Paycheck and Other Classic Stories

by Philip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny (Introduction)

Readers worldwide consider Philip K. Dick to have been the greatest science fiction writer on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick's works has continued to mount, and his reputation has been enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. The Philip K. Dick Award is now presented 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This collection draws from the writer's earliest short and medium-length fiction (including several previously unpublished stories), written during the years 1952-1955, and features such fascinating stories as Paycheck (adapted as a major motion picture starring Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman), Beyond Lies the Wub, The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford, The Variable Man, and many others. Here, readers will find Dick's initial explorations of the themes he so brilliantly brought to life in his later work.

Dick won the prestigious Hugo Award for the best novel of 1963 for The Man in the High Castle. In the last year of his life, the film Blade Runner was made from his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? More recently, Dick's short story The Minority Report inspired Steven Spielberg's movie of the same title.

Volume 1/5. Includes stories from 1952-1955:
- Stability
- Roog
- The Little Movement
- Beyond Lies the Wub
- The Gun
- The Skull
- The Defenders
- Mr. Spaceship
- Piper in the Woods
- The Infinites
- The Preserving Machine
- Expendable
- The Variable Man
- The Indefatigable Frog
- The Crystal Crypt
- The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford
- The Builder
- Meddler
- Paycheck
- The Great C
- Out in the Garden
- The King of the Elves
- Colony
- Prize Ship
- Nanny

Other editions of this volume have the same list of stories, and were published under these titles:
- The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford,
- Beyond Lies the Wub,
- The King of the Elves (+1 extra story).

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Ebooks, Collections

397 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1987

About the author

Philip Kindred Dick was a prolific American science fiction author whose work has had a lasting impact on literature, cinema, and popular culture. Known for his imaginative narratives and profound philosophical themes, Dick explored the nature of reality, the boundaries of human identity, and the impact of technology and authoritarianism on society. His stories often blurred the line between the real and the artificial, challenging readers to question their perceptions and beliefs.

Raised in California, Dick began writing professionally in the early 1950s, publishing short stories in various science fiction magazines. He quickly developed a distinctive voice within the genre, marked by a fusion of science fiction concepts with deep existential and psychological inquiry. Over his career, he authored 44 novels and more than 100 short stories, many of which have become classics in the field.

Recurring themes in Dick's work include alternate realities, simulations, corporate and government control, mental illness, and the nature of consciousness. His protagonists are frequently everyday individuals—often paranoid, uncertain, or troubled—caught in surreal and often dangerous circumstances that force them to question their environment and themselves. Works such as Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly reflect his fascination with perception and altered states of consciousness, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health struggles and drug use.

One of Dick's most influential novels is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for Ridley Scott's iconic film Blade Runner. The novel deals with the distinction between humans and artificial beings and asks profound questions about empathy, identity, and what it means to be alive. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, each reflecting key elements of his storytelling—uncertain realities, oppressive systems, and the search for truth. These adaptations have introduced his complex ideas to audiences well beyond the traditional readership of science fiction.

In the 1970s, Dick underwent a series of visionary and mystical experiences that had a significant influence on his later writings. He described receiving profound knowledge from an external, possibly divine, source and documented these events extensively in what became known as The Exegesis, a massive and often fragmented journal. These experiences inspired his later novels, most notably the VALIS trilogy, which mixes autobiography, theology, and metaphysics in a narrative that defies conventional structure and genre boundaries.

Throughout his life, Dick faced financial instability, health issues, and periods of personal turmoil, yet he remained a dedicated and relentless writer. Despite limited commercial success during his lifetime, his reputation grew steadily, and he came to be regarded as one of the most original voices in speculative fiction. His work has been celebrated for its ability to fuse philosophical depth with gripping storytelling and has influenced not only science fiction writers but also philosophers, filmmakers, and futurists.

Dick's legacy continues to thrive in both literary and cinematic spheres. The themes he explored remain urgently relevant in the modern world, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with human identity and governance. The Philip K. Dick Award, named in his honor, is presented annually to distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. His writings have also inspired television series, academic studies, and countless homages across media.

Through his vivid imagination and unflinching inquiry into the nature of existence, Philip K. Dick redefined what science fiction could achieve. His wor

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This, the first a series of six volumes of Dick’s collected short fiction, covers the period between 1947 and 1953, encompassing his first (six-month) marriage, his even briefer college experiment at Berkeley, the beginning of his second (nine-year) marriage, his four years working at a Telegraph Hill record store, and his first year supporting himself as a full-time writer. (Just barely self-supporting. Dick said he lacked the money to pay his library fines.)

The quality varies considerably, from one story to the next, but even the worst stories (which are not that bad, really) are remarkably inventive and filled with surprises. They are mostly science fiction, with a sprinkling of contemporary fantasy, and fall into two major categories: 1) stories that, after establishing a believable reality and suggesting a theme, lead to an event that compels the reader to question that reality and to rethink the idea of a theme, 2) a retelling of an old myth or an old fairy tale in a contemporary setting, in a way that makes it seem new and ancient at the same time.

My favorite of the twenty-five tales included here are: “Roog” (a dog is suspicious of the garbage men), “The Little Movement” (toy soldiers with a mind of their own), “Beyond Lies the Wub” (a space creature with an extraordinary ability), “The Defenders” (after years of robot war, Americans leave their bunker to explore the surface of an abandoned earth), “Piper in the Woods” (the Terran colonist don’t want to work anymore, sayings they are called by “the piper”), “The Infinites” (space travelers undergo a rapid evolutionary transformation), “The Preserving Machine” (Doc Labyrinth turns musical pieces into animals, with disturbing results), “Expendable” (a man finds himself in the middle of an insect war), “The Builder” (a contemporary Noah), “Meddler” (a time-machine story with a very creepy ending), “Paycheck” (a time-traveling engineer must save himself with a cryptic collection of objects sent by his future-self), “King of the Elves” (an old man discovers his destiny), “Colony” (Terran colonists find their appliances and household objects have turned against them), and “Nanny” (warfare as a form of planned obsolescence for domestic robots).

These thirteen tales are guaranteed to expand your mind and leave you slightly paranoid as well. And the other twelve tale. Well, they are pretty good too.

[Oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Estos son los primeros cuentos de Philip K. Dick que leo, y sólo puedo decir que estoy encantado. Me han parecido excepcionales. Escritos y publicados a principios de los 50 del pasado siglo, ya se pueden encontrar sus temáticas favoritas: viajes temporales, paranoia y conspiraciones. Me ha sorprendido gratamente la cantidad de ideas que maneja Dick, que posteriormente han servido de inspiración para otros escritores y guionistas. Aún recuerdo las palabras de Miquel Barceló en su primera Guía de Lectura (la buena, la de 1990), donde hablaba de su exagerado éxito, y donde se notaba el poco cariño que le tenía al autor.

Los veinticinco relatos incluidos en ‘Cuentos completos I: Aquí yace el Wub’ me han gustado mucho, empezando por el primero, ‘Estabilidad’, y pasando por ‘El hombre variable’, ‘Los defensores’, ‘La paga’ o ‘La cripta de cristal’. Dick sabía cómo enganchar al lector desde las primeras.

Me gustaría terminar con un comentario del propio Dick sobre su primer cuento publicado, ‘Aquí yace el Wub’, donde ya le empiezas a coger cierto cariño:

Mi primera historia publicada, en la más deleznable de las revistas baratas que se vendían en aquel tiempo, Planet Stories. Cuando llevé cuatro ejemplares a la tienda de discos en la que trabajaba, un cliente me miró y, con ciertos reparos, me preguntó: «Phil, ¿tú lees esta clase de basura?». Tuve que admitir que no sólo la leía, sino que también la escribía.

[Manny]

Because you are currently reading The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics, a few recommendations in Science,

Goodreads told me just now. This book was fourth on the list.

Well, that's either very clever or very stupid.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Introduction to PKD

As I was so intrigued with these stories that I wrote individual reviews for each single one of them during the past few months, there is not a lot left for me to say about this collection of short stories here but maybe one or two words about how PKD defined the role of an sf author.

