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“... of Star Wars decades later.’ This is, bizarrely, to dismiss or ignore most of the career of Philip K. Dick; perhaps Ballard’s dystopian fictions have too much in common with Dick’s for him to be able to look him in the eye. He doesn’t think there’s much around now that’s ...”

“... had Lincoln not been assassinated, or Bobby Kennedy – or more sombre fantasies, like Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle, in which Germany and Japan win the Second World War and divide the US between them. But these historical variants are not genuine time-travel narratives on the order of H.G. Wells’s ...”

“... outcome. Schell treats the preoccupations of China’s intellectuals as the central reality. Philip Snow defines his China in terms of a contrast, between what Kang Yuwei, the late 19th-century reformer, used to call the gold and the black. Few people are less like Chinese than Africans, and The Star Raft: China’s Encounter with Africa spells out ...”

“... since. It would be equally hard to find natives of fifty-plus whose upbringing was not coloured by Dick Barton, Band Waggon or Monday Night at Seven (later, Eight) on the wireless. When other wells of nostalgia dry up, we bore each other with jokes and catchphrases and signature tunes that have stuck with us. We annotate our lives by reference to fragments ...”

“... decades of the 20th century.One of the most popular women’s teams was formed in 1917 at the Dick, Kerr and Co. munitions factory in Preston. Women workers joined male apprentices playing in the factory yard during their breaks; one day, the women beat the men, and decided to establish Dick, Kerr Ladies. The plan was ...”

“... undertaken by Richard King in the course of researching Ahab’s Rolling Sea. His book, like Moby-Dick itself, tells you everything you ever wanted to know about whales but were too ashamed to ask. The fact that the sperm whale’s penis, or ‘grandissimus’, is four and a half feet long is just one of its juicier details. All but the truly dedicated ...”

“... model in the whole rag: ‘I wanted to loosen my pants and unleash my already partially swollen dick and imagine those thick black lips parting to receive it.’ That’s about as far as Giardina goes in this direction, which is both too far and not far enough. When Billy’s brother shows up at Timmy’s house with a gun he wants to dump, the novel appears ...”

“... dirt cheap and madefor a lovely sauce or dressing. Their Baedeker was that torrid Salter novelwith Philip and Anne-Marie whipping up a froth in Burgundy’s grand old hotels,roaring down two lane country roads in a vintage Delage, top down,café to café, bar to bar, meal to meal, bed to bed, hurtling aimlesslythrough a spring and summer at speed under ...”

“... Burton, Golly Burton!’ the Absurdi prostitutes ululate as they look for trade, making Dick Cheney’s former company sound like the refrain in a nursery rhyme. A schism between two Christian sects in Absurdistan is traced back to the tilt of Christ’s footrest in depictions of the crucifixion (upward to the left, Svani; to the right, Sevo); the ...”

“... and mysteries, cruelties and colourful characters, and occasional flashes of enlightenment, as Philip Hoare’s book reminds us. Chief among the enigmas are other people. Until that moment, I’d thought the whale unfathomable. A half-fabled creature, emerging from the deep in a holiday resort. But that woman was now the greater puzzle. What was going on ...”

“... Dick Turpin was executed in York on a cold spring Saturday in 1739. In those days, before the invention of the trapdoor drop, the prisoner was expected to climb a ladder, the noose around his neck, and step off into space. Turpin, dressed in finery suitable for a wedding or a funeral, died admirably, for he ‘went off this stage with as much intrepidity and unconcern, as if he had been taking horse to go on a journey ...”

“... When he imagined a literary critic, the figure that sidled onto the page was contrastingly feeble. Dick Minim, protagonist of two essays in the Idler, arrives at his profession ‘after the common course of puerile studies, in which he was no great proficient.’ Inheriting a large fortune, he starts to while away his time in London coffee ...”

“... on each page, and a very big picture. Mrs Nugent showed all her teeth, and read out the title: Dick, Dora, Nip and Fluff. The sandpit and the paints were never to be so interesting again. Like the afternoon cartoons and the hairdressing journey with my mum that were now part of something called the past, these books would suggest a world fuller than ...”

“... the story of the Francoeur family of Providence, Rhode Island – begins in medias res with Philip Francoeur bursting into the bathroom where his daughter appears to be trying to drown herself. He pulls her out of the bath and throws her onto the floor:   ‘You want to kill yourself, really kill yourself? I’ll show you how, I’ll help you ...”

“... a dickface like you.’ I turned to Kornfeld, who still hadn’t cracked a smile. ‘Do I have a dick on my face? Tell me honestly.’ ‘You better cancel the fancy punctuation, dickface,’ said Morgenlander blithely. ‘Your licence is a piss mark in the snow, as far as I’m concerned.’ He adjusted his tie, as if his head were expanding and he needed ...”