Time Out of Joint.

DICK, Philip K.

$9,800.00

Item Number: 95875

New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1959.

First edition of Philip K. Dick’s first novel published in hardcover format. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by Philip K. Dick on the front free endpaper. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with light rubbing and a few small closed tears. Jacket design by Arthur Hawkins. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box made by the Harcourt Bindery. Rare and desirable signed.

One of Dick's earliest novels, Time Out of Joint, epitomizes the common theme concerning the nature of reality that informs Dick's overall body of work. The title references the line uttered by Hamlet to Horatio after being visited by his father's ghost and learning that his uncle Claudius murdered his father; in short, a shocking supernatural event that fundamentally alters the way Hamlet perceives the state and the universe. The story centres on Ragle Gumm and his discovery that that the idyllic town in which he lives is actually a constructed reality designed to protect him from the frightening fact that he lives on a then-future Earth.