In this first book in a five-volume set collecting all the short stories of Philip K. Dick, we get a chance to see the first stories he wrote and published and can learn that from the very start, Dick was a great writer.

This is one of those rare story collections where there absolutely NO bad stories. Each one is a well-written and interesting piece; some have a dark humor, others are utterly horrifying, but each one is good or great in its own way.

Written in the 1950s, these stories are a refreshing change of pace from some of the more banal sci-fi pieces to come out of that era. The emphasis here is not on the science (which is often unexplained) but on the fiction: the characters, the mood and the plot. Adept at the plot twist, Dick often resolves his stories in logical but unanticipated ways.

From evil toys and malicious butterflies to trolls and lethal towels, Dick puts us in a number of worlds not far removed from our own and entertains us from first page to last. I look forward to reading the other four volumes in this set; some of the stories I have read before and others I haven't, but I'm sure I'll have a blast with all of them.

There are three consistent aspects to PKD's (Philip Dick's) work that I find compelling:

1. He constantly asks the (most important) question, "What is the nature of reality"?

2. He repeatedly states and offers evidence that the answer to the question "What does it mean to be human?" is the ability to feel empathy.

3. His plots involve such "ordinary" people, and have excellent character development - so you quickly get to understand them. Meanwhile, the story involves some bizarre science fiction device , idea, or condition, that he makes a part of this very normal human's world. You're quickly drawn in by the master.


PKD spent a significant amount of time thinking and writing about philosophy. In a way, reading his stories is an entertaining way of doing a survey of his take on the world's philosophical history without having to read (and understand) endless tomes of the great philosophers. You can see how this changes in PKD as you read different books in the Collected Stories series.


Philip makes it abundantly clear that he hates much of the stupidity that mankind inflicts on itself. War is a commonly expressed example of this. Of course, with the science fiction plot theme, he can easily spread examples of this through time, through the galaxy, and beyond (even to gods, other sentient races, etc).


As is tragically true so often with deep thinkers, Philip's life was far from carefree...As a consequence, and the fact that he's obviously a man bent on searching for TRUTH, his writing often has a dark underlying feeling. Comedy is sprinkled through the stories, but it too has a dark quality. Even the moments of greatest joy provide a somewhat bittersweet feeling, due to the background of the plot worlds. But again - reading PKD is not a dose of happy-pills, it is about TRUTH, whether pretty or not.


No matter who you are, these stories will make you think and I suspect learn a thing or two. They cover such a variety of plots that almost everyone is bound to be pleased by some, alarmed or saddened by others, and to feel a surge of empathy for some situations and realize that (bizarre as the situation may be) - this too is human.


I think it would be truly impossible for any thinking person to read and reflect on the 118 stories in the 5 volume series and come away completely unchanged. And for the vast majority of us (to borrow a PKD novel title) "Cosmic Puppets" with empathic capabilities, I'm betting the change will be for the better...

Reading the collected short stories - Volumes 1 through 5 - is like watching the old Twilight Zone. Weird and wonderful stuff!

This book is very short, and it is quite straightforward for PKD. As this is one of his earlier works, I was expecting an extremely outdated view of the future, but surprisingly, PKD kept the details of the mechanisms vague enough that there were no glaring 'futurisms', such as those that jammed the first chapter of "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch". Simply stating that they took a ship between planets rather than inventing the Amazing Steam-Powered Punch-Card Engine helped the book a lot.
Despite the fact that this book came before PKD really started to 'write outside the box', I was expecting the traditional PKD chestnuts- the nature of reality, psychotherapy, bleak futures, evil robots, etc.- to be mostly overlooked. Happily, he managed to investigate most of his favorite topics without tripping over himself or screwing up the plot, as he did in "The Simulacra". The plot flowed straight and true, and although one part seemed a little forced, it didn't detract from the book- it was simply a wee bit off.
If you are new to PKD, you should give this book a try, but don't expect any cosmic insights, just a good book. You might also try "Time Out Of Joint". If you are familiar with PKD, you should read this as his inventive take on the good old distopian novel. It is also proof that though the man wrote a lot of mind-bending novels, he could also get a point about individuals in a distopian system across perfectly clearly.

In this delightful early (1956) effort, Philip K. Dick reaches all the way back to Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and all the way forward to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

To jape is to cut up, to spoof outrageously a la Monty Python. Dick's hero, Allen Purcell, is about to assume the most powerful media position on the planet; at the same time, he is in fear of being imminently arrested for a jape involving the mutilation of a monument to Morec's beloved founder, the infamous Major Streiter.

