A decade ago, Philip K. Dick's complete short stories were published as a five volume series. Prospective buyers should note that this is simply a reissue of the fourth of those five volumes. It isn't a "best of" short story collection; you get the brilliant along with stories tossed off to keep bread on the table. It's still worth four stars. (The fifth volume is also particularly worth owning, and all five are still in print on backorder.)

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, insistent 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. The novels do.

For those who already know his stuff, this book is a treat. Besides the great title story, you'll see the seeds of several 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").

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 Asimov. Essential reading for any fan of science fiction, or of off-kilter writing in general.

These are the earliest stories PKD wrote, starting with the previously unpublished 1947 story "Stability" and ending with "Prize Ship", written in 1952. There are 25 of them in the lot, most with comments from the author. Some real gems are collected here (like "King of the Elves" and the pulpy "The Infinites"), but also some rather, ah, unpolished work.

But the thing is that this is not just interesting because of the actual stories but it gives a direct line to the developing talent of the man and that man at this point in his life was blossoming with ideas. He just hadn't yet gotten to the point where he knew how to express them. But that really doesn't stop one who is willing to drop those preconceived notions as to what constitutes good science fiction; this is FICTION with a capital letter, imagined from the get-go and heading towards uncharted waters. Reading this stuff made me long for such stuff today - most of what you get these days is pale and boring, closer to science fact and lacking in any true originality.

There are a handfull of average stories (particularly early on)in this collection, but don't be discouraged. The majority are excellent, and make this an immensely satisfying read. Must reads are 'The Golden Man', 'Last of the Masters' and 'A world of Talent' (read Ubik if you liked this one). If you want to get a taste for Dick's other work 'Shell Game', 'Misadjustment' and 'Exhibit Piece' are representative and also thoroughly enjoyable. There is also a small notes section included with Dick's comments on selected stories. This is a great addition and for me really adds to the collection. It's great to get the context (as most of these stories were written 40 odd years ago) opinions and reaction straight from the source. Definitely worth a go.

As a diarist myself I am interested in what other people jot down - their inner thoughts. I wonder how much they are censored by hidden rules of the mind, just as I am. There are things that, regrettably, I find difficult or impossible to write. But Philip Dick was no ordinary person and I have always admired the lucid way in which he can convey complex thoughts. In fact, it seems to me that his writing ought to be tedious if not boring, but somehow he has managed to make interesting the inner musings of his characters without getting bogged down and impeding the progress of the story. Here, in the Exegesis extracts, we see his own inner musings, and at times they do get tedious, almost embarrassing. But there is so much of interest, material for an in depth study of an unusual mind for someone equipped with the skill and will to do it. For my own, I prefer reading the novels and short stories but can't help being fascinated by these other writings too.

'Mind in Motion' is an excellent source of information for any reader of PKD. It concentrates on the major works and gives little mention to lesser novels. I found it informative and well written.

THE HIGH SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE . . .

"You've never wondered what the meaning of life is, have you?" asked my teacher.

I shook my head. "I thought people who were depressed asked those kind of questions."

"Okay. Then Quinn, I'll have to be more direct. Middlevale isn't Middlevale. Eisenhower isn't truly an accredited American high school. I'm not me, and you're not you!"

"Then who are we?"

"Victims!" Her finger shot in the air. "Victims of some sort of experiment! Some kind of psycho-social experiment perpetrated by scientists without principle, a government without morals!" Her dewlaps quivered with indignity. My head was spinning again. I tried to speak but I couldn't.

"These ears . . . open them up and you'll find microchip monitors and controls. And judging by the kind of 'visions' we've both seen, I'd also say you'd also find some kind of mind-cloak device, adjusted to auditory and visual aspects of our brains, normalizing the odd things that may abound in this laboratory environment."

I blinked. "You mean, it's all a joke?"

"A bad one. A total farce."

"You're telling me . . . You're saying that it's all a set-up? But how long has this been going on, then?"

"Hard to say. Part of your memories could have been programmed."

"Programmed?" I stared.

"Like computers."

While I have read many books relating to Philip K. Dick, this is the first from somebody who lived with him day to day that I have read. Anne Dick, while making many interesting observations does not really tell me anything that makes me understand exactly who PKD is/was.

