American Editions
From the back cover of the 1959, 1968 and 1975 Ace editions
"SOLAR LOTTERY, a first novel by one of the most striking young magazine writers, creates a strange and facinating civilization for the year 2203, a culture based upon Heisenberg's ideas of randomness and Von Neumann's Games Theory, with such logical developments as public office by lottery and formal overt assassination. "Against this background two plots develop, one of intricately deadly and suspenseful palace politics, one of an ambitious effort to rediscover our sun's once-glimpsed tenth planet. . . The body of the book is as elaborately exciting as vintage Van Vogt-with an added touch of C. M. Kornbluth's social satire. --New York Herald Tribune
From the inside cover of the 1955, 1959, 1968 Ace editions
By the summer of 2203, Ted Benteley managed to break away from his old Industrial Hill oath and was free at last to offer himself in new bondage to Quizmaster Verrick. Of course, like everyone else on Earth, Ted held a ticket on the great lottery that could suddenly make him the next quizmaster with the whole world as his possession, but he cuold hardly figure on that one chance in six billions!
What Benteley did not realize when he went to swear himself forever to Verrick was that the lottery was about to take a wilder turn than ever before, one that would make Bentley himself the deciding factor in a power game of truly cosmic proportions!
From the back cover of the Collier Nucleus Editions
THE ULTIMATE LOTTO GAME!
The year is 2203 and the Earth is governed by a bizarre system of random selection wherein public officeholders and the victims of political assassination alike are chosen by the luck of a mad draw. 'n this maniacal world Ted Benteley is an ordinary guy with an extraordinary job. Working at the Solar .Lottery he becomes a pawn in a power struggle that changes his life forever, and the direction of his century's history. Although Benteley doesn't realize it at first. by saying no to the inhuman system he has challenged the most diabolical power broker of the age to a winner-take-all duel of psychic trickery. ..
Solar Lottery was Philip K. Dick's first novel. published in 1955. Dick was one of the foremost exponents of psychologically intense science fiction. as exemplified in his Eye in the Sky which is also part of the Collier Nucleus Series. His career spanned the early 1950s until his death in 1982. during which time he published twenty-five novels.
From the back cover of the 2003 Vintage Edition
The year is 2203, and the ruler of the Universe is chosen according to the random laws of a strange game under the control of Quizmaster Verrick. But when Ted Bentley, a research technician recently dismissed from his job, signs on to work for Verrick, he has no idea that Leon Cartwright is about to become the new Quizmaster. Nor does he know that he’s about to play an integral part in the plot to assassinate Cartwright so that Verrick can resume leadership of a universe not nearly as random as it appears.
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.
"One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction." – The Sunday Times (London)
"A brilliant, idiosyncratic, formidably intelligent writer…Dick illuminates. He casts light. He gives off a radiance."– Washington Post
"Philip K. Dick’s best books always describe a future that is both entirely recognizable and utterly unimaginable." – The New York Times Book Review
"Dick [was] many authors: a poor man's Pynchon, an oracular postmodern, a rich product of the changing subculture." – The Village Voice