Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

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Jason suspects that she might be a lesbian. He wonders, "Where was her head sexually? With other lesbians? Was that it?" Tomes of Prophecy and Fate: The Galactic Pot-healer has the Book of Kalends, foretelling (in many languages) what shall be. Do Kalends make things happen in writing their book? is a major question for the characters. Colony", in which a group of human colonists on a new planet discover that it's inhabited by a lifeform which can perfectly mimic inanimate objects, and which can kill and absorb the colonists by disguising itself as e.g. towels and clothing and even vehicles, and enveloping its victims. Eventually they call for a rescue ship, and gather in a group to wait for it, having discarded anything that might be anything that could kill them, including all their clothes. The rescue ship arrives ahead of schedule and the naked colonists go up the ramp inside; the mission commander fears that something is wrong, but she's persuaded by the others that it's fine, so they enter and the ramp closes behind them. Some time later, the actual rescue ship arrives, and its crew wonders where everyone is.

Philip K. Dick by 1975: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said Philip K. Dick by 1975: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

Eddie the hotel clerk – In his new parallel world, the first person Jason meets is Eddie, who is not only a clerk and accomplished mind reader, but also, as Jason eventually learns, a police fink. PKD had his own personal issues with paranoia and he gives Jason many reasons to become paranoid. As they say, even paranoids have enemies. Why is love so good...? You love someone and they leave. They come home one day and you say "What's happening?" and they say, "I got a better offer someplace else," and there they go, out of your life forever, and after that until you're dead you're carrying around this huge hunk of love with no one to give it to. And if you do find someone to give it to, the same thing happens all over.” book, stemming from the same forces which had assaulted me at the close of 1971. { PKD to Joan, 5-20-77} PKDS-4 5: The answer to that, I suppose, is that writers must live and, to live, must produce. My personal recipe — to work for a living and write in one’s spare time — seems to appeal to nobody but myself. But it would certainly reduce the enormous output of indigestible, infuriating professional science fiction which its writers should be ashamed of. And possibly would be, if it wasn’t a question of baby’s new shoes. In the short story "The Defenders", the Eastern and Western Blocs had built robots called "leadies" to carry out World War III as proxies while humanity waited out the nuclear holocaust in underground shelters. As soon as humanity went underground, the leadies stopped fighting and began repairing the damage already done, eventually presenting both sides with peace as a fait accompli and predicting that the accomplishments of a united humanity would be "unimaginably great."

It seemed to him as if he sat behind the tiller of his custom-made unique quibble, facing a red light, green light, amber light all at once; no rational response was possible. Her irrationality made it so. The terrible power, he thought, of illogic. Of the archetypes. Operating out of the drear depths of the collective unconscious which joined him and her—and everyone else—together. In a knot which never could be undone, as long as they lived. Floyd Jones, the driving character (though almost never the viewpoint character) of The World Jones Made, can see a year into the future. Too bad his future sight is actually made of memories broadcast by his future self to his past self, essentially stripping him of free will.

For classical composer John Dowland, teardrops open the soul

To Serve the Master" is set nearly 200 years after a devastating nuclear war. What's left of humanity lives in underground shelters and there's still contamination on the surface.

Now, scifi fans are frequently a tolerant bunch. Among them are fans that will tolerate abysmal writing because the author nails the science (typically physics). Others couldn't care less about hard science, but want to see interesting projections of the technology our grandchildren will get to play with (or be oppressed by). A drug such as KR-3 breaks down the brain's ability to exclude one unit of space out of another. So here versus there is lost as the brain tries to handle perception. It can't tell if an object has gone away or if it's still there. When this occurs the brain can no longer exclude alternative spatial vectors. It opens up the entire range of spatial variation. The brain can no longer tell which objects exist and which are only latent, unspatial possibilities. So as a result, competing spatial corridors are opened, into which the garbled percept system enters, and a whole new universe appears to the brain to be in the process of creation.