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Minority Report
This is a shorter collection than ISBN 9781857989472 and is not a part of "Collected Short Stories" series.
This volume covers a wide span, from late 1954 through to 1963, the years during which Dick began writing novels prolifically and his short story output lessened. The title story of this collection has been made into the Steven Spielberg-directed movie of the same name, while "The Days of Perky Pat" inspired one of Dick's greatest works, the novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; The Penultimate Truth grew from "The Mold of Yancy". Philip K. Dick is shown at his incomparable prime in this fourth volume of the definitive collection of short fiction.
A fitting tribute to a great philosophical writer who found science fiction the ideal form for the expression of his ideas - The Independent
My literary hero - Fay Weldon
An elusive and incomparable artist - Ursula K. Le Guin
No other writer of his generation had such a powerful intellectual presence. He stamped himself not only on our memories but in our imaginations - Brian Aldiss
This collection includes the following stories:>
- Minority Report
- Imposter
- Second Variety
- War Game
- What the Dead Men Say
- Oh, to Be a Blobel!
- The Electric Ant
- Faith of Our Fathers
- We Can Remember it for You Wholesale (the basis for "Total Recall")
293 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
About the author
Philip K. Dick
1,936 books22.8k followersPhilip 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 work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a
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 work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,377 reviews
May 29, 2022
“The existence of a majority logically implies a corresponding minority.”
The action of Philip K. Dick’s : The Minority Report is based on the question: What would you do if you were accused of a murder you had not committed…yet? PKD's story focuses on a society with virtually no crime; however, people can be guilty of precrime. Precogs predict the future and punishment is meted out before any harm can be done to society. This novella is more developed than PKD short stories I’ve been reading or at least it is more focused. This was a quick read that I enjoyed. 3.75 stars
The action of Philip K. Dick’s : The Minority Report is based on the question: What would you do if you were accused of a murder you had not committed…yet? PKD's story focuses on a society with virtually no crime; however, people can be guilty of precrime. Precogs predict the future and punishment is meted out before any harm can be done to society. This novella is more developed than PKD short stories I’ve been reading or at least it is more focused. This was a quick read that I enjoyed. 3.75 stars
December 3, 2018
”’You have to be taken in--if Precrime is to survive. You’re thinking of your own safety. But think, for a moment, about the system.’ Leaning over, Lisa stubbed out her cigarette and fumbled in her purse for another. ‘Which means more to you---your own personal safety or the existence of the system?’
‘My safety,’ Anderton answered, without hesitation.
‘You’re positive?’
‘If the system can survive only by imprisoning innocent people, then it deserves to be destroyed. My personal safety is important because I’m a human being.’”
If you think about someone who looks the exact opposite of Tom Cruise, you will know what John Allison Anderton looked like in Philip K. Dick’s mind.
With wives like Lisa, who needs enemies?
John Allison Anderton’s day begins with the arrival of a snot nosed kid by the name of Ed Witwer. He has been assigned to Precrime to eventually replace Anderton whenever he decides to retire. The system is based on three Precogs who can foresee the future. They are able to see a crime before it is committed. When two or more agree, it is called a majority report, but if one disagrees with the other two, that is a minority report. Anderton designed the system, but even he has some qualms about the validity of what they do.
”’So the commission of a crime itself is absolute metaphysics. We claim they are culpable. They, on the other hand, eternally claim they’re innocent. And, in a sense, they are innocent.’
‘In our society we have no major crimes, Anderton went on, ‘but we do have a detention camp full of would-be criminals.’”
When Anderton pulls the latest cards from the Precogs and finds his name among them, stipulating that he is going to kill someone next week he doesn’t even know, he knows that he is being framed. He has no choice but to go on the run and hide until the week has passed and, in the process, prove the error of the forecasting, but if he does that, he also proves the system is flawed. There are people who most definitely don’t want that to happen. He soon finds he can’t trust anyone, and maybe the very person he trusts the least is his only hope at discovering and exposing the truth.
There are obviously differences between the short story and the movie. I enjoy both and don’t have a problem that Steven Spielberg deviates and updates the concepts that Philip K. Dick came up with in 1956. Spielberg embraces the technological advances that have occurred in the last 46 years and is able to anticipate more accurately what the near future would look like. I caught just about ten minutes of the movie the other day and stopped watching it because I realized I was way overdue to watch the complete movie again, but it did remind me that I’d never read the original inspiration for the movie. For those who are fans of the movie, you will meet a different world in the short story, but what always fascinates me is how the original story influences a director, an artist, or another writer, and therefore escapes the boundaries of the creator.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
‘My safety,’ Anderton answered, without hesitation.
‘You’re positive?’
‘If the system can survive only by imprisoning innocent people, then it deserves to be destroyed. My personal safety is important because I’m a human being.’”
If you think about someone who looks the exact opposite of Tom Cruise, you will know what John Allison Anderton looked like in Philip K. Dick’s mind.
With wives like Lisa, who needs enemies?
John Allison Anderton’s day begins with the arrival of a snot nosed kid by the name of Ed Witwer. He has been assigned to Precrime to eventually replace Anderton whenever he decides to retire. The system is based on three Precogs who can foresee the future. They are able to see a crime before it is committed. When two or more agree, it is called a majority report, but if one disagrees with the other two, that is a minority report. Anderton designed the system, but even he has some qualms about the validity of what they do.
”’So the commission of a crime itself is absolute metaphysics. We claim they are culpable. They, on the other hand, eternally claim they’re innocent. And, in a sense, they are innocent.’
‘In our society we have no major crimes, Anderton went on, ‘but we do have a detention camp full of would-be criminals.’”
When Anderton pulls the latest cards from the Precogs and finds his name among them, stipulating that he is going to kill someone next week he doesn’t even know, he knows that he is being framed. He has no choice but to go on the run and hide until the week has passed and, in the process, prove the error of the forecasting, but if he does that, he also proves the system is flawed. There are people who most definitely don’t want that to happen. He soon finds he can’t trust anyone, and maybe the very person he trusts the least is his only hope at discovering and exposing the truth.
