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    Radio Free Albemuth
    Radio Free Albemuth
    Radio Free Albemuth
    Ebook309 pages5 hours

    Radio Free Albemuth

    By Philip K. Dick

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A philosophical science fiction novel from Hugo Award–winning author Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth is a visionary alternate history of a dystopian United States, full of the conspiracy theories and religious themes that became the foundation for his celebrated VALIS trilogy.

    It is the late 1960s, and a paranoid incompetent has schemed his way into the White House and convulsed America into a vicious war against imaginary, internal enemies. Philip K. Dick, a struggling science fiction writer, is trying to keep from becoming one of that war's casualties.

    Meanwhile, Dick's best friend, record executive Nicholas Brady, is receiving transmissions from an extraterrestrial entity that may also happen to be God—an entity that apparently wants him to overthrow the president.

    Suspenseful and darkly hilarious, Radio Free Albemuth cements Dick as the twentieth century's greatest prankster-prophet.

    "An intense, often very moving book...touching on all the major Philip K. Dick themes."—Philadelphia Inquirer
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2020
    ISBN9780358448891
    Author

    Philip K. Dick

    Over a writing career that spanned three decades, PHILIP K. DICK (1928–1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, as well as television's The Man in the High Castle. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, including the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and between 2007 and 2009, the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

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    Reviews for Radio Free Albemuth

    3.5/5

    331 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      His last, full of extra paranoia, and some authorial self-insertion to boot.
    • 4/5
      This was a great Philip K. Dick novel! I was astounded that this was not published, in some form, during his lifetime. All of Dick's idiosyncrasies and the best aspects of his fiction are here: the paranoia, the sci-fi, the drugs-- everything. The ideas that he infuses through his writing serve to guide the story and the writing is surprisingly lucid and appealing. After a series of only satisfactory reads of Dick's novels, this one brings my interest in Philip K. Dick back around and makes me even more interested in the rest of his oeuvre.

      Definitely recommended for Philip K. Dick enthusiasts or those interested in sci-fi.

      4 stars!
    • 4/5
      Rating: 3.5* of fiveWhat a damned miracle it is to find this book again. In the Year of Our Suffering 2018, the weird way of PKD's imaginary travels has become our reality. Yuck! The fact that this wasn't published until after PKD's death suggests to me it wasn't fully baked yet. That is pretty much how I felt about the writing. He just didn't have a chance to get down into the working parts of the book before he died.But damn, it's really really really scary how the imaginarium in his head led PKD to predict our present.Then there's a 2014 movie that makes my hair stand on end. A good and faithful adaptation of the novel, a low-budget proof that the passion of a filmmaker makes for a good watch. I like this story because of how much it scares me. I think I should re-read the VALIS trilogy now!
    • 2/5
      I feel like I must've missed something - but my friend read it too and didn't get anything out of it either. Otoh, it's Dick - so if you're a fan of his work ya gotta check it out, eh?
    • 3/5
      Underground politics and theology and superior aliens, the music industry and secret police, hallucinations and science fiction writers - this posthumous book had the strange sort of mix that would be hard to imagine coming from another author. In the end it turns both dystopian and hopeful at the same time.
    • 3/5
      Technically, Radio Free Albemuth was PKD's last published novel. But instead it reads like a different version of the sprawling gnostic treatise of paranoia and salvation that was VALIS.

      The two protagonists are Philip K. Dick himself, and not-Philip K. Dick, who is a cipher for the author's own experiences, and the visions of 2-3-74. Again we see the motif of the 'twinless twin'.

      The plot is steeped in the conspiracy and fear and despair which characterized the mid-to-late 1970s, and the president, Ferris F. Freemont, (6-6-6), is a cipher for Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, and the Anti-Christ. We see the raw grasping for power, the unfettered rebellions against this unknowable alien power, a secret message from Al-bemuth, and subliminal thought and mind-programming.

