Counter-Clock World - Softcover

Dick, Philip K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007127707 ISBN 13: 9780007127702

Publisher: HarperVoyager, 2008

Synopsis

Pre-empting novels such as the Booker Prize-winning ‘Time’s Arrow’ by as much as twenty years, Counter-Clock world is a story of racial tensions told against the background of the year 1998 in which time flows in reverse as people are born old only to grow younger and younger.

Time runs backwards in the Counter-Clock World. Old people emerge from their graves, grow to middle age, youth, adolescence and childhood to be finally unborn in their mothers wombs. The most powerful - and most feared - organisation in the world is the Library, in charge of expunging the written records of events, which have no longer happened.

When a powerful black leader is reborn, the Library's one concern is to eliminate him before the renewal of racial violence tears the country apart. But in this counter-clock year of 1998 it isn't that simple...

This eerie and unforgettable premise encapsulates Philip K Dick's ambitious and inimitable approach to fiction writing. The attempts of his characters to cope with the bizarre reality of a world that runs backwards while their minds run forwards like ours, operate as a stunning critique of the way in which we perceive our own civilization.

About this title

Review:

'One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction'
Sunday Times

'Dick quietly produced serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise' Michael Moorcock

'No other writer of his generation had such a powerful intellectual presence. He has stamped himself not only on our memories but in our imaginations' Brian W. Aldiss

'The most consistently brilliant SF writer in the world' John Brunner

From the Back Cover:

Dick is the American writer who in recent years has most influenced non-American poets, novelists, and essayists. Roberto Bolano
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.
What would you do if your long-dead relatives started coming back? Who would take care of them? And what if they preferred being dead? In "Counter-Clock World," one of Dick s most theological and philosophical novels, these troubling questions are addressed; though, as always, you may have to figure out the answers yourself.
PHILIP K. DICK (1928 1982) wrote 121 short stories and 45 novels and is considered one of the most visionary authors of the twentieth century. His work is included in the Library of America and has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Eleven works have been adapted to film, including "Blade Runner" (based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"), "Total Recall"," " "Minority Report"," " and "A Scanner Darkly".""
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About this edition

• Publisher: HarperVoyager
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0007127707
• ISBN 13: 9780007127702
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200