- Paperback: 396 pages
- Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.; 1st Carol Pub. Group Ed edition (1 April 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0806512768
- ISBN-13: 978-0806512761
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.1 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,312,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Many thousands of readers consider Philip K. Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick's works has continued to mount and his reputation has been further enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. The Philip K. Dick Award is now given annually to a distinguished work of science fiction, and the Philip K. Dick Society is devoted to the study and promulgation of his works.
This collection includes all of the writer's earliest short and medium-length fiction (including some previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1954-1964. These fascinating stories include Service Call, Stand By, The Days of Perky Pat, and many others.
"A useful acquisition for any serious SF library or collection" -- Kirkus
"The collected stories of Philip K. Dick is awe inspiring". -- The Washington Post
"More than anyone else in the field, Mr. Dick really puts you inside people's minds". -- Wall Street Journal
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TENSION hung over the three waiting men. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
TENSION hung over the three waiting men. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Before reading this collection of stories put out of your mind any memory of the Tom Cruise/Stephen Spielberg film of the same name. The Cruise/Spielberg film was very loosely based on the Philip K Dick’s story, taking only a few elements out of the story. The original story is far superior to the adventure film that bares the same name.
In his best fiction, and this collection certainly contains some of that, Philip K Dick was a visionary – a dark visionary with a down-beat but all too real take on the future.
The title story, Minority Report, is set in the Bureau of Pre-Crime were three pre-cogs (people so brain damaged that they live in permanent comas and constantly mutter their predictions) predict murders not yet committed, but this is where similarities with the Cruise/Spielberg film ends. This is a post nuclear war world, were vast swathes of the country is burnt waist. The central character is a middle-aged, over-weight man with a much younger wife, who finds himself at the centre of a political assassination plot. This is a twisting political thriller; set in a world mutated by radiation, were every piece of new information causes another change of direction. Within this story Philip K Dick asks the question, if we know what the future holds does that automatically change the future to an unknown one?
A lot of these stories are set in post nuclear war worlds, a theme very popular in Philip K Dick’s fiction, but they are not the same world re-hashed for different stories. Whatever worlds he sets his stories in they are dark and unforgiving worlds. His future is not bright, white and hopeful.
In this collection there are stories about robots used for assignation; automatic factories that rule the world and don’t want to give that up; the search for a war criminal who is more or less then he seems; a government sanctioned machine that controls your thoughts; an America were the First Lady is the most important person even if the Presidents come and go she remains the same; a future were they look to 1960’s sci-fi to solve their technological problems; a time-travelling business woman; and much, much more.
A problem that can be sometimes levelled at Phillip K Dick’s novels is that, though often an excellent and original plot premise; he did not know how to end it. This does not apply to these stories, even the longer ones. With these stories Philip K Dick ends them perfectly, whether it is an ending to a story or a question left up in the air. Most of these stories were previously published in American sci-fi magazines of the 1950’s and 1960’s, whether this is the reason for their solid structures I don’t know, but these are very satisfying stories to read and have not aged the way a lot of sci-fi from that period has.
Forgot the bright, white and upbeat sci-fi of Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas and Star Trek; try the dark and all too real sci-fi of Philip K Dick. Some of the peripheral details of his stories may have aged but their central themes are still fresh and relevant today.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
19 reviews
56 of 58 people found the following review helpful
Dick the Revelator
20 Jun 2002
Format:Paperback
You can't compare Philip K. Dick to any other science fiction writer. About the only other author he can be fairly compared to at all is Franz Kafka - but a workingman's Kafka, shorn of all pretension or artiness. All his heros are the same besieged everyman as K., wrestling with elusive metaphysics, impossible transformations, a cosmic bureaucracy and a dysfunctional society - but also with overdue rent bills, intrusive advertising, and messy divorces.
Precogs show up in many of Philip K. Dick's works, but Dick himself was not particularly in the prediction business. Nearly every world he created, large (in his novels) or small (in stories like these) was a future dystopia. But whereas the dystopias of other sf writers make you shudder and think, "Yes, it could be like that... If Things Go On," Dick's have a different flavor, a different kind of immediacy.
And the reason for that is, that Philip K. Dick was not so much a science fiction writer as a prophet. He showed us a future that mirrored the present so faithfully that he could convince us of what he always felt - that dystopia is already here; apocalypse is already here; all you have to do (the original meaning of apocalypse) is tear away the veils.
