Not a novel, as I thought it was, but a collection of short stories, named after the first. I read many more novels, and I write them, so I think I understand the form. The constraints of a short story means that they are inevitably more about the plot and less about the characters. In addition, PKD is writing science fiction, so there is considerable emphasis on the concept. Given these parameters, I am sure he is a master of his genre. But I didn't find his work particularly enthralling.
- Minority Report
- The future police use three "precog idiots" to predict the future so that they can arrest and sentence those who will commit crimes. Sometimes the precogs disagree so the police use the majority verdict. Then the chief of police discovers that the precogs are predicting that he will kill a General so he goes on the run.
- Imposter
- Is Olham Olham or is he a robot booby-trapped with a bomb who has been engineered not only to resemble Olham but to think that he is Olham?
- Second Variety
- The UN are winning the post-nuclear war against the Russians because they have invented the 'claws': autonomous robots who trick their way in among soldiers and then cut them to pieces. But suppose these robots are beginning to evolve, designing themselves into new varieties?
- War Game
- The toy manufacturers of Ganymede are creating toys designed to subvert terran defences so the terrans have to test each toy before it is sold in the shops.
- What the Dead Men Say
- When millionaire businessman Louis Sarapis dies he can't be resurrected into half-life ... but then messages arrive from deep space seeking to get his protege elected President.
- Oh, to be a Blobell
- Munster is a human-blob hybrid who has children with another hybrid and has kids. According to Mendel's genetics, one is pure human, one pure blob and two hybrids. Munster's wife wants to be a human but, for tax reasons, he wants to be a blob.
- The Electric Ant
- Poole discovers he isn't a human but a robot who thinks he is a human. Discovering that his perceptions are governed by a reel of punched tape, he experiments by covering some of the holes, making new holes, and cutting the tape. These cause his perceptions to dramatically alter. Or is he actually altering reality? Solipsists beware.
- Faith of our Fathers
- In a quasi-Maoist totalitarian society, with significant echoes of 1984, humble government servant Chien is invited to meet the Absolute Benefactor. But is he being fed hallucinogenic substances by the government or by the rebels and what will the Leader be like when he encounters him?
- We can remember it for you wholesale
- Quail wants to go to Mars but he can't afford it. So he buys a memory implant so he can remember having been to Mars. But as the technicians implant it they discover that he already has memories of having been to Mars ... which have been erased ...
As you can see, many of these stories involve how we can tell what is true and what is false, whether we are awake or asleep, dreaming of being awake.
Selected quotes:
- "The late-afternoon wind carried the muffled booming of many people packed tightly together." (Minority Report)
- "It was amazing how transformed a bald man became under the stark potency of an officer's peaked and visored cap." (Minority Report)
- "He could not grasp what he was reading - or rather unable to read. ... All he found was a procession of words, randomly strung together. It was worse than Finnegan's Wake." (What the Dead Men Say)
July 2023; 290 pages
Also written by Philip K Dick and reviewed in this blog:
- The Man in the High Castle (this one is a novel!)
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