Enjoy fast, FREE delivery, exclusive deals and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery

List Price: $15.99 Details

Save: $6.20 (39%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Tuesday, October 17 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 5 hrs 40 mins

Select delivery location

In Stock

$$9.79 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Ships from

Amazon.com

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$3.99 delivery Thursday, October 19. Details

Or fastest delivery October 13 - 17. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Acceptable | Details

Sold by Easterseals-Goodwill Northern Rocky Mountain

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Follow the Author

Philip K. Dick

Radio Free Albemuth Paperback – October 13, 2020

by Philip K. Dick (Author)

4.6 162 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$13.49

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$5.95

$7.95 with discounted Audible membership

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$6.49

Paperback

"Please retry"

$9.79

$5.79

Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$49.97

—

Kindle
$13.49 Read with our Free App
Audiobook
$5.95 $5.95 with discounted Audible membership
Hardcover
from $6.49

2 Used from $6.49 14 Collectible from $14.99
Paperback
$9.79

18 Used from $5.79 26 New from $9.79
Audio CD
$49.97

1 New from $49.97

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$9.79","priceAmount":9.79,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"79","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"SEw%2BgNAq4RDIHNfWE2pOvmXs8G%2FosPqR2n8lT6lhEOlugMt3MtNryCCVMbPkNiSAfCf26ofTIDZbnsJ%2B6HL6OVdNI%2B97PO7T%2FpZV5wP%2Bf8dFvOLg%2FRfFGOKwBCRRzLrtx8n%2FukFM0KXCaFO6hA8DVw%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$5.79","priceAmount":5.79,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"5","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"79","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"SEw%2BgNAq4RDIHNfWE2pOvmXs8G%2FosPqRgkV00CNXPjyxzkHSDjQSaU2G460a6UUsxjHM1cMMudmNh1CIPGq%2BMUXpfaJatBC1pK9hggAbvUQCGGIJCfdRYokzo%2F%2BA9i7rCyLzLpGMlwH3%2BPUNjrtYrkTLSiqNhWKQ6h6cTVI4sy7hCnej%2BKqBEn63l26BEY0V","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

A philosophical science fiction novel from Hugo Award–winning author Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth is a visionary alternate history of a dystopian United States, full of the conspiracy theories and religious themes that became the foundation for his celebrated VALIS trilogy.

It is the late 1960s, and a paranoid incompetent has schemed his way into the White House and convulsed America into a vicious war against imaginary, internal enemies. Philip K. Dick, a struggling science fiction writer, is trying to keep from becoming one of that war's casualties.

Meanwhile, Dick's best friend, record executive Nicholas Brady, is receiving transmissions from an extraterrestrial entity that may also happen to be God—an entity that apparently wants him to overthrow the president.

Suspenseful and darkly hilarious, Radio Free Albemuth cements Dick as the twentieth century's greatest prankster-prophet.

"An intense, often very moving book...touching on all the major Philip K. Dick themes."—Philadelphia Inquirer

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Mariner Books Classics
Publication date

October 13, 2020
Dimensions

5.31 x 0.72 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0358449030
ISBN-13

978-0358449034
See all details

Frequently bought together

$9.79

Get it as soon as Tuesday, Oct 17

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

$12.99

Get it as soon as Tuesday, Oct 17

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

$11.99

Get it as soon as Wednesday, Oct 18

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Choose items to buy together.

Philip K. Dick
958
Paperback
50 offers from $5.95
Philip K. Dick
3,422
Paperback
68 offers from $3.15
Philip K. Dick
556
Paperback
42 offers from $4.91
Philip K. Dick
3,090
Paperback
71 offers from $5.11
Philip K. Dick
1,722
Paperback
55 offers from $5.50
Philip K. Dick
1,000
Paperback
66 offers from $3.92

Editorial Reviews

Review

“An intense, often very moving book . . . touching on all the major Philip K. Dick themes.”—Philadelphia Inquirer —

About the Author

Over a writing career that spanned three decades, PHILIP K. DICK (1928–1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, as well as television's The Man in the High Castle. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, including the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and between 2007 and 2009, the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books Classics; Reissue edition (October 13, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0358449030
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0358449034
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.72 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #78,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #188 in Alternate History Science Fiction (Books)
- #321 in Alien Invasion Science Fiction
- #651 in Dystopian Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.6 162 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Important information

To report an issue with this product, click here.

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Philip K. Dick

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Over a writing career that spanned three decades, Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned toward deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film; notably: Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and in 2007 the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

162 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Don’t let this be your introduction to PKD

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2022

Verified Purchase

When I was a teenager, a friend gave me a copy of VALIS to read while recovering from a terrible bout with my wisdom teeth. I was immediately hooked. I loved the themes of religion mixed with sci fi and this “metaphysical philosophy.” It was perfect for me as a young adult and I’ve gone on to read most if not all of PKD’s books.

This is not VALIS. The ideas are all there, but the execution is seriously lacking. It’s a lot of being “talked at” rather than the narrative revealing the themes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s super imaginative. Totally opens your mind to different ways of thinking about god, history, and politics. I definitely enjoyed my recent read of this maybe even more than I did when I read this probably 20 years ago. But it in no way should this be your intro to PKD. It most likely won’t hook you enough to want to explore his other, much better novels.

