We Can Build You
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Narrated by:
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Dan John Miller
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By:
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Philip K. Dick
About this listen
In this lyrical and moving novel, Philip K. Dick intertwines the story of a toxic love affair with one about sentient robots, and unflinchingly views it all through the prism of mental illness - which spares neither human nor robot. The end result is one of Dick’s most quietly powerful works. When Louis Rosen’s electronic-organ company builds a pitch-perfect robotic replica of Abraham Lincoln, the firm is pulled into the orbit of a shady businessman, who is looking to use Lincoln for his own profit. Meanwhile, Rosen seeks Lincoln’s advice as he woos a woman incapable of understanding human emotions - someone who may be even more robotic than Lincoln’s replica.
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Sometimes even gods need help. In Galactic Pot-Healer that god is an alien creature known as the Glimmung, which looks alternately like a flaming wheel, a teenage girl, and a swirling mass of ocean life. In order to raise a sunken city, he summons beings from across the galaxy to Plowman’s Planet. Joe Fernwright is one of those summoned, needed for his skills at pot-healing - repairing broken ceramics. But from the moment Joe arrives on Plowman’s Planet, things start to go awry. Is the Glimmung good or evil?
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If You Like your Pottery & Gods Fractured & Funky
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The World Jones Made
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Floyd Jones has always been able to see exactly one year into his future, a gift and curse that began one year before he was even born. As a fortuneteller at a post-apocalyptic carnival, Jones is a powerful force, and may be able to free society from its paralyzing Relativism. If, that is, he can avoid the radioactively unstable government hit man on his tail.
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We can't destroy Jones
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The Game-Players of Titan
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Years ago, Earth and Titan fought a war and Earth lost. The planet was irradiated and most of the surviving population is sterile. The few survivors play an intricate and unending game called Bluff at the behest of the sluglike aliens who rule the planet. At stake in the game are two very important commodities: land and spouses. Pete Garden just lost his wife and Berkeley, California, but he has a plan to win them back. That is, if he isn’t derailed by aliens, psychic traitors, or his new wife.
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Game, set, match!
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A Maze of Death
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Delmak-O is a dangerous planet. Though there are only 14 citizens, no one can trust anyone else and death can strike at any moment. The planet is vast and largely unexplored, populated mostly by gelatinous cube-shaped beings that give cryptic advice in the form of anagrams. Deities can be spoken to directly via a series of prayer amplifiers and transmitters, but they may not be happy about it. And the mysterious building in the distance draws all the colonists to it, but when they get there each sees a different motto on the front.
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JJ Abrams YOU are a book thief.
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The Penultimate Truth
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In the future, most of humanity lives in massive underground bunkers, producing weapons for the nuclear war they’ve fled. Constantly bombarded by patriotic propaganda, the citizens of these industrial anthills believe they are waiting for the day when the war will be over and they can return above ground. But when Nick St. James, president of one anthill, makes an unauthorized trip to the surface, what he finds is more shocking than anything he could imagine.
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Not One of Dick's Best
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Our Friends from Frolix 8
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In Our Friends from Frolix 8, the world is run by an elite few. And what determines whether one is part of the elite isn’t wealth or privilege, but brains. As children, every citizen of Earth is tested; some are found to be super-smart New Men and some are Unusuals with various psychic powers. The vast majority are Undermen, performing menial jobs in an overpopulated world.
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Unhatched eggs sat on by a cosmic chicken
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If You Like your Pottery & Gods Fractured & Funky
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We can't destroy Jones
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The Game-Players of Titan
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Game, set, match!
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A Maze of Death
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- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Delmak-O is a dangerous planet. Though there are only 14 citizens, no one can trust anyone else and death can strike at any moment. The planet is vast and largely unexplored, populated mostly by gelatinous cube-shaped beings that give cryptic advice in the form of anagrams. Deities can be spoken to directly via a series of prayer amplifiers and transmitters, but they may not be happy about it. And the mysterious building in the distance draws all the colonists to it, but when they get there each sees a different motto on the front.