My acquaintance with PKD started a few weeks ago when I happened to come across a collection of some of his novels from the Library of America. Since I own already a lot of their high-quality editions, I thought that maybe I would also like PKD, and I started reading some of his short stories before ordering the novel collection. The result was a case of literary love at first sight: His stories are full of thought-provoking ideas which not seldom are more interesting than the plots themselves. It’ probably no coincidence that PKD himself wrote:

”I think that Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. It if is good sf the idea is new, it is stimulating and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader’s mind so that that mind, like the author’s, begins to create. […] hence the very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create – and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness.”

One can certainly say that reading his stories sent me on a journey of discovery and set me thinking because after all, I felt motivated to write reviews on every single story, even though these stories were sometimes quite short. My favourite stories in that collection were “Roog”, “Piper in the Woods” and the very sinister “Colony”.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of reviewers here seem to have missed that these stories are mostly from Dick's earliest work, and that they were written 55-60 years ago. They're not his best work, and are perhaps most useful in examining how he got started. Some of the stories are predictable, some aren't. Some have wonderfully clever ideas, some don't.

Mozart wrote at least 48 symphonies; at most 5 are anything like famous.
Michael Jordan missed more than 9000 shots in his career, and yet people watched him anyway.

A great collection of short stories? No.
A worthwhile read to learn more about PK Dick and have a decent time on the way? Yes.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Introducción a los relatos de Philip K. Dick.-

Género. Relatos.

Lo que nos cuenta. Primer volumen recopilatorio de la producción breve del conocido autor, centrado en 25 relatos escritos entre 1947 y 1955, presentados en orden cronológico con un prefacio del propio autor extraído de una de sus cartas, prólogo de Owen Godersky e introducción de Zelazny.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die Lektüre dieser SF- und sogar Fantasy-Kurzgeschichten, ganz überwiegend aus der ersten Hälfte der 50er Jahre des letzten Jahrhunderts, ist sehr beglückend. Teilweise mag zwar noch die Brillanz fehlen, doch kann der Leser miterleben, wie Dick langsam sein ureigenes Thema findet: nichts ist wie es scheint.

[Tomislav · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five years after Philip K. Dick’s death in 1982, Underwood-Miller (US) published a definitive five-volume hardcover series containing a collection of all but three of his short stories, put into order of their receipt by Dick’s agent (not the same as order of publication). That year, Gollancz (UK) also published a trade paperback series of the same five volumes, but with retitled volumes 4 and 5. Unfortunately for the collector or completist, there are also other multi-volume series of his collected short stories, in other order, but with similar subtitles. If you are looking to complete the set, be sure to stick with the same series. If you are looking to read in order, I recommend the Gollancz series. To help you recognize those, here is a summary of The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, Gollancz Science Fiction, Orion Publishing Company, 1987.

Volume 1 “Beyond Lies the Wub”, 1947, 1951-1952, Introduction by Roger Zelazny
Volume 2 “Second Variety” 1952-1953, Introduction by Norman Spinrad
Volume 3 “The Father-Thing” 1953-1954, Introduction by John Brunner
Volume 4 “Minority Report” 1954-1963, Introduction by James Tiptree, Jr.
(original Underwood-Miller title “The Days of Perky Pat”)
Volume 5 “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” 1963-1981, Introduction by Thomas M. Disch
(original Underwood-Miller title “The Little Black Box”)

This review is of Volume 1 of the Gollancz series, subtitled for “Beyond Lies the Wub”.

I’ve rated each of the 25 stories from 1 to 5, using the same guidelines as I do for novels on GR. The longer novellas have plots and characters to evaluate. But many of the short stories are not much more than what Norman Spinrad calls “one-punch gimmicks.” My ratings on those might hinge on my own surprise and the plausibility of the ending twist, which I try not to divulge for the sake of spoilers. Generally, I’m willing to give PKD a lot of leeway on aliens and robots and wacky speculations, but human behavior needs to be realistic. My average rating is 2.9, and so a 3 for the entire collection.

This was the beginning of PKD’s professional short-story writing career, with some of these being sent out within days of each other. A lot of the themes that appear later in his novels are in development here – alternate realities, male urban office workers who come home to wives who are superficial and betray them, the destruction of the Earth through nuclear war and robot weapons. My favorites were The Gun, The Crystal Crypt, and Paycheck. Here’s my mini-reviews of every story -

Stability, written 1947 or earlier, unpublished before this posthumous collection. PKD was at most 19 years old. This is a somewhat aimless piece of writing in which a man who has invented a time machine is suppressed for disturbing the social goal of stability. But the authorities are distracted by a paperweight he owns – a detailed carving of a city, inside a glass bubble. Rating 1/5.

Roog, written 11/51, published in Fantasy & Science Fiction Feb 1953. This was PKD’s first sale, although not his first published story. In it, we see what the world looks like from the point of view of a pet dog. Rating 2/5.

The Little Movement, published in Fantasy & Science Fiction Nov 1952. A toy soldier purchased for a boy takes an active leadership role among his toys. Rating 3/5.

Beyond Lies the Wub, published in Planet Stories Jul 1952. This was PKD’s first published story. In it, a crew returning from Mars has bought a heavy animal for meat, only to find that it speaks English. Rating 3/5.

The Gun, published in Planet Stories Sep 1952. Star travelers reach a planet whose surface is blasted to nuclear glass, and are shot down. They find it hard to believe that any intelligent species would divide into factions and war upon itself. The planet is clearly Earth, but unfamiliar to the apparently human star travelers. No explanation of their history is provided, leaving the reader to speculate. Rating 5/5.

The Skull, published in If Sep 1952. A time traveler from future Mars comes back to the contemporary Midwest to assassinate a man who will become a major religious figure. The plot twist is a watered-down version of what happens in Michael Moorcock’s later (1966) novella “Behold The Man.” Rating 4/5.

The Defenders, published in Galaxy Jan 1953. Through eight years of nuclear war with the Russians, Americans have been living in underground bunkers, building war machines. Strangely, a couple of fighter robots reporting down to their human masters underground have tested as non-radioactive. A human surface visit is planned and the results are not as expected. The story has a surprisingly up-beat ending for PKD. Parts of this story were adapted for his 1964 novel The Penultimate Truth. Rating 3/5.

Mr. Spaceship, published in Imagination Jan 1953. In order to build a spaceship capable of fighting an alien enemy in a space war, Kramer suggests implanting the brain of his elderly retired college professor into a rocket. But Professor Thomas has secret ideas of his own, that affect both Kramer and his wife Dolores. Rating 3/5.

Piper in the Woods, published in Imagination Feb 1953. Some workers from a forward base on Asteroid Y-3 have become highly passive, and are coming home with the delusion that they are now plants. Due to its incredibly high density, this asteroid has not only Earth-like gravity, but also a breathable atmosphere, and vegetation, and even a native humanoid population. Harris heads into the woods, with an utterly predictable outcome. Rating 2/5.

The Infinities, published in Planet Stories May 1953. A survey ship with a crew of three visits an asteroid with water, temperature, atmosphere like Earth, but no life. One crewmember whose job seems to be nothing more than caring for this ship’s hamster population, releases them on the asteroid. But soon all are exposed to radiation, and a nightmarish transformation begins, with no relationship to plausible science. But hey, it’s PKD. Rating 2/5.

The Preserving Machine, published in Fantasy and Science Fiction Jun 1953. A special machine has been built to transform musical scores into new types of living animals. Rating 2/5.

Expendable, published in published as “He Who Waits” in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction June 1953. A conspiracy of bugs. Rating 1/5.

The Variable Man, published in Space Science Fiction Jul 1953. This 60-page novella starts with the building of an interstellar bomb based on a flawed understanding of relativity. Earth has been waiting for the computers to calculate a better than 50% probability of defeating the Centaurans before launching, and this bomb pushes us over the line. But the calculations go wacky when a time machine brings forward a twentieth century handyman, whose ability to fix things is nearly psychic. Good plot tension, but based on leaky concepts. Rating 3/5.