With that said, the biggest takeaway for anyone reading this book should be how prophetic PKD was. This book reads like it’s almost about the current state of our country: where politics have almost become cult like and people are so invested, almost excited, to rat people out, to mix people’s words and destroy lives of strangers. It’s eerie, honestly and shows just how good of an author he was (and that history repeats itself quite often.)

I look forward to working my way through his Exegesis for a deeper dive into the mind that could conceive of these themes that I enjoy so much. He gets me thinking in different ways and it’s so exciting to feel that spark that I felt as a kid first reading VALIS. So go read that and the rest of the trilogy, and all his other books, before reading this one.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Brandon Matuja

Philip K. Dick's best? Definitely one of his top best.

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2018

Verified Purchase

This book almost reads like a fantastic "swan song" from PKD, but I forget that, although posthumously published in 1985, it was actually written in 1976, and was the first book (pre-dating the so-called "VALIS Trilogy") to describe a lot of his own actual mystical experiences in February and March of 1974.

This book is amazingly good. I don't understand why it got such a bad review from the one writer cited and quoted on the wikipedia article for this novel. To me, it is probably the most mature and enjoyable of his books, rivaling "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer" in sheer novelistic skill; for anyone who says Philip K. Dick wrote hurried, choppy, novels of varying quality, they need to read this book! His characterizations, dialogue, arranging of plots and events, etc., are sheer genius. And of course it's amazing to realize (when you research Dick's mystical experiences) just how many of Nicholas Brady's--the novel's protagonist's--mystical experiences were actually Dick's! This novel really is beautiful in many ways, with wonderful passages (but that's common in Dick's work). In fact, the scene where Brady actually meets Valis / The Father, in the vision near the end, is probably the most beautiful passage in Dick's work that I ever read. It's also essentially a Christian book, and it's very encouraging for Christians to read Philip's praise and anticipation of Jesus's return, although Philip was never as dogmatic or biased as many Christians have been.

It IS a kind of dystopian novel, set in a slightly alternate, slightly worse post-World-War-II America (though I'd venture to suggest Dick was writing a lot of true-to-life happenings, since he himself went through the chaotic 1960s and the paranoid Cold War years). Much of it reads like Orwell's "1984". But whereas that novel got bleaker and darker, with a very dark and pessimistic conclusion, THIS novel reveals more and more hope and light--through the divine, supernatural figures of VALIS--as it goes on, so that although the realistic, disturbing conclusion arrives, at the same time there have been more and more beatific and benevolent cosmic revelations and visions revealed to Brady and the others.

I prefer this work to "VALIS", which was apparently the re-written version of this novel, and which seems to me to've obviously reflected a lot of Dick's turmoil, anger, and confusion surrounding his mystical experiences and life-events at the time, whereas this one has more positive resolution, clarity, and peace in trying to understand them.

For what it's worth, in my opinion there is not really a "VALIS Trilogy" at all. "The Divine Invasion" is another great novel from around this time, and so is "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer", but they hardly link up to either "VALIS" or even this novel at all--especially "TToTA". They are rather stand-alone books which do have some common, connecting threads. In fact, if I were ever to suggest there being a "trilogy" of these novels, I would suggest this novel, then "VALIS", then "The Divine Invasion", not "VALIS", "The Divine Invasion", and "The Transmigration..." which is the "official" "trilogy".

In summary, this is one of Dick's most mature, well-written, interesting, beautiful, poetic, moving, spiritual, (and, yes, Christian) novels.

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

John Atkinson

PKD the library probably doesn’t have

Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2021

Verified Purchase

This novel makes a very brief appearance as a film that characters are watching in the novel VALIS, which is pretty well regarded among PKD fans, usually much more so than Radio Free Albemuth, but frankly I enjoyed this novel more at the pure enjoyment of reading level.
His publisher didn’t like the novel so PKD went and wrote VALIS and I find it hard to believe that the publisher would’ve liked it either. He spends most of that novel in philosophical ruminations. Radio Free Albemuth is a much more characteristic PKD sci-fi story, perhaps with more of the stylistic feel of a novel like A Scanner Darkly.
His style continued to change through the years and the novels at the very end of his life demonstrate this.
Both of these novels are ways that PKD tried to work through unusual experiences in his own life.
Most of PKD’s dystopias are the cardboard cut-out variety but this one is more personal and nasty to the protagonists. It’s almost as if he’s finally bringing totalitarian government down to the real human level. What it meant for me was developing a much stronger dislike of the forces (particularly his Hitler youth-like characters) lined up against the main characters.
Both of the novels feature Phil himself as a character. I found that pretty amusing.
There’s a film of this novel and Philip K. Dick is also a character in the movie. It’s on Amazon, also.
Face it: if you’ve read to this point, you’re a PKD freak and you were going to read this book at some point anyway. I’ve checked out his novels at my library and I’ve read him online through my library, and this novel was not available, and I live in a very large city with many library resources.
I didn’t find a better deal than the one I got on Kindle.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Mark Pack

A good read, if not the sort of book the back cover suggests

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2010

Verified Purchase

Philip K Dick's Radio Free Albemuth is in many ways an autobiography in novel form. PKD himself appears as the narrator in the first and third sections (and a key character in the second section), with the events of the book mirroring his own personal experiences in 1974.