There are obviously differences between the short story and the movie. I enjoy both and don’t have a problem that Steven Spielberg deviates and updates the concepts that Philip K. Dick came up with in 1956. Spielberg embraces the technological advances that have occurred in the last 46 years and is able to anticipate more accurately what the near future would look like. I caught just about ten minutes of the movie the other day and stopped watching it because I realized I was way overdue to watch the complete movie again, but it did remind me that I’d never read the original inspiration for the movie. For those who are fans of the movie, you will meet a different world in the short story, but what always fascinates me is how the original story influences a director, an artist, or another writer, and therefore escapes the boundaries of the creator.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
July 30, 2022
The Minority Report Twenty Years On
John Anderton is a police commissioner involved in a pioneering project called Precrime. Through information provided by suitably trained individuals called Precogs (short for Pre-Cognitives), the agency is able to identify crimes that are going to happen in the future and prevent them by arresting the perpetrator and placing him/her in a detention facility. The results of this experimental policy have been extraordinary. In the space of just a few years, violent crime has all but disappeared in New York. We enter the story when a new commissioner assistant, Ed Witwer, reports at Anderton's office, looking to be filled in on the project and not being exactly secretive about his long-term ambition to replace Anderton as commissioner one day. Needless to say, Anderton is not enamoured with his new assistant.
Shortly afterwards, Anderton receives a card from the precogs stating that he will be the perpetrator of a crime in just a few days’ time. The person he is going to kill, a Mr. Leopold Kaplan, is quite unknown to him. Anderton is aghast. Not only is his future on the line - having received notification by the precogs that a crime is going to happen the police have no option but detain him - but the reputation of the agency is also at stake. Anderton does not know Kaplan at all; why should he want to kill him? He suspects a conspiracy to get him out of the way as a police commissioner, possibly to make way for his shiny new assistant, Witwer. He tries to escape. But how to disappear in a city that is tightly controlled and all movements monitored?
Though heavily tracked by police who have now turned against one of their own, Anderton is able to escape for now. At this point, he becomes aware of a peculiarity in the precog system, which is that quite often not all three precogs engaged by the agency give exactly the same information about the future. It sometimes happens that one of the precogs gives slightly different information from the other two, which leads to what is called a ‘minority report’. Usually, the minority report does not differ wildly from the other two, but it does open the possibility of a flaw in the system because if punishment is based on the evidence of the precogs, how can it be justified if that evidence is shaky? It could be that the system has been flawed all along, and what will happen to Precrime then?
Anderton's main worry at this point is to find out what happened to his own minority report because first of all he needs to clear his name. He needs to go back to Precrime offices and try to discover whether perchance the prediction that he is going to kill Kaplan is a majority report, and if so, what happened to the minority report. Obviously, Anderton wants the minority report to say that he is innocent, but if that were to happen, Precrime, his life’s work, would prove itself to be unreliable. What to do?
Without going to go into any detail about what happens next (for the benefit of readers who have not read/watched this yet), I'm now going to explain what makes this a very special story for me.
This is familiar P.K. Dick territory: the story is quite cerebral with an emphasis on the logical paradoxes that emerge when we attempt to look into the future. There are some magnificent passages towards the beginning when Anderton explains to Witwer the way the system works.
“You’ve probably already grasped the basic legalistic drawback to precrime methodology. We’re taking in individuals who have broken no law.”
“But surely, they will,” Witwer affirmed with conviction.
“Happily, they don’t — because we get to them first, before they can commit an act of violence. So the commission of the crime itself is absolute metaphysics. We can claim they are culpable. They, on the other hand, can eternally claim they’re innocent. And, in a sense, they are innocent.”
There are many arresting ideas in this short passage. Without a doubt, the word ‘metaphysics’ will strike readers as quite central. What was originally meant by ‘metaphysics’ is that which is beyond physics, beyond the real world. For example, reference to suprasensible realities (Plato’s forms, for instance, or God) is metaphysical because these realities cannot be made available to the senses and are therefore spurious. Dick reverses the normal meaning of metaphysics; the crime no longer belongs to the realm of the sensible world. Instead what belongs to that world is the previsions that a certain crime will be committed.
A consequence of this is that a culpable individual is not someone who has committed a crime. Technically, all those detained by Precrime are innocent. And yet, the system works. There is no crime in New York city. Note the play between the future tense that Witwer uses in the above passage (“But, surely, they will”) and the present tense that Anderton uses (“Happily, they don’t”). What Dick is suggesting here is that the reason why crimes are not committed any more is not because our look into the future is infallible but because people refrain from committing them in the knowledge that they will be caught. In other words, the consequences of an action are so immediate (arrest even before the act is committed) that nobody risks crime any more. In the film this is portrayed poignantly by having Tom Cruise’s character say that no premeditated crimes are committed any more, only crimes of passion because people commit these on the spur of the moment overwhelmed by their emotions.
And then P.K. Dick brings in another big idea. No, not the idea of free will although that is undoubtedly there (especially in the film). Dick’s big idea is to make the future a plaything at the hands of the various state agencies that vie for power. In the book the Army wants to humiliate the police and especially Precrime because they see it as an impediment to their own dominance. So they set Anderton up: if Anderton kills Kaplan (which he may well want to do given that Kaplan is an enemy of Precrime), he confirms his enemies who are intent on proving that the Pre-cogs’ previsions are unreliable. But if he does not kill Kaplan, he also proves Kaplan right because it shows that majority reports are not to be trusted!
