Dick, Philip K. Counter-Clock World (London: Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughton, 1977, c1967) 158 p.

For some reason time has reversed. Dead people come back to life. Infants return to the womb. People disgorge food. Some of them pick up cigarette butts and blow smoke into them until they are long and unsmoked. In this world one function of the People's Topical Library is the destruction of books when time had reversed to the point where they had been written. The Head Librarian is Mavis McGuire. She is “bitchy, hostile, and mean.” (p. 15).

Douglas Appleford is the librarian in charge of Section B where manuscripts are eradicated. He is “a stuffy, formal but reasonably helpful person; certainly far more easily dealt with than Mavis McGuire.” (p. 22). “'Our job here at the library,' Appleford said, 'Is not to study and/or memorize data; it is to expunge it.'” (p. 26).

Later it becomes clear that the People's Topical Library is a far more sinister organization. A newspaper reports that as many as three people a month disappear behind its walls. Everyone who works for the library eventually ends up in the “Children's Department,” from which armies of dwindled adults are deployed to enforce library policy.