      Perhaps aside from the VALIS trilogy proper, this is one of PKD's most autobiographic writings, and the one which most dispenses with the idea of the linear story. It is confusing, and perhaps redundant, but still interesting. If one wants to try and glimpse the later PKD without delving too deep, Radio Free Albemuth is a good place to start.
    • 4/5
      In 1974, science fiction writer Philip K. Dick had what he would come to understand as a religious experience, or more specifically, a Platonic anamnesis—a loss of forgetfulness. Triggered by exposure to an ichthys, what is commonly known as a “Jesus fish,” he had a flash of the continued existence of Rome circa 70 AD and felt the certainty of the early Christians that their messiah had just left and would be right back. This experience was followed by several nighttime visions where a beam of pink light beamed information into his head from an alien satellite. Dick struggled to understand what had happened to him and wrestled with these themes, most comprehensively in the writing of his exegesis, the VALIS trilogy, and, in 1976, the creation of Radio Free Ablemuth. Those that have read VALIS will recognize this novel as a tentative first crack at the material that would define and consume Dick until his death in 1982. This is not to say that this book doesn’t stand on its own, in many ways it is the more down-to-earth take on a very complex and singular cosmology, however, the VALIS mythos did become richer as a result of the extra effort. Too much of the underlying schema in this early draft is pitched in the form of manic exposition. Dick would later recast himself as Horselover Fat/Phil and kept the gist of Radio Free Ablemuth intact as the experimental film that forms the centerpiece of VALIS. Some characters, however, lose something in the translation. Cancer survivor Sadassa Silvia Aramchek comes across as a better-realized and motivated person than her later incarnation, Sherri Solvig. The thinly disguised Richard M. Nixon stand-in, Ferris F. Fremont, is a delightfully evil antagonist, doubly chilling as the portrait rings true in hindsight. All in all, Ablemuth is not the place to start exploring later-period PKD, but it is a worthwhile read as well as a fascinating example of what a rewrite/re-imagining can do.
    • 2/5
      Dick as he begins to slip into his religion-fueled paranoia, or is it paranoia-fueled religion? Not very interesting either way.
    • 4/5
      Everything you can expect from a PK Dick book is here. Paralell universes, paranoia, Valis... Not his best by far, but if you like PKD you HAVE TO read his last co-starring the writer himself.
    • 4/5
      One of Dick's "Look at me!!! I'm freakin' crazyyyyyyy!!!!!!" books. Conspiracy theories make me happy.
    • 5/5
      I'm ashamed to say that this was my first Phil Dick novel. This book, published after Philip's death, was allegedly semi-autobiographical. It dealt with his personal "experiences" in 1974. From this book, I can only conclude that Phil came to Jesus Christ. His President F.F.F. (666) is a carbon copy of today's Presidents. FAPers are now, in our time--our reality--called Homeland Security. Aramchek indeed. VALIS help us all. I was deeply impressed by his notion of a perpetuated Imperial Rome--the Empire lives, as you can tell from our adaptions of Lady Liberty, the Eagle, Capitol Hill, our Bohemian Grove Caesars... Each day we see the Republic die, before our very eyes--Dick was disturbingly accurate. I can see much of Orwell in this novel as well--especially in the FAPer Vivian Kaplan. In Heinlein's words, "What a slitch!". I don't want to present the wrong picture here--there is much schizo-paranoia-mind-f'n-theorization in this book. It is beautifully genius. Go my brothers and sisters, grow the egg within your head so that you may live eternally. Pinky made me very sad, and appreciatively mindful of all life. Where the hell is Dick's android? Misplaced, my ass.
    • 3/5
      This is not one of Philip K. Dick’s best. First problem - Dick has made himself one of the main characters in the story. Many authors have inserted themselves in their own stories. The absolute best instance of this is Orson Scott Card’s “Lost Boys”, a short story so riveting and realistic (Card makes the story about himself so real you aren’t completely sure it is fiction) and so wrenching that I have never forgotten it, never read it again, and never read the novel based on the short story. Dick does not accomplish this. Rather, it feels like he just wanted something to hang the story on – and he came up with himself. Second problem – the book spends too much time delving too deeply into introspection and dialogue about the meaning of things.The first part of the book starts out okay and a good story eventually emerges. In an alternate US, the president effectively becomes a dictator – getting there by building on the paranoia of McCarthyism and the systematic destruction of every other person who could be president. He strengthens his hold with a phantom Communist menace and a Nazi-like citizen brigade turning in everyone who questions the state. In the meantime, Dick’s friend Nicholas is being visited by voices that eventually lead both of them from Berkley to Southern California and to the discovery that aliens are speaking to him. And those aliens are going to save the world.Then, the focus of the book changes – it is no longer being told by Dick, but by Nicholas. This is where the quasi-religious self-discovery comes in and, while the plot is not completely mired, it does have to struggle through the tar lake of its own importance.The ending works nicely and puts the story (and even the introspection) into a decent context, but the side-track (the part that probably reflects Dick coming to grips with many of the issues and concerns he had addressed in previous books) derails the story and is just too long and involved to be engrossing or insightful.
    • 4/5
      Some folks found RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH a rehashing of the VALIS novels but I disagree. This is one of the more humane and intelligible of PKD's later novels and I would place it among his finest efforts. A good intro to his odd oeuvre...
    • 4/5
      Dick's last book, and unusual as he himself is a character in it, and not a small one. He narrates the first and third sections of the book. Some wonderful stuff, and some inconsistant plotting with the "theories" that Phil and Nick Brady are constantly revising.

    Book preview

    Radio Free Albemuth - Philip K. Dick

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