And here is where the story’s cerebral character gives way to a more nuanced consideration of the stakes involved. The future is not predetermined, and Anderton, too, can play with the various options the future affords him even if the personal cost to prove Kaplan wrong is quite high. He does not hesitate. In a very suspenseful sequence of events, Anderton decides that it’s the bigger picture that matters. Like a true Dickian hero – flawed, unlikeable, battered by life’s whims – Anderton still manages to salvage the reputation of his life’s work for which he has worked so hard.
There are considerable differences between the film and Dick’s story even though the basic premise is the same and even some phrases from the book are used verbatim in the screenplay. Not being a huge fan of Tom Cruise I cannot say that I enjoyed the film as much as I enjoyed the story. I think that Cruise lacks the depth of a Harrison Ford (Blade Runner) just as Spielberg lacks the depth of a Ridley Scott. Overall, though, not a bad film with some memorable acting (e.g. by Samantha Morton as the Precog Agatha).
John Anderton is a police commissioner involved in a pioneering project called Precrime. Through information provided by suitably trained individuals called Precogs (short for Pre-Cognitives), the agency is able to identify crimes that are going to happen in the future and prevent them by arresting the perpetrator and placing him/her in a detention facility. The results of this experimental policy have been extraordinary. In the space of just a few years, violent crime has all but disappeared in New York. We enter the story when a new commissioner assistant, Ed Witwer, reports at Anderton's office, looking to be filled in on the project and not being exactly secretive about his long-term ambition to replace Anderton as commissioner one day. Needless to say, Anderton is not enamoured with his new assistant.
Shortly afterwards, Anderton receives a card from the precogs stating that he will be the perpetrator of a crime in just a few days’ time. The person he is going to kill, a Mr. Leopold Kaplan, is quite unknown to him. Anderton is aghast. Not only is his future on the line - having received notification by the precogs that a crime is going to happen the police have no option but detain him - but the reputation of the agency is also at stake. Anderton does not know Kaplan at all; why should he want to kill him? He suspects a conspiracy to get him out of the way as a police commissioner, possibly to make way for his shiny new assistant, Witwer. He tries to escape. But how to disappear in a city that is tightly controlled and all movements monitored?
Though heavily tracked by police who have now turned against one of their own, Anderton is able to escape for now. At this point, he becomes aware of a peculiarity in the precog system, which is that quite often not all three precogs engaged by the agency give exactly the same information about the future. It sometimes happens that one of the precogs gives slightly different information from the other two, which leads to what is called a ‘minority report’. Usually, the minority report does not differ wildly from the other two, but it does open the possibility of a flaw in the system because if punishment is based on the evidence of the precogs, how can it be justified if that evidence is shaky? It could be that the system has been flawed all along, and what will happen to Precrime then?
Anderton's main worry at this point is to find out what happened to his own minority report because first of all he needs to clear his name. He needs to go back to Precrime offices and try to discover whether perchance the prediction that he is going to kill Kaplan is a majority report, and if so, what happened to the minority report. Obviously, Anderton wants the minority report to say that he is innocent, but if that were to happen, Precrime, his life’s work, would prove itself to be unreliable. What to do?
Without going to go into any detail about what happens next (for the benefit of readers who have not read/watched this yet), I'm now going to explain what makes this a very special story for me.
This is familiar P.K. Dick territory: the story is quite cerebral with an emphasis on the logical paradoxes that emerge when we attempt to look into the future. There are some magnificent passages towards the beginning when Anderton explains to Witwer the way the system works.
“You’ve probably already grasped the basic legalistic drawback to precrime methodology. We’re taking in individuals who have broken no law.”
“But surely, they will,” Witwer affirmed with conviction.
“Happily, they don’t — because we get to them first, before they can commit an act of violence. So the commission of the crime itself is absolute metaphysics. We can claim they are culpable. They, on the other hand, can eternally claim they’re innocent. And, in a sense, they are innocent.”
There are many arresting ideas in this short passage. Without a doubt, the word ‘metaphysics’ will strike readers as quite central. What was originally meant by ‘metaphysics’ is that which is beyond physics, beyond the real world. For example, reference to suprasensible realities (Plato’s forms, for instance, or God) is metaphysical because these realities cannot be made available to the senses and are therefore spurious. Dick reverses the normal meaning of metaphysics; the crime no longer belongs to the realm of the sensible world. Instead what belongs to that world is the previsions that a certain crime will be committed.
A consequence of this is that a culpable individual is not someone who has committed a crime. Technically, all those detained by Precrime are innocent. And yet, the system works. There is no crime in New York city. Note the play between the future tense that Witwer uses in the above passage (“But, surely, they will”) and the present tense that Anderton uses (“Happily, they don’t”). What Dick is suggesting here is that the reason why crimes are not committed any more is not because our look into the future is infallible but because people refrain from committing them in the knowledge that they will be caught. In other words, the consequences of an action are so immediate (arrest even before the act is committed) that nobody risks crime any more. In the film this is portrayed poignantly by having Tom Cruise’s character say that no premeditated crimes are committed any more, only crimes of passion because people commit these on the spur of the moment overwhelmed by their emotions.
And then P.K. Dick brings in another big idea. No, not the idea of free will although that is undoubtedly there (especially in the film). Dick’s big idea is to make the future a plaything at the hands of the various state agencies that vie for power. In the book the Army wants to humiliate the police and especially Precrime because they see it as an impediment to their own dominance. So they set Anderton up: if Anderton kills Kaplan (which he may well want to do given that Kaplan is an enemy of Precrime), he confirms his enemies who are intent on proving that the Pre-cogs’ previsions are unreliable. But if he does not kill Kaplan, he also proves Kaplan right because it shows that majority reports are not to be trusted!
And here is where the story’s cerebral character gives way to a more nuanced consideration of the stakes involved. The future is not predetermined, and Anderton, too, can play with the various options the future affords him even if the personal cost to prove Kaplan wrong is quite high. He does not hesitate. In a very suspenseful sequence of events, Anderton decides that it’s the bigger picture that matters. Like a true Dickian hero – flawed, unlikeable, battered by life’s whims – Anderton still manages to salvage the reputation of his life’s work for which he has worked so hard.
