A unique collaborative double-page illustration at the centre of the book brings these visionary worlds together, creating the ultimate collector’s edition of two science-fiction classics. Andrew Archer’s images for A Scanner Darkly are appropriately hallucinatory, offering a glimpse of the horrors and the wonders of a bad trip. For Androids, Chris Skinner has summoned the seedy neon-drenched noir of Dick’s original vision. As he writes in the poignant foreword, included with this edition: ‘I am not a character in this novel I am the novel.’ In a nod to the tête-bêche binding style popular with early pulp publishers, the two titles are bound upside down relative to each other, and each features a different illustrator. His twin sister died when only a few weeks old, and his characters often find themselves at odds with ‘phantom twins’ and multiple identities, while his habitual drug use inspired A Scanner Darkly. Both novels, written with Dick’s trademark energy and prescience, explore many of the author’s personal obsessions.
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