Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (2007)

Written around 1960, Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is a grim portrait of a luckless used-car salesman and his bigoted landlord in Oakland that seems at first to share little with the hallucinatory sci-fi works for which Phillip K. Dick is best known. But both men slip into paranoid spirals that will be familiar to any fan of Dick's later masterpieces. Is the slick acquaintance offering them financial advice a well-meaning entrepreneur, an opportunistic con man — or the head of an all-powerful conspiracy? The characters' descent into madness offers a fascinating glimpse into how Dick's uniquely warped perspective evolved. A