There are considerable differences between the film and Dick’s story even though the basic premise is the same and even some phrases from the book are used verbatim in the screenplay. Not being a huge fan of Tom Cruise I cannot say that I enjoyed the film as much as I enjoyed the story. I think that Cruise lacks the depth of a Harrison Ford (Blade Runner) just as Spielberg lacks the depth of a Ridley Scott. Overall, though, not a bad film with some memorable acting (e.g. by Samantha Morton as the Precog Agatha).
July 24, 2019
3.75 stars for this 1956 SF short story, the inspiration for the 2002 Tom Cruise movie.
Commissioner John Anderton is the creator and head of the Precog unit that is responsible for nearly eradicating serious crime. He's nearing retirement (think "bald and fat and old," not sexy guy) and is showing his new assistant, Ed Witwer, around the office. They visit the area where the three precogs - described as gibbering idiots, deformed and retarded monkeys (yes, you can certainly tell this was written in the 50s) - are kept who visualize every future crime. The dreams are captured by machines and printed on punchcards. :D If your name shows up on a card as a future murderer, you're arrested and held in a detention camp indefinitely.
When Anderson picks up a card and sees his name on it as the future murderer of Leopold Kaplan - a man he doesn't even know - in one week, he suspects his wife and/or Witwer of setting him up. He pockets the card but, knowing that army headquarters receives a duplicate printout, he immediately takes off, determined to prove his innocence. He's abducted promptly upon leaving his house and taken to the home of a retired Army general: Leonard Kaplan himself, who has some things to discuss with Anderton.
The story and the movie start in very similar places but then turn down different tracks, and by the end they've veered wildly apart. It's interesting to compare the two and their different takes on the ethics of the Precrime system and whether it should go or stay as part of society. The story is admittedly quite dated but I found the twists and turns, and the key of the minority report, fascinating.
Commissioner John Anderton is the creator and head of the Precog unit that is responsible for nearly eradicating serious crime. He's nearing retirement (think "bald and fat and old," not sexy guy) and is showing his new assistant, Ed Witwer, around the office. They visit the area where the three precogs - described as gibbering idiots, deformed and retarded monkeys (yes, you can certainly tell this was written in the 50s) - are kept who visualize every future crime. The dreams are captured by machines and printed on punchcards. :D If your name shows up on a card as a future murderer, you're arrested and held in a detention camp indefinitely.
When Anderson picks up a card and sees his name on it as the future murderer of Leopold Kaplan - a man he doesn't even know - in one week, he suspects his wife and/or Witwer of setting him up. He pockets the card but, knowing that army headquarters receives a duplicate printout, he immediately takes off, determined to prove his innocence. He's abducted promptly upon leaving his house and taken to the home of a retired Army general: Leonard Kaplan himself, who has some things to discuss with Anderton.
The story and the movie start in very similar places but then turn down different tracks, and by the end they've veered wildly apart. It's interesting to compare the two and their different takes on the ethics of the Precrime system and whether it should go or stay as part of society. The story is admittedly quite dated but I found the twists and turns, and the key of the minority report, fascinating.
May 10, 2014
I'm not an old, crusty sci-fi fan who read this when it came out in '56. No, I'm a neophyte who only knows about The Minority Report because of the 2002 movie version. It's hard not to associate this solid, yet too short short story with that blockbuster flick starring Tom Cruise...
...and I'm not even going to try. Why? Because I loved the movie, even though I hate Tom Cruise. Maybe "hate" is too harsh. Let's just say I've never liked him and have only tolerated watching his movies, all the while wishing it was someone else in his role.
Even with my anti-Cruise bias, I really enjoyed the heck out of the movie and expected the same with the story. Well, that didn't happen. Oh, I enjoyed it all right. It's perfectly fine. However, it lacks tension. Certainly high-stakes are on the line for our hero Anderton, the head of police force that captures and incarcerates would-be criminals before the crime is committed, but figuring out what's going on is made all too easy for him. It needed to be teased out a bit more.
I have to hand it to the screenwriters and director Steven Spielberg for tricking out this pedestrian story and turning it into a fast, fun, 2+ hour thrill ride. In comparison, the original story is like a quarter's worth of floppy anti-climax on one of those sticky, paint-chipped, slow-moving mechanical rides out front of your typical beat-down grocery store.
...and I'm not even going to try. Why? Because I loved the movie, even though I hate Tom Cruise. Maybe "hate" is too harsh. Let's just say I've never liked him and have only tolerated watching his movies, all the while wishing it was someone else in his role.
Even with my anti-Cruise bias, I really enjoyed the heck out of the movie and expected the same with the story. Well, that didn't happen. Oh, I enjoyed it all right. It's perfectly fine. However, it lacks tension. Certainly high-stakes are on the line for our hero Anderton, the head of police force that captures and incarcerates would-be criminals before the crime is committed, but figuring out what's going on is made all too easy for him. It needed to be teased out a bit more.
I have to hand it to the screenwriters and director Steven Spielberg for tricking out this pedestrian story and turning it into a fast, fun, 2+ hour thrill ride. In comparison, the original story is like a quarter's worth of floppy anti-climax on one of those sticky, paint-chipped, slow-moving mechanical rides out front of your typical beat-down grocery store.
Want to Read
March 1, 2024I have a bad habit. If I like a movie, I try to find out if it's based on a book and I try to read it. I thought this book will be a good one too. But I think I liked the movie more.
July 25, 2023
If the system can survive only by imprisoning innocent people, then it deserves to be destroyed.
One of the most important roles of science-fiction is to notice trends in our current society and extrapolate them into what is often termed as a dystopian future; to trigger a warning signal that we [as individuals, as social organizations, as the human race] are heading in the wrong direction.
