Book cover of Time Out of Joint

Book description

Ragle Gumm is an ordinary man leading an ordinary life, except that he makes his living by entering a newspaper contest every day - and winning, every day.

But he gradually begins to suspect that his life - indeed his whole world - is an illusion, constructed around him for…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Time Out of Joint as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Philip K Dick is the king of dual reality, and although Time Out of Joint may not be as well-known as some of his other stories, it is one of his early masterpieces that paints the picture of ordinariness until reality begins to tip towards a far darker truth, which, as Jack Nicholson once famously said, "You can’t handle the truth!"

What I love about this book, and probably almost all his others, is that Dick is warning anyone who is prepared to listen that there are people out there who can destroy the world, and then pretend it didn’t…

Suburbanite Ragle Gumm is overcome with a sense of urgency to play a bizarre newspaper game every day. He’s so good at it, he makes a living from its cash prizes. But lately, his world seems to be fraying around him. Things he sees and knows are suddenly...not. And if you can’t trust the very ground you’re standing on, what’s left? This takes the whole “maybe my world isn’t what I think it is” idea about as far as it can go, and it was just about the first story to ever do that. The best, most satisfying book I…

From Jesse's list on a world under secret control.

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