A rare and early foray into the subject of Time Travel from Dick, although the timeslip element is used initially merely as a device to move an objective viewpoint to a far future and therefore alien society.
Although one of the novels in which Dick was still finding his literary feet, it shows signs of the depths of his ideas and the themes which would come to dominate his work.
Dr Jim Parsons is snatched from the US of Nineteen Ninety Eight and deposited in the year Two Thousand, Four Hundred and Five. Interestingly, the US that Dick envisaged in his own near future is one in which large corporations have been nationalised and society seems to be run by the professional classes (Doctors, lawyers, etc). American politics and society is often something at which Dick takes a sideswipe, often as part of the background to the main narrative.
Parsons arrives in a post-nuclear world where the human race has become homogenised and the birth rate is strictly controlled (as is female rights).
Children are produced by a process of controlled natural selection whereby competitive 'tribes' engage in various mental and physical challenges; the number of points they win determining who contributes their zygotes to 'The Soul Cube', which is essentially a vast bank of reproductive material.
Death is welcomed, as when a tribe member dies, a replacement is automatically fertilised within the cube.
Being a Doctor, and somewhat politically liberal, Parsons is confused and appalled when he is arrested for saving the life of a young woman who subsequently makes a complaint against him for denying her the right to die.
Structurally, the novel follows the mythic structure in that the hero - unwillingly in this case - is taken from his world of familiarity and his happy marriage (unusually for Dick, whose heroes tend to suffer from broken or dysfunctional relationships) to an alien world of seemingly bizarre behaviour and barbaric cultural beliefs.
Dick was once quoted as having been influenced by AE Van Vogt, and if it shows anywhere, it shows in this novel which, if a little less obscure and rambling than some of Van Vogt's work, displays some of his trademarks such as 'the dark city of spires', the super race, the peculiar machines, the convoluted plot and the trip to Mars. These are Van Vogt clichés which can be seen at their best in Slan (1940) and 'The World of Null-A' (1948).
It's obviously hastily written, although the time-travel loops and paradoxes are well-thought out and all the ends neatly tied up, although Dick skimps on some areas where the motives of the characters are confusing. For instance, believing himself to have murdered someone by utilising time-travel equipment Parsons goes out of his way to try and ensure that he has actually done so. At that point, however, he has no motive for carrying out the murder, and has been shown earlier to be - he is a Doctor after all - someone who is dedicated to preserving life.
Not a major Dick novel, but interesting nonetheless.

Well, as you can probably tell, this is not a very well-known much less well-read PKD novel. It was published in 1960, hardly the height of his career. Other reviewers made this book sound as if it wasn't all that good, so I was surprised that the first third of the book was actually pretty good. Basically, there's this doctor named Jim Parsons driving down Hwy 101 when suddenly his car runs off the side of the road. And then he finds himself in the future. I like how PKD described the future: a rather primitive Bladerunner world is the closest I can compare it to. In the future, you're not supposed to heal people--i.e. doctors are bad--you just let them die. There are no elderly people and little or no disease. In a way this book is very prophetic, since the elderly are increasingly losing their status. But shortly after the doctor's arrival, the plot takes a nosedive. It reads really quickly, much more so than the Penultimate Truth, which I think is PKD at his worst. My problem with this book is this: A mystery-type book is confusing enough. Add in the element of time-travel going both ways and it's VERY easy to get confused. Stupid paradoxes. As a rule of thumb, I try and steer clear of time-travel subjects, the exceptions being the Terminator movies. Anyway, this book is okay. I'm glad that I have it in my PKD library, but if you want to read a better story with a little mystery and science fiction intertwined, read A Maze of Death by PKD instead.

Set in California, a man plays a prank on his neighbours by faking a hominid skull in his back yard.

The archeological find turns out to hide a sinister truth about the area, an ancient ill that has been forgotten and that threatens the lives of the new residents of the area.

Dick's novel is not one of his greats but is certainly worth a read. It is a nice example of how a prank can backfire and end up working for the good of all.

