, ex-cop, war hero and hacker extraordinare, who, with the help of a childhood friend turned artificial intelligence, scours the earth looking for the rare creature. But there are others with plans for the sheep as well. Mercenaries employed by the military. Adherents of a secret religion based on the writings of a 21st century SF author. And alien races, eager to start a revolution on their home world and a war on Earth. To keep our planet from being enslaved, Harry will have to pull off a grand diplomatic coup, a gambit that will take him from the halls of power to the lava-strewn battlefields of alien worlds. There's only one chance to get it right, to save the life of the sheep—and to protect the future of humanity. Other Tor Books The Android’s Dream Agent to the Stars Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded Fuzzy Nation Redshirts 1. Lock In 2. Head On The Interdepency Sequence 1. The Collapsing Empire 2. The Consuming Fire Old Man's War Series 1. Old Man’s War 2. The Ghost Brigades 3. The Last Colony 4. Zoe’s Tale 5. The Human Division 6. The End of All Things At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"A great and calamitous sequence of arguments with the universe: poignant, terrifying, ludicrous, and brilliant. The Exegesis is the sort of book associated with legends and madmen, but Dick wasn't a legend and he wasn't mad. He lived among us, and was a genius."-Jonathan Lethem Based on thousands of pages of typed and handwritten notes, journal entries, letters, and story sketches, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the magnificent and imaginative final work of an author who dedicated his life to questioning the nature of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the relationship between the human and the divine. Edited and introduced by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, this will be the definitive presentation of Dick's brilliant, and epic, final work. In The Exegesis, Dick documents his eight-year attempt to fathom what he called "2-3-74," a postmodern visionary experience of the entire universe "transformed into information." In entries that sometimes ran to hundreds of pages, Dick tried to write his way into the heart of a cosmic mystery that tested his powers of imagination and invention to the limit, adding to, revising, and discarding theory after theory, mixing in dreams and visionary experiences as they occurred, and pulling it all together in three late novels known as the VALIS trilogy. In this abridgment, Jackson and Lethem serve as guides, taking the reader through the Exegesis and establishing connections with moments in Dick's life and work.

Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D--which Arctor takes in massive doses--gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself. Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.

After U.S. survivors have worked diligently in underground warrens for fifteen years, they begin to doubt the government's pronouncements about the progress of a nuclear war