Morec is short for Moral Reclamation, a kind of Moral Majority Heaven on Earth in which any offenses -- most particularly of the sexual variety -- trigger vicious Maoist self-criticism meetings culminating in the loss of one's apartment lease. And without a lease, there's nowhere to go but the outer planets.

Philip K. Dick weaves in a number of themes masterfully, from the devastation following a nuclear holocaust to the "Health Resort," a scheme for processing those who crack under the strain of Morec. There are juveniles everywhere (not what you think), not to mention the Cohorts, Active Assimilation, the Domino Method, "nooses," and the usual panoply of brilliant Dick inventions, such as all food dishes being enclosed in quotes, as in "His 'eggs' were cooling on the plate."

There are arresting throwaway lines such as when the character of Sue Frost is introduced: "Her eyes, he noticed, were an almost colorless straw. A strong kind of substance, and highly polished."

Although he has been compared to Borges and Kafka, Dick is very much an American original. THE MAN WHO JAPED's unusual combination of paranoia and a wicked sense of humor is unique, as if Orwell's Winston Smith in 1984 were played by John Cleese.

This is an early PKD, and probably isn't really worth 5 stars, but I rate it thus anyway, just because hints of work to come show up in this book. This is a story of a very repressive society (read cold war, McCarthy-era USA)and a man who breaks out of the pattern. As with all PKD books, read carefully or you will lose track of where you are.

Before the age of the internet collectors of Philip K. Dick books had only this volume to help them out. It, too, is now a valuable collector's item in its own right. An essential tome for the fan of PKD and worth every penny of whatever they're charging for it -- Lord RC

For the serious collector of Philip K. Dick books Levack's bibliography is essential. Contains lots of b/w cover scans from before 1988, including some foreign. All kinds of obscure odds and ends in here too. A great book to have.

i enjoyed this compilation of many good sci-fi authors, i recommend it to anyone who likes sci-fi.

If you've never read Philip K Dick, this collection of short stories is a great place to start. The first two stories in the collection (his first 2 published stories) aren't the greatest, but from the third story on it's one brilliant gem after the other. I read this book 3 months ago and it's still with me. "Electric Ant" is perhaps the best SF short story I've ever read. I've read several of Dick's novels but these short stories are better!

I cannot understand why this Dick book has been out of print for years. Some of his most interesting characters and concepts found in later books evolved from this one, his most intelligent post-bomb novel. His flare for the unusal and his this -ain't -quite -what -it -seems twists keeps the reader guessing throughout. Even though we get just a glimpse of who the characters are before the nuclear destruction, we are sympathetic to their attempt to eek out an existance and share their hopes for a new world. Their personal evolution is wonderfully illustrated.

While much of the work from Mr. Lupoff I have read is adequate, this single piece stands out in my mind. He has been able to capture the crazy world within world view multiple level of reality pretty well. The eternal hope that something like this could occur, while extraordinary, would be quite exciting. I don't want to give away the story, since short stories rely on the last page blast, but suffice to say it is well worth the read.

Philip K. Dick was one of science fiction's short story "master craftsmen", though he was better known for his novels. His short stories are reminicent of Frederic Brown's, but usually Dick's were better paced and fuller. Published almost exclusively in SF magazines, most of his best stories were printed in Del Ray's "The Best of Philip K. Dick" collection. A good handful of these are some of the authentic gems of short SF. Towering above all the others (including the others collected in this volume), however, is "Frozen Journey", published in this volume with the less effective title "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon". This was one of the first Dick stories to see "mainstream" print, as it first appeared in "Playboy", usually the domain of writers like Roth and Mailer. This short story brings together so many Dick themes in one place, it's like a pure distillation of his explorations; the unclear nature of reality, the difficulty of gender relations, the mistrust of technology, and the tendency to mental instability. But there is also something new here, a powerfully moving evocation of the effect of one man's guilt and sorrow on his consciousness and his resulting isolation from other people. In this story, Dick is able to wed his well-noted ontological ambiguity seemlessly with his compassion for humanity's predicament, something only partially achieved by his best novels (though some come close, notably "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"). All of the elements of the story serve to demonstrate the central tragedy, bring us in to the heart of the protagonist, make us see through his troubled eyes (even at the reality he has become blind to), and move us to reflect on the profound metaphor Dick has created: life as a frozen journey through space, alone with the shadows in our minds and hearts, broken by the sorrows of lost love, corrupted conscience, impending decay and death. Not since the "half-life" concept in "Unik" has Dick created such a potent and bleak image. To my mind this story represents a special kind of apex for Dick, his deepest expression of tragedy. It deserves to stand among the best such in English in short story form.