This book is a series of interesting articles that are of (recent) historic interest. There were some real revelations even for me even though I had read many of the source documents (including the published excerpts from the Exergesis). I particularly liked the story of Philip Dick writing letters critical of some people who were actually his fans and sending them to the FBI by posting them in the rubbish bin. If the FBI was going through his rubbish (as he expected) these letters would surface (which they did - but perhaps via his own carbon copies), but if his rubbish was not being examined no harm would be done. He was an unusual man - perhaps in some ways unstable, and yet the body of his work remains to point in other directions.

The negative of this book is some of the pompous academic language used in the reviews. As a testament to academic review the book is not a great advertisement. Perhaps it tells us something of the people who actually deigned to review science fiction - but I am glad they did - I would have just preferred that they use the same open style that Philip Dick did himself - their own style rather than taking on an academic style as if that gives some extra creedence to their words.

The are two parts of this book that I particularly value, and a long section that I just let wash passed me.

The interview with Philip Dick is a great record to have - it's almost like me being with him and chatting to him. (Although I might have directed the discussions differently - if Philip had allowed it!) I also appreciated Robert Anton Wilson's essay at the end - it's provocative, informative and a credit to this book with its challenge to Mr Apel's personal experience with Philip Dick, after his death (i.e. after Philip Dick's death, not Mr Apel's - I know that neither of those options make much sense to twenty-first century people - imbued as we are with rationalism and scientific method). Mr Wilson's philosophy of believing nothing mirrors my own except that I believe EVERYTHING - or at least, everything that I personally experience.

So what of the remainder of Mr Apel's book? His own experiences of 'connection' with Philip Dick after Philip Dick's death. The wole idea of life after death - or at least existence after death - is so tantalising, so seductive, that it is easy to be absorbed in someone else's testimony. But to me, we have a mind to use and we should use it for our own evaluation of the cosmos we are embedded in. My 'faith' is based on my experience and I will be neither uplifted nor crushed by someone else's experiences or harangues - no person and no written text. Consequently Mr Apel's narrative is of interest but is essentially meaningless to me - I can neither believe nor misbelieve - it might just as well be a fantasy or the history of Atlantis or a theory about what wiped out the dinosuars.

But for all that I am not offended by Mr Apel telling his tale - we all have the right to speak and to hear. And in line with this I will tell a story of my own. My fascination with Philip Dick grew from the mid sixties. The puzzles the plots often present, the unique humour, the unexpected twists and so on are part of the appeal the novels have. But there is something else. I read and re-read the novels and short stories so that now I know the twists, I have some grasp of the puzzles, I've experienced the humour before - so it's not surprise that tantalises me. And yet each time I start re-reading I find myself engrossed beyond any rational explanation. I know that Philip Dick has technical skills as a writer (although some critics seem to like to decry certain aspects of Philip Dick's grammar or plotting as if language and the structure of stories are static things and alternative techniques cannot be used or accepted). But I'm sure it's not just technique that attracts me. One of the last of Philip Dick's book that I read (so late in publication) was 'The Broken Bubble'. I was startled by a paragraph in it. It seemed that I had written this - it was my voice that was speaking. How could Philip Dick - who I never had the privelege to meet - know these thoughts of mine?

And what of life after death - what does my experience tell me? I suggest a study of Mahler's last three great orchestral works is revealing (and Mahler was a composer who Philip Dick referred to at times). The eighth symphony is the traditional view of salvation (reward, not punishment - Mahler had excluded punishment in the Resurrection symphony - 'there is only God's heavenly love'); 'The Song of the Earth' is the resigned acceptance of separation; and the ninth symphony - well for me it contains a great outburst of a dying person looking back in their last gasp at the world they are leaving and connecting with those left behind. I have experienced that same gasp - not from dying persons - but as if it has been left at particular places in the fabric of the cosmos ready for any mind that passes that way and is so attuned to grasp, regardless of the time of their passing. But that is all my experince - make of it what you will.

This was the first science fiction I ever read: many, many books ago! It is probably only interesting to the fan of Philip K. Dick. Having said that, it really is fun, in its own way. All the Dickian issues are there: What is the nature of reality; do we really know what is going on; the man caught in the middle of realities in flux; the wife/girlfriend as super unsupporting person, etc. If you want to read all of PKD's stuff, find this and read it. Otherwise, it is only marginally interesting.