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JJ Abrams YOU are a book thief.
- By Darwin8u on 08-24-13
By: Philip K. Dick
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The Penultimate Truth
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the future, most of humanity lives in massive underground bunkers, producing weapons for the nuclear war they’ve fled. Constantly bombarded by patriotic propaganda, the citizens of these industrial anthills believe they are waiting for the day when the war will be over and they can return above ground. But when Nick St. James, president of one anthill, makes an unauthorized trip to the surface, what he finds is more shocking than anything he could imagine.
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- By Richard on 03-21-12
By: Philip K. Dick
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Our Friends from Frolix 8
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- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Unhatched eggs sat on by a cosmic chicken
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The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
On Mars, the harsh climate could make any colonist turn to drugs to escape a dead-end existence. Especially when the drug is Can-D, which transports its users into the idyllic world of a Barbie-esque character named Perky Pat. When the mysterious Palmer Eldritch arrives with a new drug called Chew-Z, he offers a more addictive experience, one that might bring the user closer to God. But in a world where everyone is tripping, no promises can be taken at face value.
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Fantastic and current
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The Crack in Space
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- Narrated by: Benjamin L. Darcie
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When a repairman accidentally discovers a parallel universe, everyone sees it as an opportunity, whether as a way to ease Earth’s overcrowding, set up a personal kingdom, or hide an inconvenient mistress. But when a civilization is found already living there, the people on this side of the crack are sent scrambling to discover their motives. Will these parallel humans come in peace? Or are they just as corrupt and ill-intentioned as the people of this world?
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Relevant reading for 2020
- By Anonymous User on 11-06-20
By: Philip K. Dick
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Martian Time-Slip
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On an arid Mars, local bigwigs compete with Earth-bound interlopers to buy up land before the Un develops it and its value skyrockets. Martian Union leader Arnie Kott has an ace up his sleeve, though: an autistic boy named Manfred who seems to have the ability to see the future. In the hopes of gaining an advantage on a Martian real estate deal, powerful people force Manfred to send them into the future, where they can learn about development plans.
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Autism, schizophrenia, and Martians
- By Darwin8u on 01-22-17
By: Philip K. Dick
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Dr. Futurity
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Dr. Jim Parsons awakens after a car accident, he finds himself in a future populated almost entirely by the young. But for the young to keep running the world, death is fetishized, and those who survive to old age are put down. In such a world, Parsons - with his innate desire to save lives - is a criminal and an outcast. For one revolutionary group, however, he may be just the savior they need to heal and revive their cryogenically frozen leader.
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Time's Second Arrow
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-16
By: Philip K. Dick
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Confessions of a Crap Artist
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jack Isidore doesn’t see the world like most people. According to his brother-in-law, Charley, he’s a crap artist, obsessed with his own bizarre theories and ideas, which he fanatically records in his many notebooks. He is so grossly unequipped for real life that his sister and brother-in-law feel compelled to rescue him from it. But while Fay and Charley Hume put on a happy face for the world, they prove to be just as sealed off from reality, in thrall to obsessions that are slightly more acceptable than Jack’s but a great deal uglier.
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The moods of the mass can't be fathomed...
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-18
By: Philip K. Dick
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Clans of the Alphane Moon
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For years, the third moon in the Alphane system was used as a psychiatric hospital. But when war broke out between Earth and the Alphanes, the hospital was left unguarded and the inmates set up their own society, made up of competing factions based on their particular mental illnesses. When Earth sends a delegation to take back the colony, they find enclaves of depressives, schizophrenics, paranoiacs, and others uniting to repel what they see as a foreign invasion.
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One of my favorite
- By M.Biblioswine on 05-06-21
By: Philip K. Dick
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Dr. Bloodmoney
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
What happens after the bombs drop? This is the troubling question Philip K. Dick addresses with Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb. It is the story of a world reeling from the effects of nuclear annihilation and fallout, a world where mutated humans and animals are the norm, and the scattered survivors take comfort from a disc jockey endlessly circling the globe in a broken-down satellite.