Many people are going to take a fresh interest in Mr. Dick's writings because of the movie Minority Report. For them, I give this advice: go first to his novels (some of the best ones are "Ubik", "A Scanner Darkly", "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"). You have to immerse yourself in his world to grasp where he's coming from, and short stories don't give you room to do that.
For those who already know his stuff, this book is a treat. Besides the great title story, you'll see the seeds of some of his novels here ("Palmer Eldritch" prefigured in "Days of Perky Pat", "Simulacrum" in "The Mold of Yancy", and "Ubik" in "What the Dead Men Say"). This is the fourth of five volumes Citadel has published of his complete short stories. This and the fifth volume are most worth owning. Once you become a fanatic, of course, you'll want to have them all. (There was once a single volume, shorter than this, of collected best short stories, but I believe it's out of print.)
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Unbelievable collection
26 May 2002
Format:Paperback
Although these are not necessarily Philip K. Dick's best short works, they are necessary reading for every fan. As the writer in the introduction says, the reason I read PKD is because he has that oddest and most unique of all virtues in a writer - strangeness. You'll be hard-pressed to find stories stranger than this anywhere. As PKD himself says in the notes section at the end of the book, he often sold his stories to the flexible SF magazine Galaxy, as the more famous Astounding and its editor, John W. Campbell, considered his stories "nuts." Also, this notes section is very interesting for other reasons: it becomes apparent in reading them that these stories have much deeper meanings than they at first appear to have. It is quite entertaining enough to read them for their sure strangeness - you will laugh out loud often reading PKD - mostly at the dialogue, which you'll be hard-pressed to determine whether it is entirely unreal, or more real than most. However, deeper and more profound themes were always resonating at the bottom of the well of Philip K. Dick's stories. Although he was quite consistent and extremely prolific with his writings, some of his stories were definitely better than others. Still, everything the man ever wrote is worth reading. This particular collection contains some of his best - and most interesting - shorter works. Covering the period from 1954-1964, we get such classic stories as The Minority Report, an all-time classic SF story; The Unreconstructed M, a dramatic story of spine-tingling SF suspense; and many others - classic stories, profound stories, and just plain weird stories. This is some of the best science fiction published since the Golden Age of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimove. Essential reading for any fan of science fiction, or of off-kilter writing in general.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
The Unabridged Audio Collection...
2 Mar 2006
Format:Audio CD
Keir Dullea does a great job narrating this collection of stories by Philip K Dick. Not only does it have five very good stories, FOUR of them are the basis of Dick movies. First off is "The Minority Report." The idea was the same as the movie, but the story was totally different. I definitely didn't see the end coming... it would have made an interesting movie.
Second was "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," which became the movie "Total Recall." The story was pretty short, shorter than I would have liked, but it was good. The movie was similar, but a lot was changed.
Third was "Paycheck," later made into the movie with Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman. This was actually the most faithful adaptaton. A man wakes up with no memory, finds a bag of clues, and uses them to trace his way back to a secret project. Only the end was different, and of course the movie expanded and added characters, but I liked the story better.
Fourth was "Second Variety" made into the movie "Screamers" starring Peter Weller. Again, the two were much alike. A very good SF story set on a bleak planet where clone robots have wiped out much of civilization and have found a way to manufacture themselves.
The fifth and shortest is "The Eyes Have It," which is a brief, humorous piece where the main character takes the wording from a romance novel literally...
A strong collection and a good recommendation for anyone who wants to compare the stories and movies and wants to get almost all of them in one shot. If only it had contained the story for "Imposter."
Second was "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," which became the movie "Total Recall." The story was pretty short, shorter than I would have liked, but it was good. The movie was similar, but a lot was changed.
Third was "Paycheck," later made into the movie with Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman. This was actually the most faithful adaptaton. A man wakes up with no memory, finds a bag of clues, and uses them to trace his way back to a secret project. Only the end was different, and of course the movie expanded and added characters, but I liked the story better.
Fourth was "Second Variety" made into the movie "Screamers" starring Peter Weller. Again, the two were much alike. A very good SF story set on a bleak planet where clone robots have wiped out much of civilization and have found a way to manufacture themselves.
The fifth and shortest is "The Eyes Have It," which is a brief, humorous piece where the main character takes the wording from a romance novel literally...
A strong collection and a good recommendation for anyone who wants to compare the stories and movies and wants to get almost all of them in one shot. If only it had contained the story for "Imposter."
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