Books › Our Friends from Frolix Eight
Our Friends from Frolix Eight
First published 1977 · 255 pages
A fast-paced, provocative collision of everyday human heartache and bizarre extraterrestrial revolution.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like stepping into a vividly strange yet hauntingly familiar funhouse mirror of our own society. It moves at a propulsive, fast-paced clip, throwing the reader into a provocative clash between private, everyday heartaches and massive public battles for salvation. The mood oscillates between hilarious absurdity—epitomized by the arrival of a ninety-ton protoplasmic slime—and deep, existential dread under a despotic oligarchy. The prose is breathtakingly insightful, carrying a literary weight that defies simple genre classification, much like the works of Borges or Calvino. It is a perfect fit for readers who crave mind-bending, unpredictable science fiction that uses bizarre alien encounters to explore the deeply human struggles of love, frustration, and revolution.
- Mood
- bizarre
- unpredictable
- vivid
- existential
- Tone
- provocative
- haunting
- hilarious
- insightful
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- private dreams versus public battles · individual and collective salvation · class struggle and revolution · humanity's familiar heartaches
- The writing
- Breathtakingly insightful and vividly imaginative, blending the hilariously familiar with the utterly strange in a literary style that defies simple classification.
- The arc
- Moves from endless, menial frustration and impending doom to a wildly unpredictable, bizarrely cosmic search for salvation.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave mind-bending, fast-paced science fiction that uses bizarre alien encounters to explore deeply human struggles and societal structures.
Content notes
- despotism
- class oppression
- revolutionary conflict
About the book
For all the strange worlds borne of his vast and vivid imagination, Philip K. Dick was largely concerned with humanity's most achingly familiar heartaches and struggles. In Our Friends From Frolix 8, he clashes private dreams against public battles in a fast-paced and provocative tale that ultimately addresses our salvation both as individuals and a whole.Nick Appleton is a menial laborer whose life is a series of endless frustrations. Willis Gram is the despotic oligarch of a planet ruled by big-brained elites. When they both fall in love with Charlotte Boyer, a feisty black marketer of revolutionary propaganda, Nick seems destined for doom. But everything takes a decidedly unpredictable turn when the revolution's leader, Thors Provoni, returns from ten years of intergalactic hiding with a ninety-ton protoplasmic slime that is bent on creating a new world order. Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Description from Open Library.
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