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Post nuclear apocalyptic surburban middle class
- By Michael G Kurilla on 01-04-18
By: Philip K. Dick
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Counter-Clock World
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Counter-Clock World, time has begun moving backward. People greet each other with "goodbye", blow smoke into cigarettes, and rise from the dead. When one of those rising dead is the famous and powerful prophet Anarch Peak, a number of groups start a mad scramble to find him first - but their motives are not exactly benevolent, because Anarch Peak may just be worth more dead than alive, and these groups will do whatever they must to send him back to the grave.
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Our Man in the Graveyard
- By Darwin8u on 01-15-16
By: Philip K. Dick
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The Cosmic Puppets
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Following an inexplicable urge, Ted Barton returns to his idyllic Virginia hometown for a vacation, but when he gets there, he is shocked to discover that the town has utterly changed. The stores and houses are all different and he doesn't recognize anybody. The mystery deepens when he checks the town's historical records...and reads that he died nearly twenty years earlier.
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Remember Millgate?
- By Darwin8u on 06-21-16
By: Philip K. Dick
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Eye in the Sky
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When a routine tour of a particle accelerator goes awry, Jack Hamilton and the rest of his tour group find themselves in a world ruled by Old Testament morality, where the smallest infraction can bring about a plague of locusts. Escape from that world is not the end, though, as they plunge into a Communist dystopia and a world where everything is an enemy. Philip K. Dick was aggressively individualistic, and no worldview is safe from his acerbic and hilarious takedowns.
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Báb's Treatise Between the Two Fern-like Sanctuaries
- By Darwin8u on 01-31-15
By: Philip K. Dick
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Valis
- Valis, Book 1
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
What is VALIS? This question is at the heart of Philip K. Dick's groundbreaking novel, the first book in his defining trilogy. When a beam of pink light begins giving a schizophrenic man named Horselover Fat (who just might also be known as Philip K. Dick) visions of an alternate Earth where the Roman Empire still reigns, he must decide whether he is crazy or whether a godlike entity is showing him the true nature of the world.
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Life changing
- By Michael on 03-16-16
By: Philip K. Dick
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Now Wait for Last Year
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Earth is trapped in the crossfire of an unwinnable war between two alien civilizations. Its leader is perpetually on the verge of death. And on top of that, a new drug has just entered circulation - a drug that haphazardly sends its users traveling through time. In an attempt to escape his doomed marriage, Dr. Eric Sweetscent becomes caught up in all of it. But he has questions: Is Earth on the right side of the war? Is he supposed to heal Earth’s leader or keep him sick? And can he change the harrowing future that the drug has shown him?
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Last/Best Self-help Book for Couples and Suicides
- By Darwin8u on 02-07-15
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To all appearances, John Wilder has all the trappings of success, circa 1960: a promising career in advertising, a loving family, a beautiful apartment, even a country home. John's evenings are spent with associates at quiet Manhattan lounges and his weekends with friends at glittering cocktail parties. But something deep within this seemingly perfect life has long since gone wrong.
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7 hours and 27 minutes pure blisd
- By Mia on 01-05-13
By: Richard Yates
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A Key to the Suite
- A Novel
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. Floyd Hubbard arrives at a convention at a busy beach-town hotel with a mission from the top brass: ax a long-time manager in the sales team who has been slacking off for too long. Hubbard’s a loyal company man, but his background is engineering, not cold-blooded corporate warfare. Little does Hubbard realize that the first grenade has already been lobbed - and he’s the target.Cory Barlund has heard more than her fair share of odd requests in her years as a high-class call girl, so this one’s right up her alley...
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Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
- By Lifeisshort on 01-23-15
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The Immigrants
- By: Howard Fast
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a love story of great beauty and great tenderness, the kind of love story that entangles the listener in the lives of the characters, so that after the story is over, one continues to live with those characters. And fortunately, the listener will not have to say farewell to these characters, since it is the first in a series that will tell the story of three Californian families over the course of the 20th century.
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Narration style kills the story.