Are we there yet? Have we reached the grim point where authoritarian governments use extensive surveillance techniques in order to determine what individuals think? Do we already have what used to be called the ‘thought police’ and now is referred to as Five-Eyes or DHS?
In this PKD novella, crime is stopped before it can actually happen with the help of ‘precogs’ , individuals with altered / enhanced paranormal psychic powers who can take snapshots of the future. When the three mutants are on the same wavelength, they issue a majority report. If one of them dissents, there will be a minority report. Which one is more important? The opinion of the majority or that of the minority? What about when the report refers directly, personally to yourself?
Their minds were dull, confused, lost in shadows.
But not the shadows of today. The three gibbering, fumbling creatures, with their enlarged heads and wasted bodies, were contemplating the future. The analytical machinery was recording prophecies, and as the three precog idiots talked, the machine carefully listened.
The chief commissioner of the Precrime division, John Anderton, boasts that since he implemented this new procedure, he has practically eradicated violent crime, murder in particular. What mr. Anderton doesn’t realize yet is that his celebrated trio of mutants have released a new report which accuses him of killing a person he doesn’t even know.
John Anderton becomes a fugitive, desperately trying to prove his innocence while suspecting every person that surrounds him.
Did a covert awareness pass between them? He couldn’t tell. God, he was beginning to suspect everybody – not only his wife and Witwer, but a dozen members of his staff.
Philip K Dick is a true master of this sort of psychological torment, more focused on mind games than on hard science-fiction and technology. It’s not paranoia if They are actually out to get you, and John Anderton is a great choice for lead character to illustrate this staple of PKD anxiety. His struggles between ideology and personal liberty echo our own struggles in the third millennium to preserve our privacy and our civil liberties in the face of government and private enterprise over-reach.
... he was almost ready to concede that he was the victim of a weary, neurotic fantasy, spawned by growing insecurity. Without a fight, he was willing to give himself up. A vast weight of exhaustion lay upon him. He was struggling against the impossible – and all the cards were stacked against him.
The novella is rather short, a bit rushed and confused in the second half, but the core ideas of future predictions and practical applications in law enforcement are argued clearly and persuasively.
... there can be no valid knowledge of the future. As soon as precognitive information is obtained, it cancels itself out. The assertion that this man will commit a future crime is paradoxical. The very act of possessing this data renders it spurious.
I think it will be worth my time to continue to explore the body of work of this provocative author.
August 12, 2014
This is only my second PKD story (the first being The Man in the High Castle, which I liked, despite still being pretty sure that I don't know what any of it actually meant), and I think, maybe, that I liked this one, too... But I'm not sure yet, because, well, I had some pretty big issues with it. We shall see how I feel after I blark out all of my thoughts in this review.
The premise here is that at some point in the future, society is virtually crime-free thanks to precognitive predictions leading to pre-offense arrests. Doesn't it just make you all warm and fuzzy inside? Doesn't it make you feel all safe and sound? It sure did to Police Commissioner Anderton... at least until his name came up as a potential murderer. He goes on the run (shocker) and tries to figure out what to do next, as he's convinced that there's a plot being perpetrated against him. Dun dun dunnnnn!
So, basically, here's the deal. I like this story (mostly - there were some illogical conclusions and some plot holes that took it down a bit) if I view it superficially as a SF/dystopian thriller. But the problem is that if I look even a little bit deeper to the implications of what such a society would be like, my enjoyment falls apart and this little story really bothers me.
A word of warning here: I don't know if I can avoid spoilers if I'm going to talk about the things that bothered me about this one. So if you're concerned and don't want to be spoiled, come back in an hour after you've read the story for yourself.
So let the ramble-ranting commence.
Anderton created and built the Precrime division of the police, and he's run the show there for years. There are three precogs who were taken in early childhood and trained to search their visions of the near future for crimes, report these crimes through the computers that they are hooked up to (which analyze every sound they make), non-stop, on and on and on until they die. They are described as "idiots" and "monkeys" and "mutants" and are treated as tools rather than the humans they are. They are kept in the room of the police building lovingly (being SO facetious here, if you can't tell) referred to as the "monkey room".
So lemme give you the quick and dirty total spoiler version of the rest of the plot:
Anderton's name pops out the machine claiming that he's going to commit a murder, which is grounds for him to be arrested and detained (for a week? a month? indefinitely? Dunno. It never said...) with the other potential criminals for the safety of his potential victim. He knows he's fucked at this point, because every card that comes out to his office is duplicated to the office of the Army - you know, keep everyone honest and all that jazz.
But HE knows himself and he knows that HE would never kill anyone, so he must be being framed! (Because HE'S not a criminal like those... those... CRIMINALS. Or well, like they would be if they weren't in jail for thinking about being criminals!)
Anyway, Anderton automatically latches on to the idea that Witwer (who is newly appointed to be Anderton's assistant) is gunning for his job as head honcho... and look, his wife is there too. She's in on it! They been bangin' for weeks, that whore and her young boyfriend Witwer! They want him out of the way! Oh, no? Just in his imagination? Well, can't put nothing past a woman. Anderton don't trust nothin' that can bleed for a week and not die. Just sayin'.
So, he takes his paranoia out into the world, and starts packing, intent on going on the run. Except he's picked up and taken to his victim's house, where he tries, unsuccessfully, to convince him he means no harm. Or maybe successfully, but the victim is not in the 'giving a shit' kind of mood. So he packs him off to have him arrested, at which time he's picked up by yet ANOTHER interested party, who gives him money and fake documents and tells him to lay low.
So Anderton totally does just that, by calling his office and arranging to come scope the machinery, and telling his former employee all about his new disguise... you know, so he'll know who to expect when he gets there. Because, you see, he got a tip that there's something wonky with a minority report. What's that, you ask? Well lemme tell you! You see, the precogs are all hooked up to their own computers, and all three of them view the future individually, not together. Since there are three of them, if two agree on a potential future, that's called a majority report, and the third's differing view would be a minority report.