In that year he experienced a series of strange visions, initially probably the result of medication but increasingly less likely as the series went on. In the book, one of the main characters similarly has visions and tries to work out what they mean and what is causing them, cycling through options such as religious experiences and aliens as new visions come to him.

As in many of Philip K Dick's books, the science fiction is gently in the background, occasionally playing a key role in the plot but never really what the book is about. The same applies to the authoritarian government and plots to overthrow it. This part of the book features heavily on the cover of many editions, making the book sound far more like an action thriller than the reality. However, the book is about paranoia and trust - how do you react to apparently impossible events in your life and how do your friendships cope when put under strain by an authoritarian government?

The label "science fiction" has probably deprived the book of the plaudits from literary circles it would have otherwise won, for the playful self-referential role of author as narrator is written in a way that rivals much lauded authors such as Primo Levi. At one point the narrator (a thinly disguised version of the author) talks about a book he has written (using the genuine title of a PKD novel), which in turn is about an imaginary alternative history, and a second book (again a genuine PKD novel) that is about a hallucinating character similar to the narrator's best friend in this novel. At another point the narrator is criticised by his best friend in words that could just as well be addressed to the real Philip K Dick,

"Sorry, Phil, but - well, why can't you write about normal people, the way other authors do? Normal people with normal interests who do normal things. Instead, when your books open, there is this misfit holding some miserable low job, and he takes drugs and his girlfriend is in a mental institution but he still loves her..."

The book itself did not get published during PKD's lifetime as requests for major changes from the publishers saw Dick sideline the text and instead use it as a basis for the first part of his three-volume Valis trilogy. The text was published after his death. Unlike many books which are not published during an author's lifetime because they simply were not very good, this one is an enjoyable read - as long as you aren't expecting a fast moving science fiction thriller.

9 people found this helpful

Shantiq

a sign-of-things-to-come ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 3, 2016

Verified Purchase

The events recounted/fictionalized in Radio Free Albemuth come from an experience PKD went through in 1974; a year during which I read a book called Don Juan A Yaqui Way Of Knowledge from 1968; which at the time was also "hard" to understand.
Radio Free Albemuth and Valis overwhelmed many readers when they saw the light in 1981/1985 as the events overwhelmed PKD in 74. In the book he calls God Valis [vast active intelligence system] he also calls him Zebra; PKD did not have the language in 74 to term what had happened to him; in fact Western society did not by and large have the wherewithal to describe those kind of events which these days (post 90s New Age/Ayahuasca/Iboga/David Icke/Shamanic penetration in Western Culture/Ascension) we would term simply "Waking Up"...

PKD went through what Stanislav Grof in his amazing book[s] calls Spiritual Emergency ...

This is the thing about PKD on everything he was ahead of the game; sometimes by 40 or 50 years ... his own awakening overwhelmed him like a tsunami of complex meaning and interpretations he tried to fit in a Newtonian vision when really Quantum was the only possible starting point ... he tried for the rest of his days to fit the experience into a "normal" framework ... Valis/Radio Free Albemuth are that in many ways ... this attempt ...
Radio Free Albemuth as a text says to quote Neil Young "More to the picture than meets the eye"; Radio Free Albemuth heralds the widening of consciousness which became much more widespread in the 90s and beyond: PKD woke up in 74; he saw past lives he saw the collapsing of time as a concept when in the fourth and higher dimensions; he "channeled" information from his Higher Self/Guide/Guardian Angel and knew all this was real but did not as did not his society have the vernacular to express it; so he gave us Valis Radio Free Albemuth and Divine Invasion to try and explain; and he did it in PKD style: with boundless humour ...

Radio Free Albemuth is a document from those times; a mystic spiritual text by an overwhelmed PKD who was never mad never schizophrenic; simply ahead of the times ... a wayshower a true genius; think of Radio Free Albemuth and Valis too as a sign-of-things-to-come couched in a highly humorous vein ... it is SO enjoyable a read

4 people found this helpful

bravo2 zero

even more dick!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 16, 2012

Verified Purchase

i read this book with trepidation, because with p.k.d. books concerning drugs, religion etc,he sometimes got a little bogged down with detail,but i survived and realised, that ,it is probably one of his most important books and in a lot of ways very relevant.
many websites are touting the film of the book and having seen the trailer for it i would urge all p.k.d. fans to lobby for its general release and then onto dvd asap because it is 2 years old already...........

J B

RFA

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 7, 2013

Verified Purchase

It's great because it is by Philip K Dick

If you have seen some great films, its because the directors stole a few ideas from PKD.

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on May 4, 2018

Verified Purchase

Everything is perfect!

See more reviews

Image Unavailable

Follow the Author