- By Glynis on 11-27-14
By: Howard Fast
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God Save the Mark
- A Novel of Crime and Confusion
- By: Donald E. Westlake
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
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What, you ask, is a Fred Fitch? Well, for one thing, Fred Fitch is the man with the most extensive collection of fake receipts, phony bills of sale, and counterfeit sweepstakes tickets in the Western hemisphere, and possibly in the entire world. For another thing, Fred Fitch may be the only New York City resident in the twentieth century to buy a money machine.
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American Gods for the Grifter set!
- By William R. on 09-06-11
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Seize the Day
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children; at odds with his vain, successful father; failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as “the type that loses the girl”); and in a financial mess.
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Why?
- By Ashraf Abaza on 05-16-19
By: Saul Bellow
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The Night Listener
- By: Armistead Maupin
- Narrated by: Armistead Maupin
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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This unprecedented audio project is as thought-provoking as it is mesmeric. The Night Listener is a meditation on the power of voices and the faith we place in them, and an extraordinary audio experience from an American literary icon.
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Wheels within wheels
- By Naomi on 07-06-03
By: Armistead Maupin
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The Keep
- The Adversary Cycle, Book 1
- By: F. Paul Wilson
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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"Something is murdering my men." Thus reads the message received from a Nazi commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims. When an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find something that's both powerful and terrifying. Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore - who just happens to be Jewish - to shed some light on the mysterious happenings.
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At long last, The classic horror novel on Audible
- By Shieldslinger on 07-22-20
By: F. Paul Wilson
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The Other Side of Midnight
- By: Sidney Sheldon
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In Paris, in Washington, and in Greece, an innocent American becomes a pawn in a game of vengeance and betrayal. Catherine Douglas is a woman caught in a web of four lives intertwined by passion as her handsome husband pursues an incredibly beautiful film star, while Constantin Demeris, a legendary Greek tycoon, tightens the strands that control them all.
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Sheldon being Sheldon
- By Marise Gonzalez Doty on 09-25-24
By: Sidney Sheldon
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Perchance to Dream
- Selected Stories
- By: Charles Beaumont
- Narrated by: J. Paul Boehmer, Gabrielle de Cuir, Harlan Ellison, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer. It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone - for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.
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Contents
- By Ralph Freaster on 06-22-16
By: Charles Beaumont
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Bright Lights, Big City
- By: Jay McInerney
- Narrated by: Daniel Passer
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The tragicomedy of a young man in New York City, a writer, never named, who works as a fact-checker for a prestigious magazine. He struggles with the reality of his mother's death, alienation, and the seductive pull of drugs and a vibrant nightlife.
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Curiously, mundanely real
- By Amber on 01-07-12
By: Jay McInerney
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Unhatched eggs sat on by a cosmic chicken
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Ragle Gumm has a unique job: Every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn’t consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town, in 1959. At least, that’s what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet named Marilyn Monroe, whom he’s never heard of. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them, like "bowl of flowers" and "soft-drink stand".
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Mediocre Mother to Gravity's Rainbow and the Truman Show?
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Life changing
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On a ravaged Earth, fate and circumstances bring together a disparate group of characters, including a fascist with dreams of a coup, a composer who plays his instrument with his mind, a First Lady who calls all the shots, and the world’s last practicing therapist. And they all must contend with an underclass that is beginning to ask a few too many questions, aided by a man called Loony Luke and his very persuasive pet alien.
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In a mad world, only the mad are sane.
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Radio Free Albemuth
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In Radio Free Albemuth, his last novel, Philip K. Dick morphed and recombined themes that had informed his fiction from A Scanner Darkly to VALIS and produced a wild, impassioned work that sounds like a visionary alternate history of the United States. Agonizingly suspenseful, darkly hilarious, and filled with enough conspiracy theories to thrill the most hardened paranoid, Radio Free Albemuth is proof of Dick's stature as our century's greatest science fiction writer.