The Indefatigable Frog, published in Fantastic Story Magazine Jul 1953. Two college professors disagree on the winner of Xenon’s paradox, and so re-enact it. Unrealistic, but clever. Rating 4/5.

The Crystal Crypt, published in Planet Stories Jan 1954. A trio of Terrans has pulled off a terrorist act against a major Martian city, and is attempting to escape the authorities there before the war starts. But how did they evade the lie detector? Not sure why exactly, but the story has a very contemporary feel even seventy years later in 2024. Rating 5/5.

The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford, published in Fantasy & Science Fiction Jan 1954. Doc Labyrinth has built a machine called the Animator, that brings unexpected living things to life. Just like the earlier Doc Labyrinth story (The Preserving Machine) this story is more weird than plausible. Rating 2/5.

The Builder, published in Amazing Dec 53/Jan 54. A man is so obsessed with building a boat in his backyard, that he neglects his job, his wife, his sons. It makes no sense until the very last line of the story. Rating 3/5.

Meddler, published in Future Oct 1954. This story effectively demonstrates that time travel to the future is just a logically problematic as the paradox of changing the past. Within the story, the beauty of butterflies is not what it seems. Rating 4/5.

Paycheck, published in Imagination Jun 1953. A mechanic has been hired by a secretive corporation in exchange for losing all memory of what he was working on for the contracted two years. Disappointingly, his forgotten self seems to have made a decision to exchange all his pay for a small collection of useless pocket items. But each item has a use, as the plan made by his forgotten self is unveiled step by progressively more outrageous step. This story is the basis of the 2003 film by the same name. Apparently, the film is not as good as the story. Rating 5/5.

The Great C, published in Cosmos Science Fiction & Fantasy Sep 1953. Several generations after a nuclear apocalypse, a young man is sent by his tribe on an annual quest to ask three questions of the Great C(omputer), at great risk to himself. It’s all plausible up until his questions are answered – then woohoo, why that? Rating 2/5.

Out in the Garden, published in Fantasy Fiction Aug 1953. Robert’s beautiful wife Peggy is always sitting out in the garden with her pet duck Sir Francis. A friend makes a joke about Leda and Zeus in the form of a swan, and Peggy does not take it well, because she is pregnant. The story nearly forgotten, Robert and Peggy’s son invites his father to a picnic in the garden. Rating 2/5.

The King of the Elves, published as “Shadrach Jones and the Elves” in Beyond Fantasy Fiction Sep 1953. As unexpected as it is for Shadrach Jones to discover a small team of wet elves at his gas station, he is even more shocked at what the ask him to do after their king dies while he is hosting them. He is drawn further and further into their world. Rating 3/5.

Colony, published in Galaxy June 1953. An extremely aggressive and versatile form of native life is discovered by the science crew on the otherwise perfect world named Planet Blue. They dare not bring it home to Earth, and devise a novel process for getting off-planet. Rating 4/5.

Prize Ship, published as “Globe from Ganymede” in Thrilling Wonder Stories Winter 1954. The rest of the Solar System is under threat of war with the Ganymedeans. Nearly at the point of capitulation, a Ganymedean space ship is captured, and so hope is revived. Rating 3/5.

Nanny, published in Startling Storie Spring 1955. A family’s robotic nanny begins to have mysterious problems. The promise of the new technology is being undermined by schemes of profiteering corporations. Rating 3/5.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

PKD writes with mystery. You wonder where you are, who are these people, pigs, stuffed animals, toy soldiers, aliens, robots, etc... When you get a grip on the scene, many plot lines intensify toward the crisis, and many lead to a revelation or plot twist. PKD has a deep, unique way of thinking, unbound by the parameters of what we as a united humanity call reality. He has a searching mind, a hunger for the unknown, as if he has to find it. In a sense, perhaps, he could be considered a Sci-Fi Kafka. He has stories that outline a simple plot and outline, in simple words and story progression, but under all of that....



I've come to love Doctor Who in the past couple years, and have realized PKD provides the kind of sci-fi I seek in that show. I had thoughts of a book of shorts I had read, and particularly the stories The Golden Man and Second Variety. I realized I liked those stories, in the same kind of way I like Doctor Who. I have since purchased all five books in the Citadel PKD short story collection, starting with this, the first in the series. I have a desire to read the novels as well. I'm finding a pleasure in PKD I've been lacking for a long time, flashes of my bliss, and hope to be on my way following that light of the moment, the pleasure and blessing of the reading lifestyle for the sake of reading. For Love.

PKD reminds me of The Matrix, my favorite sci-fi movie. He has that philosophical, existential, seeking of a deeper reality, seeing life through eyes beyond the eyes, the mind beyond the mind. PKD, to me, is a philosopher using sci-fi as an instrument of research and exploration, searching out his own unconscious mind. Some turn mental anguish into art (Van Gogh), some into timeless literature (Kafka). PKD turns his hunger, his pain and anguish into science fiction, and I don't know that he set out with the intention of doing so. He journeyed into himself, and it happened. He didn't try. So many of us who set out to be artists may lose our way because we may fall into the path of "becoming" instead of "being."

[Jack Stovold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having never read any Philip K. Dick, but long having an interest, I’ve decided to read through all his works in chronological order as best as I can (for various reasons, I won’t be able to read his first novel, Gather Yourselves Together, until July). I want to give you my impressions of his works as a first-timer and observe the evolution of his writing.
I started with this one.
This collection contains most of Dick’s earliest stories, mostly written in 1952, although the first one, “Stability”, is his earliest known story, written in 1947 but first published nearly forty years later.
I was hooked as soon as I read “Stability”, which contains a classic time travel paradox, and a truly bizarre ending that I don’t fully understand, but like so many of the stories in this collection left a vivid image in my mind.
Perhaps the thing that surprised me most about this collection, based on my impressions of Dick, was the frankly fantastical and earnest nature of most of these stories. Dick is definitely not a “hard” sci-fi writer here, in that the “science” in many of these stories is vaguely sketched out at best. In fact, a number of them, such as “Expendable” (a tale of a man caught between the war for earth’s fate between sentient ants and spiders), “Roog” ( the terror experienced by a dog perceiving garbagemen as marauding invaders) “The Builder” (about a modern day Noah), “Out in the Garden” (a man is concerned his toddler son is actually the product of his wife’s affair with a duck), and the two Doc Labyrinth stories, “The Preserving Machine” (Labyrinth creates a machine to turn musical compositions into animals), and the title story “The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford” (Labyrinth creates a machine to bring inanimate objects to life) are in fact just trippy little fantasy vignettes. They’re a lot of fun.
One other thing I like is how casually Dick throws in sci-fi tropes like aliens, time-travel and interplanetary councils and wars. For example, the Martians in “The Crystal Crypt” are almost comically under-explained. They appear to be human and dark-skinned, but they apparently have a millennia old civilization. Whether they are truly alien or an ancient human colony is entirely unexplained. Similarly, in “Prize Ship”, the people of the nine planets of the solar system are obviously human colonists, but the Ganymedeans appear to be alien and have a different language, but I can’t be sure. (Also unexplained: do the people of Jupiter, Saturn, etc; actually live on gas planets? Dick obviously cares little about these things).
Speaking of “Prize Ship”, the story has an example of what I perceive to be one of Dick’s greatest strengths throughout this collection, the ability to create vivid imagery. The image of the tiny medieval warriors in “Prize Ship”, the eerie scene of malevolent butterflies gathering in a grassy meadow in “Meddler”, the epic moonlit battle between the elves and the trolls in “The King of the Elves”, and the time-travel scenes and bizarre ending of the above-mentioned “Stability” are still rattling around in my head weeks after finishing this.
Many of the sci-fi tropes featured in this book seem almost clichéd, but one has to remember Dick has been imitated so often that many of these must have seemed much original at the time, especially time-loop paradoxes, which Dick uses often to great effect, at least three times in this collection, in “Stability”, “The Skull”, and “Meddler”. However, at other times Dick thinks of something striking, as in the consequence of time travel in “Prize Ship”. I had never considered and never seen explored in any other work (this consequence is also ignored in Dick’s other time travel stories).
Other tropes familiar to sci-fi readers, especially sci-fi of the 50s, are cold-war paranoia, either of endless apocalyptic war with the Russians (“The Defenders”), post nuclear wastelands (“The Great C”, “The Gun”), time-travel (a whole bunch), interstellar war (“Mr. Spaceship”, “The Variable Man”), and brain transference into a machine (“Mr. Spaceship”). One of my favorite little stories, “The Indefatigable Frog”, featured petty rival professors and strongly reminded me of Asimov. “Beyond Lies the Wub” also featured a twist ending reminiscent of Asimov.
The two longest stories in this collection, “The Variable Man” and “Paycheck” were quite good. “The Variable Man” was simultaneously thrilling and amateurish, but I keep thinking about it. It contains Dick’s most “science-fiction-y” concept in the bomb used to destroy the Alpha Centauris. I’m surprised it hasn’t been made into a movie yet. On the other hand, the exciting “Paycheck” has been made into a movie that falls short of the story, disappointing as both a Dick adaptation and as a John Woo film. (“King of the Elves” is also apparently in the works as a CG kids movie from Disney).
Perhaps what charmed me most about this collection was the pulpy, almost comic-book like nature of many of these stories, which was something I didn’t expect. “The Infinites”, another of my favorites, could easily be an episode of the original Star Trek. Many others remind me of the “The Twilight Zone”.
Highly recommended. The only drawbacks are the tossed-off nature of many of the sci-fi concepts in here. This might turn off some people, especially if you’re used to harder sci-fi like Asimov. The concepts here are less important than how people react to them. I haven’t read any later Dick, but the stories here are by and large pulpy, and many of them don’t have any underlying theme or message, instead just focusing on telling an entertaining yarn. A few of them are slight and unmemorable (“The Builder”, “Out in the Garden”). On the whole, however, I found this very entertaining, and I look forward to more Dick.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some random Berkley record store employee writes science fiction stories in his free time. In 1953 a Sci-Fi magazine actually buys one of his stories, and the rest, as they say, is history.

