1960 / Audiobook / 139 pages / USA
**
Whether or not it was really the first sci-fi novel he wrote, as Wikipedia's dubious bibliography claims, this is clearly a less assured writer expanding his prescient short story about AIs stealing AIs' jobs by throwing in generic sci-fi action rather than idisyncratic oddities. The uncharacteristically straightforward and methodical plot is refreshing, but lightweight.
1960 / Audiobook / 138 pages / USA
***
Heady themes like ethnic cleansing and euthenasia are the subjects of this early PKDystopia, dealt with in very trivial ways. Then our blacked-up hero goes on a pulpy time travel adventure featuring a literal time's arrow and it gets more fun.
1957 / Audiobook / 127 pages / USA
***
Like a precognitive audition for The Twilight Zone, this short early novel of suburban cosmic horror has very few of what would become established as PKD tropes, helping it to stand out in the canon if not the genre.
1955 / Audiobook / 188 pages / USA
***
The first distinctively PKD novel, its pot-luck dystopia is more satirical than credible, but could have been a classic with more recognition in the lottery of fame. The disparate plot strands don't pull together all that well, but that's the case for a lot of his books, even with experience. It's a lottery.
1956 / Audiobook / 192 pages / USA
***
A particularly dark and philosophical work exploring moral relativism and determinism, lightened somewhat by compulsory aliens because it's the fifties.
1956 / Audiobook / 160 pages / USA
***
The satirical fascist dystopia is slowly maturing, but not as tangible as they'll be later, feeling much like the contemporary '50s but with interstellar travel and borrowing from Bradbury. You can probably read more into this tale of futile rebellion than the author concerned himself with when bashing out words for food.