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The Pistol to the Head
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Dr. Futurity
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When Dr. Jim Parsons awakens after a car accident, he finds himself in a future populated almost entirely by the young. But for the young to keep running the world, death is fetishized, and those who survive to old age are put down. In such a world, Parsons - with his innate desire to save lives - is a criminal and an outcast. For one revolutionary group, however, he may be just the savior they need to heal and revive their cryogenically frozen leader.
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Time's Second Arrow
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When a repairman accidentally discovers a parallel universe, everyone sees it as an opportunity, whether as a way to ease Earth’s overcrowding, set up a personal kingdom, or hide an inconvenient mistress. But when a civilization is found already living there, the people on this side of the crack are sent scrambling to discover their motives. Will these parallel humans come in peace? Or are they just as corrupt and ill-intentioned as the people of this world?
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Relevant reading for 2020
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Galactic Pot-Healer
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Sometimes even gods need help. In Galactic Pot-Healer that god is an alien creature known as the Glimmung, which looks alternately like a flaming wheel, a teenage girl, and a swirling mass of ocean life. In order to raise a sunken city, he summons beings from across the galaxy to Plowman’s Planet. Joe Fernwright is one of those summoned, needed for his skills at pot-healing - repairing broken ceramics. But from the moment Joe arrives on Plowman’s Planet, things start to go awry. Is the Glimmung good or evil?
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If You Like your Pottery & Gods Fractured & Funky
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Volume I: The King of the Elves
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The King of the Elves is the opening installment of a uniform, five-volume edition of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, expanded from the previous Collected Stories set to incorporate new story notes, and two added tales, one previously unpublished, and one uncollected.
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Fantastic stories!
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The World Jones Made
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Floyd Jones has always been able to see exactly one year into his future, a gift and curse that began one year before he was even born. As a fortuneteller at a post-apocalyptic carnival, Jones is a powerful force, and may be able to free society from its paralyzing Relativism. If, that is, he can avoid the radioactively unstable government hit man on his tail.
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We can't destroy Jones
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By: Philip K. Dick
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Dr. Bloodmoney
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- Unabridged
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What happens after the bombs drop? This is the troubling question Philip K. Dick addresses with Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb. It is the story of a world reeling from the effects of nuclear annihilation and fallout, a world where mutated humans and animals are the norm, and the scattered survivors take comfort from a disc jockey endlessly circling the globe in a broken-down satellite.
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Post nuclear apocalyptic surburban middle class
- By Michael G Kurilla on 01-04-18
By: Philip K. Dick
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A Scanner Darkly
- By: Philip K. Dick
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- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Drugs are bad
- By Randall on 04-25-09
By: Philip K. Dick
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The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
- By: Jonathan Lethem - editor, Pamela Jackson - editor, Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 52 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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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 is the definitive presentation of Dick’s brilliant, and epic, work.
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Fascinating Journals of a Garage Philosopher
- By Rich S. on 10-05-13
By: Jonathan Lethem - editor, and others
What listeners say about We Can Build You
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ben Hallum
- 04-10-23
meh
not sure what his plan was with this book. It somehow felt like it was all over the place while simultaneously feeling like nothing was happening at all.
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- Jake L.
- 06-05-18
Unexpectedly fun to listen to.
So, I can't seem to find a straight answer on this, but it seems to me that this could be a deliberate prequel to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep--having JUST finished that one right before this, it is not difficult to connect additional meaning to the events, names, and technology that's shared between the two stories. Perhaps it's similar to the "Man With No Name" trilogy--certainly not a direct correlation between the stories, but maybe a story that takes place in a parallel universe. In any case, it's super fun to connect the dots, even if they weren't intended to be connected. The tone is COMPLETELY different from the aforementioned book--the two business partners at the forefront of the story are like Click and Clack from the old NPR show, Car Talk, and the addition of an android Abraham Lincoln feels like it could have easily inspired Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
I also grew up in the piano business, so it had me laughing out loud to be reading the uncanny realism and accuracy that PKD captured regarding the piano/home organ business in the late '70s and early '80s which was when my dad's business really had it's hay days. He either did some serious research, or maybe had a chapter of his life where he himself worked in piano sales. That's such a bizarre business to feature in a novel, but it was such an unexpected delight to stumble upon.
