Imprint

  • Gollancz

The Broken Bubble

Formats & Editions

Four people's lives intertwine and collide in this early novel from one of the SF greats

San Francisco in the 1950s, a turning point in American culture: the rise of rock and roll and the teenage lifestyle. Jim Briskin is a disc jockey on radio KOIF. He's still in love with his ex-wife, Pat - even though she's about to marry someone else at the station - and she's vacillating between them. But when he takes her to visit the desperate household of two of his teenage fans, she seduces the boy into abandoning his pregnant wife - who then claims Jim as her protector and support.

And all around them the cultural upheaval of postwar American society is manifest, by teenage outcasts who have a remote-controlled Nazi automobile they use to bump into the rich kids' cars; by Thisbe Holt, the dancer who performs for conventioneers by stuffing herself inside a clear plastic bubble; by blaring used-car ads and the conflict between generations.

Dick gives us a vision of redemption tempered with layered ironies and a lot of real humour.

Read More

Praise for The Broken Bubble

  • At once terrifying, hilarious and compassionate

Read More
Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick

Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was born in Chicago but lived in California for most of his life. He went to college at Berkeley for a year, ran a record store and had his own classical music show on a local radio station. He published his first short story, Beyond Lies the Wub in 1952. Among his many fine novels are The Man in the High Castle, Time Out of Joint, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.

More about Philip K Dick

Related books

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.