In bonus notes at the back of this volume, Philip K. Dick writes about that first story he sold, a fun little tale about garbage collectors from the point of view of a dog. He also tells about a mystery writer, Tony Boucher, who reviewed the stories that amateur writers in Berkley were working on and gave them advice on how to make them better, for one dollar a session. Dick praises this man for his selfless dedication to the improvement of other people’s art. He is the real hero behind these stories.

This first set (there are two more volumes) of early PKD stories shine with imaginative brilliance. All are set in the future, near and far, and feature time travel, robots, devastating wars, humanoids, drones, aliens—everything that later got used in a movie, and a lot that did not. The briefly expounded plots rhyme with later Outer Limits and Twilight Zone type material, and of course some of them are quite disquieting.

Two more volumes, you say? Great!

[Mövlüd Məmmədli · Rating 5 out of 5]

PKD' nin hekayələrinin cəmləşdiyi 5 cildlik antologiyasının ilk dayanacağı. İlk cild olan- "Bay Uzay Gemisi' ndə PKD' nin 1951-1952-ci illərdə yazdığı 25 hekayəsi yer alıb. PKD' nin hələ o vaxt 23-24 yaşlarında olduğunu nəzərə alsaq, kitabdakı elmi- fantastik (bəziləri fantastik olmaqla) hekayələr çox mahircə yazılıb.
PKD' nin yaradıcılığının son illərində yazdığı romanlarındakı, yazarla birgə duyduğum hisslərin ən ibtidai formasını bu hekayələrdə də hiss etdim. Kitab gerçəklik haqqında ortaya qoyduğu suallar, distopik gələcək düşüncələri və biraz da gələcəkdə bizi gözləyən texnoloji inkişafa qarşı qorxusunun yazarın gənc yaşlarından sahib olduğu düşüncə forması olduğunu ortaya qoyur. Və 70-ci illərdə yazdığı romanlarında obrazların dilindən göstərilsə də, yazarın da sahib olduğu paranoyanın izləri gənclik ədəbi nümunələrində də görünür. Elmi-fantastik yazarlar arasında xüsusi yeri olduğuna hər əsəri ilə bir daha inandığım bir yazar.
Tərcüməyə gəldikdə 6.45' in əksinə daha oxunaqlı tərcümə ilə qarşılaşdım.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit, I am biased. The short story form is under appreciated and under utilized and I would much rather see genius is the short form than mediocrity in the novel. PKD is the type of writer that makes you remember that the short story form is an art form and much more difficult to pull off than other, longer forms. Despite that he's relegated to "genre writer" category, there are numerous short stories that delve into deeper areas of philosophy, humanism, and, of course, the future of the world. Sure, there are predictable stories but the majority are really, honestly thought-provoking. He also isn't afraid of reusing a character. Notable are the timelessness of the pieces, they seldom felt out-dated or period. I wish I could write like PDK.

[Alejandro De Luca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este volumen recopila los primeros cuentos escritos y publicados por Philip K. Dick. Todos ellos de la década del cincuenta.

La mayoría de los relatos son de ciencia ficción. Entre los temas de este género literario que se tratan aparecen los viajes en el tiempo, civilizaciones extraterrestres, científicos con máquinas extraordinarias, naves espaciales y viajes intergalácticos.

Algunos de los relatos tienen un remate irónico o incluso gracioso. No todos terminan de la mejor manera dándole a algunos un cierto aire de cuento de terror.

Al menos dos cuentos de este libro tratan sobre objetos inanimados que cobran vida. En las notas del final del libro Philip K. Dick aclara que esto tiene que ver con no confiar en la apariencia de las cosas. Una idea que luego potenciaría en su obra: la paranoia de todo lo que rodea.

El cuento El Rey de los Elfos es el único que se puede clasificar como fantasía pura, aunque hay algunos otros que oscilan entre este género y la ciencia ficción, como por ejemplo En el Jardín.

El cuento que más me gustó fue Aquí yace el wub, seguido (sin orden particular) por La calavera, Mr. Spaceship, Los infinitos, La paga, El Gran C y La niñera.

De este último, La Niñera, debo decir que es impresionante la forma en que predijo la constante carrera en la que vivimos el día de hoy al tener que actualizar continuamente nuestros dispositivos electrónicos.

Este es un libro muy recomendable para quienes les guste la ciencia ficción y también para chicos o adolescentes a los que no les guste leer textos muy largos. Pueden ir leyendo de a un cuento por vez.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I certainly think Dick is one of the great sci-fi writers, but this collection of early stories definitely shows it's earliness. Nothing is quite as polished as you'd like (although that's pretty standard for Dick, I guess.) When it boils down to it, there just weren't that many great stories here.

Included:

Stability - 3 stars - It's sort of ironic (prescient?) that Dick's first story is what it is: time travel and confusion.

Roog - 2 stars - I know this is a beloved story, but it's never done it for me, and it didn't this time, either. I know what it's going for, but it doesn't seem to get there, for me.

The Little Movement - 3 stars - A humorous little story, but the ending is a little too predictable to have the necessary punch.

Beyond Lies the Wub - 4 stars - I liked this one quite a bit. It seems so silly and Seuss-ian, but there's something here about the depth of man's capacity for evil that I like.

The Gun - 3 stars - reads like a fairly standard sci-fi story. Not bad, but nothing particularly PKD here.

The Skull - 5 stars - I was really surprised that PKD's religious fascination started so early; I had gotten the impression this was a later phenomenon. Invariably, this is essentially PKD writing the "what if Jesus was a time traveler," but maybe not making it completely explicit. (I assume that's because of when he was writing.) The finale and everything ends up being pretty predictable, but there's still something fascinating in how it unfolds.

The Defenders - 5 stars - The first story revolving deeply around Cold War Hysteria, a theme he was big on. But this one points out the irony of the whole thing by having highly rational robots just trick the humans into behaving better. I like seeing humans get tricked into bettering themselves, apparently.