Philip Dick's collection of "android-oid" short stories is an excellent collection of the demons that haunted not just his mind, but the collective consciousness. Each story delves into intriguing ways that robots will run amok in the future. There are some precious gems in this collection which represent Dick at his best. Many of the stories are infused with his fascination of what makes a human human and a robot not. Two eloquent stories are "The Little Movement" (my personal favorite), and the short story that the awful "Screamers" was based on which I believe is called "New Model". If you love SciFi and have a Bradbury bent towards alternate futures, this is a must read! If you have never read Philip Dick, this is an excellent introduction! Bon Apetite!

Although not on quite the same level of Volumes One and Two in this five book set of all of Philip K. Dick's short fiction, Second Variety and Other Classic Stories is a worthwhile read for any PKD fan.

Dick cranked out stories very quickly in his early years, and some of these tales do have a certain sense of being rushed, but others, including the title story are nothing short of brilliant. As usual, Dick focuses on dystopic futures that are politically and/or environmentally ravaged; usually these stories have a level of humor too, but others in this collection are more purely downbeat.

While some stories are just okay, I particularly enjoyed "The Golden Man," "Second Variety" and "Foster, You're Dead." There are some other great ones, too. I would recommend this to any science fiction fan who wants to read some truly original fiction; this is another good collection of Dick's short stories.

The man is good. If you have not read any of Philip K. Dick I would highly recommend any of his books. He is by far the best Sci-Fi writer ever. Some of my favorite short stories from this book are "The Father-Thing, The Golden Man, The Hanging Stranger." Heck, they are all good. They remind me more of episodes of "The Twilight Zone" then just Sci-Fi.

This book, third in a set of five from Citadel Press (who are doing similar definitive collections of Robert Bloch & Theodore Sturgeon), collects all of Dick's short stories, the vast majority of them from the 50s - not coincidentally, the high-water mark of the sf pulps. All are introduced by later-era sf writers like Tom Disch, Norman Spinrad & this volume's John Brunner; unfortunately, all take pains to point out that the true value of these stories was in their raw wealth of ideas, which Dick later cannibalized and expanded upon in his novels. During his short-story tyro period, Dick wrote fast and furious (how does a story a week sound?) and the conventional wisdom states that these tales are too one-dimensional, formulaic and crudely-written to have much artistic quality on their own merits. I strongly disagree. While Dick's later novels are of course worth reading, these early stories literally SEETHE with fevered imagination: it's important to note that he does not employ recurring characters or settings here. He literally starts each story with a blank canvas, which only makes his prolific output that much more astounding. All of his obsessions and central themes are already present, but emerging as they did against the backdrop of the American 50s, the oft-noted 'flaws' in these small gems lend an eerily authentic surrealism and subversive power that his 60s and 70s work (when the world he lived in was already waist-deep in 'science fiction time', to use a Spinrad phrase) somewhat lack. Actually, Dick's COLLECTED STORIES, like much of the most resonant 50s sf, can be savored as much for their horror-story frissons, or their mythic and allegorical properties, as they can as pure speculative fiction. (And one could make the argument that such work, produced under the spectres of McCarthyism, The Bomb, flying-saucer sightings, a growing militarism and the incipient gray-flannelled paranoia festering in the newly-minted utopia of suburbia, was much more daring and revolutionary than similar Dick-inspired work published in the far-less-restrictive, anything-goes 60s). Sure, many of the characters in COLLECTED STORIES read like print versions of Kenneth Tobey and Morris Ankrum, but therein lies their power; they're true to the era in a way that 'better-written', more fully developed protagonists probably couldn't be. Anyway, to cut a long-winded sermon short, readers drawn to either sf or horror, as well as those who nominally detest both genres but do enjoy a touch of strangeness and obsessiveness in their fiction, should run out and buy SECOND VARIETY and the other four books in this series. You may be surprised to find many of these 'one-dimensional' stories, written hastily for money, clinging like burrs to your subconscious long after the work of Great Authors have slid noiselessly from memory. Mandatory reading.