The Cosmic Puppets starts with a promising idea, that of a man returning to his town of birth to find that in this world he died in infancy. All right. The novel (if it indeed qualifies length-wise) is a mystery/thriller in the first half. The 'Wanderers' turn out to be the real people, and this is a good interpretation of the common plot device, ie. ghosts. When the protag. and his friend (I forget their names) try to turn things back to normal, Cosmic Puppets seems a little like a precursor to Ubik, what with the layers of reality visible in a physical sense. At this stage, Cosmic Puppets is quite tolerable.

But then the ending! It's awful. Terrible. Enought to stop you from reading. It all falls apart. Cosmic Puppets is an early PKD novel, and it shows. But it also shows in simple form the themes that PKD would pursue later.

Only a PKD fan would find anything of interest, however.

One of the earlier PKD novels, which initially reads like an original episode of the Twilight Zone (in fact I can think of an episode with a cameo from a young James Doohan which was very like the first half of the book). As usual the tale has a little PKD twist, to help things along.

This final plot-turn was definately an issue he came back to in later novels, possibly most noteably The Divine Invasion, and Valis to a lesser degree.

It is an early PKD, so a lot of the complexity and depth is not so well formed, but it is no less enjoyable for that. An easy one to get into PKD for those not so familiar, and a genesis of ideas for later works for the seasoned fans.

When I bought this book, I didn't realize it was in spanish, as it never said anything about a foreign language book. When I take a quick spanish course I will read it and let you know my opinion.

This book is a collection of mixed short stories for spanish readers. Not the best overall but includes some excellent stories. For a more complete collection I recomend The collected stories of Philip K. Dick, 5 volumes. But if you read spanish and want to get a tast of Dick's works this is a very good one.

The Minority Report is one of Philip K. Dick's masterpieces, and one of the greatest science fiction stories ever written. It is tightly-written, action-packed, and fast-paced - everything one could ask for in adventure SF. So why the low rating? Well... it's just a short story. I'm not sure of the exact length, but it's something along the line of 30 or 40 pages. What this edition attempts to do is fluff the book out with a bunch of screwy packaging, filling it out to a somewhat respectable book length. What it is, obviously, is a cheap and sorry attempt by the publisher to cash in on the recent Spielberg movie based on this story. Now, the story itself is certainly great and essential; I highly reccommend you read it if you have not already. However, there are much better (not to mention more economical ways) of acquiring it. The also recently-released book "The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories" or the older "Philip K. Dick Reader" both contain The Minority Report, as well as a series of other worthwhile stories. You would be far wiser to purchase one of those books than this cheap piece of marketing.

Just want to warn people to ignore dolts who claim this book doesn't help them understand the movie, or who think the book was written after the movie, or who think the brilliant author Philip K. Dick is still alive. This is an incredible short story, written decades ago, but if I were you I'd buy an anthology of Dick's stories and stay away from this weird marketing gimmick. The only merit it has, perhaps, is as a collector's item for fans of things like that. I enjoyed the spin Spielberg and his fellow writers used for the story, but found the movie version less interesting than the story. If you really want to bend your mind, buy a Philip K. Dick anthology or his "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich." Cheers!

With all the hype of the movie coming out, I wanted to read the original story beforehand. Being that I work at a book store, I was able to read it during my 1 hour lunch break. The layout is definitely unique and eye-catching, but hard to read (and hold) vertically. If it was a book of pictures then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. However, the story itself deserves the unique layout to complement it. It is a very intriguing story and since it is a short story the events kept moving along at a nice pace. As a short story, it is more likely that the movie will actually expand on the original story. Nevertheless, the story does make you think along with Anderton as he figures out what happened in the reports. With that said, I don't think our store has sold a copy of this version yet. But we have sold out of the book containing "The Minority Report" and other stories by Philip K. Dick. Obviously, people know a better value when they see it. Buying this version would simply be for the novelty of the layout--at least at this price.

Such a good story was worthy of much much more then this. Ubik possably one of Dicks best works has been turned into everything including a pc game ( cryo). I can only hope that this screeplay is never made into a movie, it just misses out on two much.