Mr Spaceship - 2 stars - has an interesting premise, but doesn't go anywhere interesting.

Piper in the Woods - 3 stars - Futuristic disease investigation.

The Infinites - ? - I only remember a couple of weird scenes from this one, and I didn't like it enough to re-read it. Sorry.

The Preserving Machine - 3 stars - So this isn't really a science fiction story. It's about transforming pieces of music into animals, then letting them survive in the wild; so, more surreal than science. It turns out pretty much the way you'd expect, but the idea itself is sort of strangely compelling, so I enjoyed it.

Expendable - 2 stars - Another one with some sort of premise that isn't teased out enough. This one feels like the first 5 pages of a longer story, in fact.

The Variable Man - 1 star - This story is really long and rambling, and most of it is unnecessary for the story itself. In fact, it gets so long and tedious that I actually can't remember what finally happens at the end. I think it does have some sort of resolution, but I was well past caring, by that point...

The Indefatigable Frog - 4 stars - As an academic, I tend to appreciate stories revolving around passionate and ridiculous academic arguments, as this one does.

The Crystal Crypt - 2 stars - standard.

The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford - 2 stars - So this is chosen to be the title story, huh? About a guy who brings a shoe to life? I don't get it...

The Builder - 3 stars - PKD tackles Noah.

Meddler - 3 stars - In this world, you can see the future but not the past. That's really weird. And it has deadly butterflies in it, which is cool. But at the end of the day, it's just too, too obvious what's going to happen. A story where the end is writ at the beginning.

Paycheck - 2 stars - This is one of the PKD stories that I find really, really frustrating, because it has such a nice premise, and handles it well for a while, before completely going off the tracks. In this case, all is well as the premise begins to unfold: the main character has left himself a pile of random objects that seem unusually useful, for some reason. And there's a fascinating premise here corporations have a sort of sacredness from government meddling that individuals don't have (a surprisingly believable concept, at the moment). But then, our hero decides to use his powers to blackmail the corporation into hiring him? That's the big plan? It's so bizarre that I can never wrap my head around it. And the winking implication of an as-yet-unpredicted romance at the very end of the story is unbearingly groan-inducing. If you're reading this book, you probably know that this was made into a movie a decade or so ago. That movie fixes the main problems in this story while introducing a whole host of new ones. (Primary amongst them, the fact that this everyday engineer and his everyday biologist girlfriend somehow turn into some sort of super-ninja secret agents. This is only exacerbated by Girlfriend repeating to Boyfriend that he's "only OK" at handling a motorcycle, as he's performing matrix-style stunts through traffic.) This is certainly NOT the only instance of a highly-flawed PKD piece being turned into a differently-flawed movie.

The Great C - 4 stars - Post-apocalyptic humanity relates to a surviving mega-computer.

Out in the Garden - ? - PKD modernizes Leda and the Swan. I find this one inexplicable.

The King of the Elves - 3 stars - PKD writes a fantasy story, which sort of surprised me. It's passable enough.

Colony - 5 stars - This one made me laugh pretty hard. An alien life form that can imitate any inanimate object in your house, then eat you when you sit on it / touch it / wear it. There is something fascinatingly paranoid and beautiful about the idea. Nice ending, too.

Prize Ship - 2 stars - A space ship lets us visit Lilliput and Brobdingnag? Meh.

Nanny - 4 stars - I love PKD's stories against consumerism, and that theme seems to start here. Companies are building their Nanny Robots to destroy each other, so that people have to keep upgrading. There's something so patently ridiculous about it being babysitting robots, but it certainly drives the point home, eh?

[Agape · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yazarla ilk olarak "Uzay Piyangosu" kitabıyla tanışmıştım. Bazı yazarlar ne kadar iyi olsalar da bazen kişiye hitap etmeyebilir. Bu yüzden ilk önce bir okuyup sonra diğer kitapları almaya karar verip vermeyeceğime bakacaktım. Nihayetinde yazarın tarzı çok hoşuma gitmişti fakat "Uzay Piyangosu" kitabının ciddi anlamda editöryal sorunları canımı sıkmıştı. Bu sebeple kendisine biraz ara vermiştim.


Uzun bir aranın ardından "Hangi kitabı okumalıyım?" diye düşünürken bazı kitaplarının öykülerin genişlemiş hali olduğunu veya öykülerden temel alındığını öğrendim. Böyle olunca ilk olarak öykü derlemelerini bitirmenin daha iyi olacağını düşündüm.


Bay Uzay Gemisi derlemesinde 25 öykü bulunuyor. Hepsine olmasa da en az 20 tanesine değinmek isterdim fakat buranın yeterli olmayacağını biliyorum. Dick gerçekten çok keyifli ve yaratıcı bir hayal gücüne sahip. Yazarın kendi yazdığı "Önsöz" karşılıyor bizi ve ardından başka bir ünlü yazar Roger Zelazny "Giriş" kısmıyla bizi selamlıyor. Bu bölümlerden sıkılanlar için oldukça kısa ve faydalı olduklarını belirtmek isterim. Kitabın en arkasında "Notlar" bölümü var. Öykülerin yayınlandıkları yeri ve kronolojik sıralamasını gösteriyor. Bazı öyküler için açıklamalar da mevcut. Bu sebeple her öyküden sonra göz atmanızda fayda var.


Berna Kılınçer tarafından çevirisi yapılan kitapta beni en çok rahatsız eden "içeride ve dışarıda" kelimelerinin yanlış yazılması oldu. Bu bazılarınız için önemsiz görünebilir fakat benim gözümü tırmalıyor. Her seferinde elime bir kalem alıp araya "i" koyma dürtüsüne engel olmaya çalıştım.


Çoğu öykü 1950'li yıllarda yazılmış fakat öyle noktalara değiniyor ki her öyküden sonra oturup içinde bulunduğunuz devri değerlendirirken buluyorsunuz kendinizi. Özellikle devlet politikaları konusunda ciddi anlamda çarpıcı etkiler yaratıyor.


Sindire sindire okunması gereken bir kitap olsa da o kadar heyacanlı ve merak uyandırıcı ki ara vermek istemiyorsunuz. Öykülerin genişliğini çok güzel ayarlamış Dick.


Bilenler bilir ben pek öyle bir kitabın ikinci kez okunmasına sıcak bakmayan birisiyim. Yine de "ikinci kez okunacaklar" adlı istisna listem de yok değil. Bay Uzay Gemisi kesinlikle bu listede kendisine yer edindi. Eğer 10 üzerinden 13 puan verebilseydim kesinlikle puanım 13 olurdu.


Bilim kurgu hayranı olup da henüz Dick okumadıysanız bir an evvel okumaya başlamalısınız. Okurken sizi minik sürprizler de bekliyor olacak. Kendisinin kitaplarından esinlenilerek çekilen filmler ve diziler mevcut. İsterdim ki tüm öyküleri mini dizi olarak günümüzde de güzelce çekilse. Black Mirror tadında fakat daha çarpıcı olacağını düşünüyorum.


Öykülere tek tek değinmeyeceğim çünkü kısalar ve tat kaçırmak istemem. Yine de değinmek istediğim bir nokta var ki Dick, toplumun "tüketim çılgınlığına" ve "satış tekniklerine" ciddi anlamda dikkat çekiyor. Günümüzde yaşadığımız dünya şu an bu ürkütücü sistemin ta kendisi. Sosyal medya platformlarında bulunan hesapların yüzde 90'ı size bir şey pazarlıyor. Nereye baksanız bu konuda bilinçaltınız tetikleniyor. Belki şimdilik bu konuda tedirgin hissetmiyor olabiliriz fakat gün geçtikçe bu girdabın içinde boğuluyor gibi hissedeceğiz. Belki de hissediyoruz.


Uzun lafın kısası Bay Uzay Gemisi ve Uzay Piyangosu kitaplarını öneririm. İnsanı aydınlatan, farklı bir bakış açısı kazandıran, düşündüren ve hayal gücünü tetikleyen kitaplara hep hayran kalmışımdır.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Introducción a los relatos de Philip K. Dick.-

Género. Relatos.

