Solar Lottery

Hired to work for Quizmaster Verrick, the man in charge of the strange game in which the ruler of the Universe is selected, Ted Bentley is unaware that Leon Cartwright, the man destined to take over Verrick's job, is targeted for assassination or that Verrick is plotting to resume control of a not-so-random universe. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

The universe is not nearly as random as it appears in this fun, pulpy early work from the award-winning science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick.

This book is about the virtues and social justice of random distribution. The first chapter is a utopian fragment about a future country, Aleatoria, where everything, including political power, jobs and money, is distributed by lottery. The rest of the book is devoted to considering the idea of the lottery in terms of the conventional components and assumptions of theories of justice, and to reviewing the possible applications of lottery distribution in contemporary society. This revised second edition includes a new introduction.

A last judgment on the genre from science fiction's foremost critic

What if you could see into the future? Award-winning author Philip K. Dick examines precognition in this influential novel.

A study of the novels and short stories of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick (1928-1982)with presentation of a literary chronology of his career.

Introduction: Individual and Society -- Henry James, The Princess Casamassima (1886) -- Jack London, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. (1910/63) -- Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men (1946) -- Philip K. Dick, Solar Lottery (1955) -- Richard Condon, The Manchurian Candidate (1959) -- Loren Singer, The Parallax View (1970) -- Don DeLillo, Libra (1988) -- Stephen King, The Dead Zone (1979) -- Stephen King, 11/22/63 (2011) -- Mark Costello, Big If (2002) -- Nicholson Baker, Checkpoint (2004) -- Noah Hawley, The Good Father (2012) -- Conclusion.