She spends quite a bit of time looking through her eyes at how she could have been, should have been, and how PKD treated her and his family. It is though she is working at providing her own cathartic needs through the book. The descriptions of living conditions, friendships, relationships, while all interesting, leave me wanting something more. I'm not quite sure what, and possible Anne was not as well. This book was written many years ago and then revised for this publication. It shows. Sometimes the book seems to ebb and flow with the older stuff being broken by newer material.

Don't know if this would be the best introduction to PKD the man and the writer, not at almost $100.00. But, for a true "Dickhead" as we who enjoy PKD and his works are called, this gives us another piece to the enigmatic puzzle that is known as Philip K. Dick

The revelation in reading this book is realizing how juvenile and manipulative the man himself could be in contrast to the rather more noble alter egos he used in his novels. This image of Dick is jarring at first, but as I progressed through the letters, which chronicle the humiliations he was forced to suffer as a result of his poverty during this period, my sympathy returned to Dick and I was grateful to see this "real" side of the man who wrote so many worthwhile novels. More editorial details on people and events referenced in the letters would have been appreciated, but overall the book is well put together and certainly recommended for any Dick fan.

As others have noted, WE CAN BUILD YOU has two main storylines which never really mesh. Two thirds into the book, the simulacra plotline is simply dropped & the remainder focuses on Louis Rosen's mental health & his 'relationship' with Pris. While Pris is the most coherently drawn character in the book, Rosen's infatuation is rather clumsily drawn & never quite believable. In addition, Rosen makes a somewhat bland protagonist--I found myself more sympathetic to Pris, even if she is a borderline sociopath.

A shame the simulacra (manufactured replicas of humans) plotline is abandoned, as it had real potential. In particular, the Edwin M. Stanton simulacrum was a fascinating character (more so than the Lincoln, as it doesn't come with our own preconceptions)--Dick could have taken that character & run with it. I might also note that Dick treats Pris rather harshly, considering this is a mentally ill 18-year-old girl. Hence my sympathy leaning toward her.

Not one of PKD's famous novels, but one of the very best of the rest (see my review of NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR for more on this phenomenon). Dick actually wrote this in 1962, immediately after THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE and at the same time as MARTIAN TIME-SLIP, when he was at the height of his powers. It was conceived, written, and shopped to publishers as a mainstream novel with an sf setting -- and, like Dick's brilliant 50's mainstream novels, it failed to sell (a setback which had a huge influence on his subsequent career). When Dick wrote DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP in 1966, he recycled the unforgettable dark-haired girl character, Pris Frauenzimmer, as Pris Stratton. And when his life fell apart in the early 70's, he finally sold the ms. as a magazine serial.

This is, I believe, the only PKD novel written in the first-person. Our hero, Louis Rosen, falls in love with a young schizoid girl. There's the usual amount of brilliant PKD sf speculation (in this case, about what it means to be human), wedded seamlessly to the very best portrayal of a male-female relationship in all his fiction. The dialogue is priceless; there's a scene in a hotel room that has more quotable lines than most writers can muster in a career.

There are two aspects to the novel that may bother people who read only sf -- but they are central to the conception and true nature of the book (as both an sf novel and a highly experimental postmodern novel, without compromise to either). First, it changes horses midway, leaving a lot of plot strands dangling (what Kim Stanley Robinson calls Dick's "broken-backed" novel structure), as our narrator becomes more and more obsessed with his femme fatale. In the same way, there's not a lot of *plot* closure in the ending, but there's total emotional closure (a lot like real life).

This one will break your heart, as it undoubtedly broke PKD's, in more ways than one.

As always Dick explores the themes: "who and what are real"; "who is crazy and who is sane". Louis Rosen is a former piano salesman whose family company starts to make simulcra (exact robot replicas). Abe Lincoln is their first construct and he soon gains consciousness and begins to ask for his rights vs. a wealthy mars colonizer. Who is and what is human? Our hero meanwhile falls in love with teenage Pris, a refugee from a Federal Bureau of Mental Health hospital. Is anyone sane? From there on things take delightful dizzying Dickian twists. Its a wonderful book for anyone with a healthy measure of paranoia.