Lo que nos cuenta. Primer volumen recopilatorio de la producción breve del conocido autor, centrado en 25 relatos escritos entre 1947 y 1955, presentados en orden cronológico con un prefacio del propio autor extraído de una de sus cartas, prólogo de Owen Godersky e introducción de Zelazny.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/....

[Juraj · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes it's hard to review a collection of short stories. Some are great, others usually suck unless it's "the best of..." type of book. In this case, though, I have no issues rating it 2/5.

This is the first of five volumes of PKD's short stories going through his whole career and organized chronologically. So that means these are the earliest and I guess it shows. There wasn't a single great standout. Interestingly, I have a feeling that the quality went down the page count went up instead of other way around. The first bunch of stories were the most interesting. Or at least I wasn't so tired of their predictability and poor characterization.

The only stories that are worth a mention are Beyond Lies the Wub, The Gun and The Infinites.

All stories are from late 40's and early 50's and they really show their age. There's also a novelette hidden in the middle called Variable Man which was looking promising but as the story went on I was losing interest. Major theme of many of these is war. Given the time period they were written it makes sense.
I forced myself to read everything though by the end I was losing interest. PKD is one of my favorite authors and if Electric Sheep TV anthology is something to go by when it comes to his short fiction at least some interesting stories are waiting in the remaining volumes. But this one was just ok.

[Alexis Benitez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recomendado más como una pieza de historia de la ciencia ficción que como una lectura imprescindible. Por más que algunos conceptos sean buenos y lleguen a ejecutarse muy bien, en la mayoría de los casos no es así. Gran parte de los relatos se encuentran condicionados por las habilidades en desarollo de su autor, el poco espacio disponible para escribir (se publicaban en revistas junto a otros autores locales) y la carencia de un editor profesional o un equipo de asistentes disponibles para limar los relatos hasta su máximo esplendor. Por lo tanto, si bien durante muchos de los cuentos presentados tenemos premisas llamativas, resaltan aquí y allá las exposiciones forzadas, el monólogo final del antagonista, la ingenuidad de los protagonistas, la falta de una tensión palpable y los desenlaces olvidables; no en todos los cuentos se encuentran cada uno de estos desaciertos, pero es imposible ignorarlos una vez hacen acto de presencia. Lo positivo recae en el diálogo de los personajes que suele ser natural, el humor poco señalado en sus obras, el buen ritmo de las historias, el mensaje anti bélico que nunca cae en soluciones sencillas o ridículas, y en atestiguar las premisas y conceptos del autor de ciencia ficción más referenciado y adaptado de la cultura pop; que más adelante en su carrera se superaría a si mismo mejorando todo lo que estaba al alcance de sus habilidades, llegando a desarrollar novelas nacidas de sus propios cuentos que le harían ganador de prestigiosos premios y un lugar recurrente en el podio de todas las listas que mencionan a los mejores autores y a los cuentos del género, sin mencionar al premio fundado en su honor y demás privilegios en la literatura estadounidense que obtuvo después de su muerte.

Advertencia necesaria: recomendaría leer algunos de sus cuentos de forma individual para despejar dudas sobre el interés real, conocer la curiosa y extravagante historia del autor, o estar muy al tanto de su influencia en el cine y la televisión. De otra forma dudo que alguien se interese en gastar la desorbitada suma de 22 euros por cada uno de los cinco tomos que componen su narrativa breve.
Sobre la edición en si, y otro punto en contra, es el papel y tinta. La combinación entre ambos dejará disconforme a cualquier comprador. El papel no es muy diferente de las ediciones clásicas y antiguas de minotauro, y a seis años de su impresión el tono amarillo empieza a notarse. La tinta, por otro lado, tampoco es de buena calidad y lo que a simple vista resulta llamativo en la rara definición de los caracteres se revela como pixelado visto de cerca. También hay algunos errores de tipeo.
25 relatos en 461 páginas, a 41 lineas de texto en 22,5x14cm, márgenes correctos y con notas no muy abundantes al final del libro: de las 25 piezas solo 7 tienen comentarios del autor, el resto consiste en mencionar solo la fecha de escritura, de publicación o para señalar la expansión de la idea en otra novela.

[TAB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stupendous collection of short stories, I have been converted to Dick's idea of science fiction (set out by him in the preface) that the lead character of a science fiction story should not be a person but instead, an idea. An idea that has roots in this, the modern world, but changes the face of what we know so as to make us question the possibilities of our future (and in some cases our alternate past or present). Give me more!

Best stories: "Beyond Lies the Wub", "The Defenders", "Paycheck", "Variable Man", "The Skull", The Crystal Crypt"

[Aracne Mileto · Rating 4 out of 5]

* Los Infinitos 4.5 estrellas / 30-03-2020
* La nave humana 4.5 estrellas / 31-10-2020
* La niñera 4 estrellas / 21-08-2021
*Roog 2.5 estrellas / 09-01-2022
*La estabilidad 2 estrellas / 23-01-2022
* La pequeña rebelión 2.5 estrellas / 16-02-2022
* Más allá se encuentra el Wub 4.5 estrellas / 20-02-2022
* El cañón 4 estrellas / 10-03-2022

[Jorge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me cuesta hablar de Philip K. Dick y ser objetivo, simplemente porque es uno de mis escritores favoritos y quizás uno de los mejores escritores de ciencia ficción de la historia. Sin embargo, trataré.

Cuentos completos I es una compilación con los primeros cuentos de K. Dick. Y se nota. Aunque hay algunos relatos muy interesantes ("Roog", "Más allá se encuentra el wub", "El hombre variable", "La rana infatigable", "La paga", "El gran C" o "El rey de los elfos"), la suma general es una colección de cuentos con ideas buenas o muy buenas que no se resuelven bien o que se desinflan en el clímax o el final. Es decir, no hay cuentos geniales como los que se encuentran en el Cuentos completos II.

¿Qué le faltan a estos cuentos? Diría que le faltan la paranoia, la locura, el humor y lo absurdo de los escritos posteriores de K. Dick.

Como los Cuentos completos están en orden cronológico, es obvio suponer que a medida que avance en la lectura de los volúmenes, encontraré cuentos cada vez mejores. Porque es casi una ley el que los escritores mejoran con la práctica.

Así es que a leer el Cuentos completos III se ha dicho...

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I generally like Philip K. Dick better in his short stories. He has fantastic and weird ideas, but too often his plotting and characterization can't sustain a novel length. Anyhoo, this is a collection of his earliest short/medium length works, covering 1952-55. Many are strongly influenced by the cold war, something that oddly contrasts with the current U.S. culture that has us fighting three simultaneous wars of choice. Among of my favorites is "The Preserving Machine" wherein a scientist is so concerned that WW3 will destroy cultural treasures that he invents a machine to turn classical music into animals so the music will be able to survive independent of human civilization. The outcome, as you can probably anticipate, is not encouraging.

[P.E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un recueil qui comprend 9 nouvelles, de niveau inégal, mais qui fait découvrir une facette méconnue de l'écrivain de Berkeley :

Le constructeur = The Builder
Le roi des elfes = The King of the Elves
La dame aux biscuits = The Cookie Lady
L'homme doré = The Golden Man
Si Benny Cemoli n'existait pas... = If There Were no Benny Cemoli
Projet Argyronète = Waterspider
La guerre contre les Fnouls = The War with the Fnools
La sortie mène à l'intérieur = The Exit Door Leads In
Chaînes d'air, réseau d'éther = Chains of air, web of Aether

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of early (as in pre-breakdown) Philip K. Dick stories runs the gamut from later-became-blockbusters such as "Paycheck" to hidden gems like "Beyond Lies the Wub". If you're not familiar with Philip K. Dick, this is a good place to start.