The plot is heavenly affected by trying to figure out how to profit from creating electronic doppelgangers of historical figures, piecing together their virtual consciousnesses from the vast libraries of knowledge recorded about them through history. There isn't much time wasted on trying to make it seem plausible--that isn't important to the story--nor is there much time wasted re-hashing trite philosophical ideas about whether or not these androids (or "simulacra" as they call them in this story) have "souls," etc. It is self apparent within only a few lines of discourse that whether or not they were created by the hands of man, they embody the same characteristics that make humans "human," and therefore, the characters just roll with it and move on with the real meat of the story.
The last few chapters seem on the surface to get derailed from the rest of the story, deviating from the android-driven plot and delving into a world of schizophrenic psychosis, but after letting it sink in, I feel like that's part of the real meat of the underlying themes PKD may have been exploring. We're already thinking about what's on the surface--are androids alive?--but then we're offered more related questions: Are the visions of our minds worth validation? Is a fantasy life inside a schizophrenic delusion worth as much as the reality of an unreciprocated love? Is the illusion of life from an artificial intelligence the same kind of delusion? Does it matter?
What I think I appreciate most is that we aren't ever asked these questions, nor presented any conclusions. We're simply offered the situations that the characters encounter, and are left to ask our own questions about the implications.
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- Darwin8u
- 01-15-16
Simulacra for me & simulacra for you.
“Hell,' I said, 'love is an American cult. We take it too seriously; it's practically a national religion.”
― Philip K. Dick, We Can Build You
Is this a PKD novel? Does it contain?
1. Madness? Yes.
2. Paranoia? Yes.
3. Simulacra? Yes.
4. Hallucinations? Yes.
5. Funky inventions? Yes.
6. Metaphysical explorations of what it means to be alive? Hell yes.
7. Loneliness? Yes.
8. Theology? Not so much.
9. A Fascist-type government? Not in this one.
10. A Large Omnipresent Industry? Yes.
11. Unreliable narrator? Yes.
12. Life on another planet? Yes.
13. A Murder? Yes.
14. A US President? Yes.
15. Has it been made into a movie? Not that I'm aware of.
This novel scores 12/15 on the PKD meter, and most certainly is a work of PKD.
The aspect of PKD that makes his novels work for me, I've recently decided, is their ability to span an almost base-level of human existence; the greasy hair, wrinkled clothes-level but link it directly to some metaphysical otherworldliness. He does this not only through his exploration of big themes and ideas, but also through clever beginnings. I love the idea that the company that starts making simulacra in this novel was a small, Western electronic organ company that is trying to schlep its organs to various people using sleazy sales practices.
Because of a changing economy, they arrive at the idea of constructing a simulacra of both Edwin M. Stanton AND Abraham Lincoln. Genius. Anyway, the simulacrum idea is the catalyst that Dick uses to explore his often examined ideas about what it means to be alive, human and to love. I adore that both Lincoln and Stanton appear both just as alive and probably more rational than most of the humans they are interacting with. I love that Lincoln ends up giving relationship advice to the narrator (who happens to be in love with a woman who today would out spectrum Sheldon Cooper). Anyway, it was good, solid PKD. Not a place to start, but if you find yourself on a PKD tear, not a bad book to drive through.
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16 people found this helpful
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- M.Biblioswine
- 04-19-21
This is neither the best nor the worst
This is not PKD at his best nor at his worst. It is good. I have been fond of it for a long time. The performance is very good. The voice talent often sounds like the late actor Bill Paxton. That is entertaining.
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- Allens
- 10-28-13
Pathethic
I thought Phillip K. Dick was a better writer. This book did not age well. Not at all. Pass on this. Narration isn't too great either.
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- Matthew D. Ceo
- 11-13-21
Love PKD, did not love this book
It's clearly a precursor to future works, but it was quite boring and uneventful. the narrator's female voice was an odd choice, too.
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