So, he goes, investigates, some shit goes down, and the long story short version is that, yes, there was a majority report about him killing his victim, but technically not really because they were all minority reports.
Here's how it happened.
1 - Supposedly at some point, he decides to kill a person.
2 - Anderton's name gets kicked out on a card.
3 - He changes his mind based on the fact that he knows he'd never kill, so the second precog picks up this change and boots out a report saying he's NOT going to kill anyone.
4 - He then sees THAT report and realizes that if word gets out that the precogs are false-predicting, it would shut down the Precrime division - because that would mean that they are totally imprisoning innocent people (not to be confused with 'people who just haven't committed a crime... yet') - and everything he had worked for would be gone...
5 - So he decides that he has to kill the guy to fulfill the original prediction to make the system not wrong and to keep the whole thing going. Which the 3rd precog picks up as intent to murder, thus forming the original majority report, even though it was two different murder decisions.
So he does the murderizing, and then goes on vacation - whoops, I mean into exile - with his wife because hey, looks like she totally wasn't a backstabbing slutwhore out to ruin him after all. Ahh, love. Such a beautiful thing. I see this relationship going the distance, I really do.
And the Precrime project lives on, though with Witwer heading it up now. Anderton parts ways with him with a warning, that Witwer should watch his back, because the situation that happened to him could only happen to the person in charge of Precrime... Do I smell a sequel??
My question is - What in the world makes Anderton, or Witwer, or anyone in the role of the commissioner of Precrime so special? The situation occurred because someone whose name came up on a card then saw the card and thus changed their 'destiny' for lack of a better word. Why wouldn't that be possible with the clerk that Anderton handed the cards off to? What if HIS name was on a card and he saw it? Same deal.
So, at this point, you're probably asking yourself just what my problem is. Sounds like a good book, full of paradoxes and intriguing questions about the nature of inevitability and free will... I must be a terrible person for not loving it!
*sigh* You're probably right. I'm often a terrible person who dislikes books. But you see, I feel like good SF should have more than a sci-fi-y setting or situation. I feel like it should be a little more than that, and have meaning.
This one. Well. I'll just put it out there. I think if you open the door on controversial issues, you damn well better be willing to take a good look at them. And that's where this book failed for me. Not only did it not examine any social implications of the ideas he wrote about, but I feel like it outright promotes certain conceptions and attitudes that I have serious fucking issues with.
There was no examination of the morality or ethics of imprisoning people for things they haven't done.
There was no examination of the morality or ethics of imprisoning (PKD's word, remember) mentally disabled people as slaves to a morally questionable practice of imprisoning people prior to their having committed any crime.
The ONE woman in the book was portrayed alternatively as an untrustworthy whore or a loyal wife. Apparently, there was no middleground.
Maybe that's just a reflection of the difference a few decades can make in terms of mindset. But I think that if a story is going to be considered a classic, it should stand the test of time and appeal just as much to someone reading it 100 or 200 years later as it does to someone reading it the day its published. And I don't think that this one does that, because of the fact that it ignores the societal impact aspect of the story. I'm not going to cut PKD any slack for that.
I feel like there should have been MORE to this story. As it is, it's an OK thriller... but only if you don't look too close.
The premise here is that at some point in the future, society is virtually crime-free thanks to precognitive predictions leading to pre-offense arrests. Doesn't it just make you all warm and fuzzy inside? Doesn't it make you feel all safe and sound? It sure did to Police Commissioner Anderton... at least until his name came up as a potential murderer. He goes on the run (shocker) and tries to figure out what to do next, as he's convinced that there's a plot being perpetrated against him. Dun dun dunnnnn!
So, basically, here's the deal. I like this story (mostly - there were some illogical conclusions and some plot holes that took it down a bit) if I view it superficially as a SF/dystopian thriller. But the problem is that if I look even a little bit deeper to the implications of what such a society would be like, my enjoyment falls apart and this little story really bothers me.
A word of warning here: I don't know if I can avoid spoilers if I'm going to talk about the things that bothered me about this one. So if you're concerned and don't want to be spoiled, come back in an hour after you've read the story for yourself.
So let the ramble-ranting commence.
Anderton created and built the Precrime division of the police, and he's run the show there for years. There are three precogs who were taken in early childhood and trained to search their visions of the near future for crimes, report these crimes through the computers that they are hooked up to (which analyze every sound they make), non-stop, on and on and on until they die. They are described as "idiots" and "monkeys" and "mutants" and are treated as tools rather than the humans they are. They are kept in the room of the police building lovingly (being SO facetious here, if you can't tell) referred to as the "monkey room".
All day long the idiots babbled, imprisoned in their special high-backed chairs, held in one rigid position by metal bands, and bundles of wiring, clamps. Their physical needs were taken care of automatically. They had no spiritual needs. Vegetable-like, they muttered and dozed and existed. Their minds were dull, confused, lost in shadows.
But not the shadows of today. The three gibbering, fumbling creatures, with their enlarged heads and wasted bodies, were contemplating the future. The analytical machinery was recording prophecies, and as the three precog idiots talked, the machinery carefully listened.
For the first time Witwer's face lost its breezy confidence. A sick, dismayed expression crept into his eyes, a mixture of shame and moral shock. "It's not -- pleasant," he murmured. "I didn't realize they were so --" He groped in his mind for the right word, gesticulating. "So -- deformed."
"Deformed and retarded," Anderton instantly agreed. "Especially the girl, there. Donna is forty-five years old. But she looks about ten. The talent absorbs everything; the esp-lobe shrivels the balance of the frontal area. But what do we care? We get their prophecies. They pass on what we need. They don't understand any of it, but we do."