[Paul Spence · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first of five volumes reprinting most of PKD's short fiction in chronological order. The stories range from seriously dated historical curiosities to mini-masterpieces of high concept. There have been several previous editions reprinting Dick's stories but this one is by Subterranean Press, one of the finest speciality presses operating in the US today. If you like PKD you should get this entire series. Original/first printings of his works are prohibitively expensive.

This is a list of the stories, with their first publication date and the magazine in which they were published, that are included in this collection:

• 1 • Stability •
• 13 • Roog • F&SF Feb ’53
• 19 • The Little Movement • F&SF Nov ’52
• 27 • Beyond Lies the Wub • Planet Stories Jul ’52
• 35 • The Gun • Planet Stories Sep ’52
• 47 • The Skull • If Sep ’52
• 67 • The Defenders • Galaxy Jan ’53
• 87 • Mr. Spaceship • Imagination Jan ’53
• 113 • Piper in the Woods • Imagination Feb ’53
• 131 • The Infinites • Planet Stories May ’53
• 149 • The Preserving Machine [Doc Labyrinth] • F&SF Jun ’53
• 157 • Expendable • F&SF Jul ’53
• 163 • The Variable Man • Space Science Fiction Sep ’53
• 221 • The Indefatigable Frog • Fantastic Story Magazine Jul ’53
• 231 • The Crystal Crypt • Planet Stories Jan ’54
• 249 • The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford [Doc Labyrinth] • F&SF Jan ’54
• 259 • The Builder • Amazing Dec ’53/Jan ’54
• 269 • Meddler • Future Oct ’54
• 279 • Paycheck • Imagination Jun ’53
• 309 • The Great C • Cosmos SF&F Sep ’53
• 321 • Out in the Garden • Fantasy Fiction Aug ’53
• 329 • The King of the Elves • Beyond Fantasy Fiction Sep ’53
• 347 • Colony • Galaxy Jun ’53 (AP)
• 365 • Prize Ship • Thrilling Wonder Stories Win ’54
• 383 • Nanny • Startling Stories Spr ’55

[Rubén Vilaplana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Primeros relatos de Dick, curiosos, extraños y como no, sorprendentes.

[Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

2022 Reading Challenge #11: The first book by a famous dead author  ☑

After being unable to decide whether to read Philip K. Dick's first written work (Stability), first sold work (Roog), or first published work (Beyond Lies the Wub), I decided to read this short story collection, as it has all three aforementioned stories (and, also, spanning from 1947-1955, it leads up nicely to his first published novel, Solar Lottery [1955]).

So, as is usually the case (especially with an author's earlier work), there are some hits and misses, and (as is usually my feeling when it comes to short stories) a lot of those "misses" were due to not being fleshed out enough. Were I to base scores on the concepts alone, many of them would get five stars because PKD definitely was creative. Even considering the recurring themes of war, authoritarianism, and paranoia; no two stories felt identical, which is also no small matter. 

Most of the works do share a similar tone, and PKD consistently writes in such a way that intentionally leaves the reader in the dark —ommitting backstory, time gaps, characters using specific terminology, etc.— especially initially, which helps draw you in immediately, even if the story wouldn't normally be confusing, which can be a pro or con depending on both the story in question and the specific reader's tastes. PKD was also a big fan of the twist ending, and although in most cases they didn't come as a surprise, I still can't fault him for that (perhaps because it seems much more difficult to keep a surprise ending a surprise when the story is only a few pages long).

A brief synopsis and/or opinion of each story follows.

Stability (1947) ★★½
In a future where stability is prioritized (and enforced) above all else, an inventor is told his patent application has been declined. The strange thing is he doesn't remember applying for a patent in the first place. It's not a b ad premise, but it felt really underdeveloped and rushed. There were lots of little details that could've been incorporated but weren't.

Roog (1951) ★★★★★
At first I thought this one was just kind of silly, but it’s actually a pretty neat concept. From the dog’s perspective, this could be a very real alien and fearsome situation.  Making it longer could’ve underscored the strangeness and despair more, but I'd still say this one was excellent, if only because I don't think I've ever read a warped perspective of a mundane scene before.

The Little Movement (1952) ★★★
Fantasy about some toy robots plotting to take over the humans. The ending struck me as funny, but I'm not sure if it was supposed to be.

Beyond Lies the Wub (1952) ★★★★★
A crew member aboard a spaceship restocking food supplies on Mars buys a pig-like creature that turns out to be highly intelligent and even possess mental abilities that surpass our own. The captain remains adamant about eating the "wub," but the rest of the crew has second guesses. Although it felt rushed (and more could have been done with the topic of sentience in animals), I still really liked this one. Once again, the ending was very comical to me.

The Gun (1952) ★★★
A team of scientists are shot down by a still-operational self-automated gun left behind amongst the ruins of an earth civilization. Once they discover what it was that was so important to this extinct race that they built such secure defenses, it felt like PKD felt like a couple of lines of dialogue was all he needed to make his statement about humans/culture, but it fell flat because he didn't go further with it.

The Skull (1952) ★★★★½ 
A prisoner is sent back in time to kill the founder of an anti-war movement. Some will say this one is also predictable, but I actually didn't get it until just before the protagonist had his realization. A decent plot and message, although some of the scenes in the middle were a bit unbelievable (and I'm referring to the human interactions, not the time traveling).

The Defenders (1953) ★★★★½
In the future, humans live underground while “leadies” (robots) conduct a global war for them, as the surface is now radioactive. Taylor is a technician for the war program who is informed of a strange discovery about the leadies, and recruited for a team who is going to investigate the situation further. It's very predictable early on, but a great concept all the same. I’m glad he expanded on it via his later full-length novel The Penultimate Truth (which I’ll have to read at some point).

Mr. Spaceship (1953) ★★★
Humanity has long been at war with an alien race known as "Yuks." Desperate for a way to outmaneuver the enemy's living mines, a team of engineers decides to transfer a human brain into a spaceship. The initial twist can be seen from a mile away, but the ending isn’t bad, even if it is a bit simplistic.

Piper in the Woods (1953) ★★★
A military doctor tries to figure out why an increasing number of patrolmen returning to earth from an asteroid station claim to have become plants. Here is an example of where PKD didn't need to conveniently skip over key events to leave the reader in the dark, but still did. I would have liked to have seen specifically what happened after "he entered the ferns, hurrying after her," before he returned to base, and I don't think it would've taken anything away. The ending wasn't that much of a twist anyway.

The Infinites (1953) ★★
Maybe it isn’t fair to criticize the pace of a short story in which radiation exposure causes a crew of astronauts to rapidly evolve, but if it had been drawn out more the tension and events could have been waaaay more potent and believable. For example, the captain says, “Our brains, our power of thought, are far in advance of other Terrans,” but that wasn't demonstrated (especially not at that point). On top of that, the take-away message was just okay.

The Preserving Machine (1953) ★½ 
Realizing that music (specifically classical) would be the first part of culture to disappear, Doc Labyrinth commissions the building of a machine that transforms music into living things. It's a super creative concept, but it was probably the most disappointing out of the whole lot. The evolution of the animals was a cool direction to go in, but it could’ve led to something more interesting than essentially just saying, “Oh well.” I would have liked to have seen him preserve all genres of music, and rock n' roll ends up growing into an all-consuming beast, but I guess he wrote this before he could've made that metaphor (Big Mama Thornton, Junior Parker, and Guitar Slim were around; but it wasn't until the following year that Big Joe Turner and Bill Haley and His Comets recorded their big rock n’ roll hits).

Expendable (1953) ★★
Another story that is more fantasy than sci fi, but let’s not split hairs. "Bugs vs humans" isn’t a very new idea (Maybe it was in the 50’s), and even with the claim that humans are in fact the invaders (from space), there wasn’t much to grab my attention. I'll admit that this is a great example of how his choice in perspective and terminology succeeds in piquing interest right away.

The Variable Man (1953) ★★★½ 
Two systems (Terra and Proxima Centauri) are locked in a Cold War, reliant on machines that calculate the odds of winning, and just as Terra comes up with a weapon that there could be no conceivable defense to, a man from the past is accidentally pulled into their present and the machines cannot rectify the new variable. Another really cool premise, but the guy from the past is a bit implausible in his abilities. As the longest story, it gets much more adequate setup, the chase sequences and power struggle between Reinhart and Sherikov added effective drama, and the ending came as a genuine surprise; and yet something felt more dissatisfying than some of the others. Maybe it was the fact that the story was longer but the character development still felt lacking.

The Indefatigable Frog (1953) ★
I found the premise (two professors arguing over a theoretical question that is entirely not theoretical) completely uninteresting, even once they conduct an experiment (artificially confined to the parameters of the paradox). It started to go into a more interesting and promising direction with the double cross, but then it ended up back in the same place it could’ve without it. 

The Crystal Crypt (1954) ★
Three saboteurs secretly board a ship leaving Mars for Earth. Their confiding in a complete stranger was entirely unrealistic, their passing the lie detector on a technicality was dumb, and the twist was obvious. The story would've been much better had it been told in real-time, but I think PKD was really set on there being a twist.

The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1954) ★★½ 
Doc Labyrinth is back, only this time he's using a machine that annoys things into animation. I got a kick out of it, but mostly just because it was silly and weird.

The Builder (1954) ★½ 
A man builds a boat, although he can't explain why. It’s not “bad,” but by the end it only manages to allude to something you would have guessed from the first mention of a guy building a giant boat.

Meddler (1954) ★★★½ 
A machine that dips into the future shows images of a world uninhabited by humans, so a "histo-research" expert is sent forward in time to figure out what causes the extinction. It's a pretty decent sci-fi spin on the classic self fulfilling prophecy.

Paycheck (1952/3) ★★★★★
An electrical engineer named Jennings finishes a two-year contract for a mysterious company (at which time his memory is erased of his time there, as stipulated in his contract). Now he is being pursued by the security police, with only the help of seven seemingly innocuous objects prepared for him by his past self. It has a great memory-loss thriller feel, like The Bourne Identity or PKD's own We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (Well, Total Recall, as I've only seen the film adaptation), so I'm not surprised that they made a movie of this one too (although apparently it isn't good).

The Great C (1953) ★★★★
In a post apocalyptic future, each year a tribe of survivors must send a young man who must try to stump a computer with three questions or else be sacrificed. It's a good premise with interesting mythological influences, but it would've been better had PKD done more with it.

Out in the Garden (1953) ★★★
Fantasy with a tinge of Lovecraftian horror about a woman and a duck.

The King of the Elves (1953) ★★
One rainy night, a gas station owner lets a soaked group of elves and their king take shelter in his home. When the king ultimately dies, he finds himself not only their new king, but in the middle of an ancient conflict between elves and trolls. A bit of a silly fantasy, which is fine, except that the ending was unsatisfying. 

Colony (1953) ★★★★★
A crew on a newly discovered planet is surprised to find no dangerous life forms... until they find the ultimate dangerous life form. The ending was predictable, but still great.

Prize Ship (1954) ★★
Earth is at war with Ganymede, and it looks like they’re going to have to surrender and meet Ganymede’s demands, but then one of the enemy’s technologically superior ships is captured. Believing it could turn the tides in Earth’s favor (assuming they can figure out how to use it), four men volunteer to test drive it. The plot went somewhere entirely different from what I expected, and not in a good way.

Nanny (1955) ★★★½
Robotic nannies are an invaluable part of domestic life, but they seem to be programmed to duke it out with other models, forcing families to buy newer, bigger models. I took it as a satire of commercialism and consumerism, to which extent it worked very well. The plot and pacing required more work though.

Aggregate score: 76.5 out of a possible 125.
Average: 3.06

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

After six years of immersion, doing a podcast, writing a book about Philip K. Dick I was over due to read these early stories as a whole. But that is not how I have PKD short stories in the past. Volume two of the Collected stories is the second PKD I bought, in the early 90s, and that copy sits under this book on my shelf. Those stories were my first serious introduction to PKD, after that, I just read random stories usually not in collections. A story we covered for the podcast or for research.
This gives me an excuse to talk about why I am reading this book. All of PKD’s short stories are collected in five volumes. They are collected in other forms, best of, Movie tie-ins, but to read the complete stories you need this volume. So Last year Keith Giles and I can up with a bold idea. Compile a Philip K. Dick encyclopedia. A Dickapedia. We couldn’t do this alone, knew we needed volunteers and cause for the book to benefit. Bringing back the Philip K. Dick Festival to California and giving it a budget to work with seemed the idea.

So Dickapedia will have entries for all invented, planets, species, technologies, government agencies, and stuff like that. Each researcher who picks up a novel to research and write the entries on becomes the expert on that book. (not too late to get involved) but one of the jobs I volunteered for was reading the first volume of short stories and doing the entries for Dickapedia. So keep in mind I was reading this volume with this in mind.

As a PKD guy it is almost impossible for me to divorce his novels or stories from the events happening in his life when I know he was writing them. We joked on Dickheads (podcast) about having to known if a novel was written by happy married Phil, or angry divorced Phil. The stories in this collection were mostly written during a prolific era for short stories 1952. Phil had just married Kleo, second wife (longest marriage) and they had moved into the Franciso house. (I have seen that house!)

The first story Stability was written in around 1947, Phil’s senior year of high school. We few of the others Roog and Beyond Lies the Wub were from ’51 and likely written for Anthony Boucher’s $1 Thursday SF writing classes. (Went to that house as well and there is a plaque outside the house) At least one “Out in the Garden” appears to be a pre-Kleo story, maybe as early as 1950. Most of the stories however were written in 1952. NATO was just formed, Eisenhower was president, The Lakers were still in Minnesota, and Signing in the Rain was the best movie of the year.

So Now the actual collection. Stability the opener perfectly reflects senior year Phil. This is very Van Vogt-inspired story is about a future dystopia. I would go as far as to say much like his first novel, he is trying to capture a Van Vogt feel, if you have not read the Canadian Golden ager you probably would never notice. It is not just like his Stabilization as it is written in this story mirrors elements of the Games Machine in Null-A and Phil’s debut novel Solar Lottery.

I am not going to go through each story but it is valuable to read this early era in this collection because it is pretty close to the order he wrote them in and you can see his growth. His first professional sale Roog is a comically surreal story. The humor and pulp elements are there in his first story to see print Beyond Lies the Wub. Mostly a funny story it plays with perception and a dash of philosophical ethics. While The Gun and The Skull are both excellent 50s SF that have deeper meaning and show what Phil is capable of, they are not the stories that most feel like a step forward to me.
The Defenders was in Galaxy magazine and Horace Gold liked it enough to put it on the cover of the magazine. A decade later Phil would expand and reboot the idea as part of the soup that would become his excellent novel The Penultimate Truth. To me this short is the first real masterpiece of the book, and thus Phil’s budding young career. He fits a ton of ideas, concepts and messages into a piece that is also heavy with world-building.

The next story that felt like an evolution and step forward was Piper in the Woods. This story has a little pulp in the world-building but it was the first time where I felt like Phil was going weird, and didn’t care if the elements had scientific explanations. Of course, The Preserving Machine and the title story The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford are where he lets go of all Pulp pretext.
All the stories come with a certain quality worth reading, some of the more fantasy ones I didn’t enjoy as much as the pulpy ones. The Variable Man, Phil’s first published novella shows what he could do. He had completed a novel at that point, maybe even writing the novella of Vulcan’s Hammer. Nonetheless, this is a great first attempt at writing longer SF.

Two of the stories would be rebooted in novels, Paycheck would become a Hollywood action movie, but why must you read this collection of work? This is the perfect view of the evolution of Philip K. Dick the science fiction writer. This is his first attempts at exploring the SF universe. So yeah. Collected Stories Volume 1. It is not just a must-have but an experience reading it in order.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesantísimos, quitando uno o dos que me han sido más indiferentes, el resto son cuentos muy cortos con conceptos fascinantes, si el autor los hubiera alargado un poco más podrían haber sido novelas fantásticas.