So lemme give you the quick and dirty total spoiler version of the rest of the plot:
Anderton's name pops out the machine claiming that he's going to commit a murder, which is grounds for him to be arrested and detained (for a week? a month? indefinitely? Dunno. It never said...) with the other potential criminals for the safety of his potential victim. He knows he's fucked at this point, because every card that comes out to his office is duplicated to the office of the Army - you know, keep everyone honest and all that jazz.
But HE knows himself and he knows that HE would never kill anyone, so he must be being framed! (Because HE'S not a criminal like those... those... CRIMINALS. Or well, like they would be if they weren't in jail for thinking about being criminals!)
Anyway, Anderton automatically latches on to the idea that Witwer (who is newly appointed to be Anderton's assistant) is gunning for his job as head honcho... and look, his wife is there too. She's in on it! They been bangin' for weeks, that whore and her young boyfriend Witwer! They want him out of the way! Oh, no? Just in his imagination? Well, can't put nothing past a woman. Anderton don't trust nothin' that can bleed for a week and not die. Just sayin'.
So, he takes his paranoia out into the world, and starts packing, intent on going on the run. Except he's picked up and taken to his victim's house, where he tries, unsuccessfully, to convince him he means no harm. Or maybe successfully, but the victim is not in the 'giving a shit' kind of mood. So he packs him off to have him arrested, at which time he's picked up by yet ANOTHER interested party, who gives him money and fake documents and tells him to lay low.
So Anderton totally does just that, by calling his office and arranging to come scope the machinery, and telling his former employee all about his new disguise... you know, so he'll know who to expect when he gets there. Because, you see, he got a tip that there's something wonky with a minority report. What's that, you ask? Well lemme tell you! You see, the precogs are all hooked up to their own computers, and all three of them view the future individually, not together. Since there are three of them, if two agree on a potential future, that's called a majority report, and the third's differing view would be a minority report.
So, he goes, investigates, some shit goes down, and the long story short version is that, yes, there was a majority report about him killing his victim, but technically not really because they were all minority reports.
Here's how it happened.
1 - Supposedly at some point, he decides to kill a person.
2 - Anderton's name gets kicked out on a card.
3 - He changes his mind based on the fact that he knows he'd never kill, so the second precog picks up this change and boots out a report saying he's NOT going to kill anyone.
4 - He then sees THAT report and realizes that if word gets out that the precogs are false-predicting, it would shut down the Precrime division - because that would mean that they are totally imprisoning innocent people (not to be confused with 'people who just haven't committed a crime... yet') - and everything he had worked for would be gone...
5 - So he decides that he has to kill the guy to fulfill the original prediction to make the system not wrong and to keep the whole thing going. Which the 3rd precog picks up as intent to murder, thus forming the original majority report, even though it was two different murder decisions.
So he does the murderizing, and then goes on vacation - whoops, I mean into exile - with his wife because hey, looks like she totally wasn't a backstabbing slutwhore out to ruin him after all. Ahh, love. Such a beautiful thing. I see this relationship going the distance, I really do.
And the Precrime project lives on, though with Witwer heading it up now. Anderton parts ways with him with a warning, that Witwer should watch his back, because the situation that happened to him could only happen to the person in charge of Precrime... Do I smell a sequel??
My question is - What in the world makes Anderton, or Witwer, or anyone in the role of the commissioner of Precrime so special? The situation occurred because someone whose name came up on a card then saw the card and thus changed their 'destiny' for lack of a better word. Why wouldn't that be possible with the clerk that Anderton handed the cards off to? What if HIS name was on a card and he saw it? Same deal.
So, at this point, you're probably asking yourself just what my problem is. Sounds like a good book, full of paradoxes and intriguing questions about the nature of inevitability and free will... I must be a terrible person for not loving it!
*sigh* You're probably right. I'm often a terrible person who dislikes books. But you see, I feel like good SF should have more than a sci-fi-y setting or situation. I feel like it should be a little more than that, and have meaning.
This one. Well. I'll just put it out there. I think if you open the door on controversial issues, you damn well better be willing to take a good look at them. And that's where this book failed for me. Not only did it not examine any social implications of the ideas he wrote about, but I feel like it outright promotes certain conceptions and attitudes that I have serious fucking issues with.
There was no examination of the morality or ethics of imprisoning people for things they haven't done.
There was no examination of the morality or ethics of imprisoning (PKD's word, remember) mentally disabled people as slaves to a morally questionable practice of imprisoning people prior to their having committed any crime.
The ONE woman in the book was portrayed alternatively as an untrustworthy whore or a loyal wife. Apparently, there was no middleground.
Maybe that's just a reflection of the difference a few decades can make in terms of mindset. But I think that if a story is going to be considered a classic, it should stand the test of time and appeal just as much to someone reading it 100 or 200 years later as it does to someone reading it the day its published. And I don't think that this one does that, because of the fact that it ignores the societal impact aspect of the story. I'm not going to cut PKD any slack for that.
I feel like there should have been MORE to this story. As it is, it's an OK thriller... but only if you don't look too close.
October 31, 2015
11/1/15
I might have to reread this very soon, because I just watched the movie, and it was fantastic.
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I'm not sure if I read the same novel as the ones who rated this 4-5 stars. I honestly don't get how to like this novel, aside from the premise.
The blurb/synopsis is very ambiguous, yet that's not my problem with this one. Ambiguity doesn't necessarily mean that the novel's going to turn out awful, but rather ambiguity, in most cases, leads to the enjoyment of the reader. In this case, everything didn't work out the way I wanted things to.
While the premise is very interesting, the execution for me was horrible. I honestly only liked the first story, and the others were boring and flat. I needed to force myself to read and read hoping to be able to enjoy myself, but after every short story the level of my boredom drastically increased.
Maybe this novel's just not for me, or maybe I'm just not used to PKD's writing as this is my very first time to try out one of his novels. I'm not giving up on him though, because I think judging the author based on his short stories would be slightly incorrect. I'm clearly not recommending this, but if you're fond of PKD then maybe you'd be able to enjoy this. 1.5/5 stars, clearly not for me.
I might have to reread this very soon, because I just watched the movie, and it was fantastic.
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I'm not sure if I read the same novel as the ones who rated this 4-5 stars. I honestly don't get how to like this novel, aside from the premise.
The blurb/synopsis is very ambiguous, yet that's not my problem with this one. Ambiguity doesn't necessarily mean that the novel's going to turn out awful, but rather ambiguity, in most cases, leads to the enjoyment of the reader. In this case, everything didn't work out the way I wanted things to.
While the premise is very interesting, the execution for me was horrible. I honestly only liked the first story, and the others were boring and flat. I needed to force myself to read and read hoping to be able to enjoy myself, but after every short story the level of my boredom drastically increased.
Maybe this novel's just not for me, or maybe I'm just not used to PKD's writing as this is my very first time to try out one of his novels. I'm not giving up on him though, because I think judging the author based on his short stories would be slightly incorrect. I'm clearly not recommending this, but if you're fond of PKD then maybe you'd be able to enjoy this. 1.5/5 stars, clearly not for me.
March 14, 2017
What I should like to know is why Anderton would have committed murder in the timeline which the first minority report forecasted. All the reasons that Anderton could have committed murders had resulted from prediction itself and there was no way that a prediction could be made without Anderton seeing the card.
I think the story really works because no one, who already hasn't committed or is planning to commit a murder, believes him/herself capable of one. Anderton, like most such people, just can't see himself as a murderer.
The moral issue is whether you can punish him. Orwell was against punishing thoughtcrime, though it seems to have become a crime in most countries these days. PKD goes a step further and asks whether a person who hasn't yet even thought of crime can be punished. Personally I think not, because almost all of us are potentional murderers.
You might not agree, people are suspiciously confident of their innocence - and one almost smells a cognitive response in the way most people develop a hatred of murderers as if they are some sort of alien forces. People tend to say stuff like their souls are tainted, that they are marked like Cain etc. I should like to a dress this prejudice. The truth is murderers aren't much different from the rest of the world, and anybody can be a murderer, given adequate circumstances. Nothing is easier and, believe me, you do not feel tainted or marked. Think of soldiers or executioners or police - they aren't much different, they are just given the right circumstances. Most people just don't get fitting circumstances in their lives. Now some of you might find such a world where everybody is potential murderer interesting, the truth is despite such noise built around the thing, the actual act is disappointingly banal. I mean slipping a cyanide pill in someone's drink is not unlike slipping a medicine in drink of a patient stubbornly resisting treatment. Similarly butchering someine's neck is not unlike skinning a dead animal. It is just those children tales that make it sound like such a big deal.
I think the story really works because no one, who already hasn't committed or is planning to commit a murder, believes him/herself capable of one. Anderton, like most such people, just can't see himself as a murderer.
The moral issue is whether you can punish him. Orwell was against punishing thoughtcrime, though it seems to have become a crime in most countries these days. PKD goes a step further and asks whether a person who hasn't yet even thought of crime can be punished. Personally I think not, because almost all of us are potentional murderers.
You might not agree, people are suspiciously confident of their innocence - and one almost smells a cognitive response in the way most people develop a hatred of murderers as if they are some sort of alien forces. People tend to say stuff like their souls are tainted, that they are marked like Cain etc. I should like to a dress this prejudice. The truth is murderers aren't much different from the rest of the world, and anybody can be a murderer, given adequate circumstances. Nothing is easier and, believe me, you do not feel tainted or marked. Think of soldiers or executioners or police - they aren't much different, they are just given the right circumstances. Most people just don't get fitting circumstances in their lives. Now some of you might find such a world where everybody is potential murderer interesting, the truth is despite such noise built around the thing, the actual act is disappointingly banal. I mean slipping a cyanide pill in someone's drink is not unlike slipping a medicine in drink of a patient stubbornly resisting treatment. Similarly butchering someine's neck is not unlike skinning a dead animal. It is just those children tales that make it sound like such a big deal.
August 14, 2019
This classic Philip K. Dick tale, first published in Fantastic Universe (January 1956), is a richly rewarding work, at once an absorbing mystery, a nail-biting thriller, an exploration of a plausible social application of of precognitive abilities, a prescient glimpse into the coming surveillance state, a meditation on free will, and a wise assessment of the limits human character—all wrapped up with an honest and satisfying conclusion.
Dick’s long short story—almost novella length—is set in a future America that boasts a system of predictive policing called “Precrime” in which three precognitive mutants (otherwise congenital, unemployable isolates) look into the future, foreseeing crimes before they happen and thus enabling the authorities to arrest and exile the potential criminals before they become felons in fact.
But is such a system foolproof? What if, for example, there is a “minority report,” that is, what if one of the three mutants predicts a result that differs from the other two? What happens then? This question becomes personal for Police Commissioner John A. Anderton—a firm believer in the value of the Precrime system—when it predicts that he himself is destined to commit a murder. His attempt to save himself—and solve the dilemma and save the Pre-Crime system too—makes up the rest of the story.
One final note. Without giving anything away, I’d just like to say that the conclusion of the fine Spielberg movie differs from the book, and I believe it is inferior to Dick’s original conception. It transforms Anderton into a much simpler Hollywood-type characters—a servant of the system who sees the error of his ways and becomes a hero because of it. Dick’s Anderton is a much more conflicted, complex character, and his decisions—and their consequences—are both more tragic and more believable because of it.
June 26, 2025
Três pré-cogs (odeio a palavra idiotas neste contexto) são utilizados para sustentar um sistema designado por pré-crime. Basicamente, eles são capazes de adivinhar que alguém irá cometer um crime e, deste modo, prendem o pré-criminoso antes que este cometa o ilícito. Sim, não faz sentido à luz da lei, mas resulta. Isso até que o chefe daquilo tudo é acusado de pré-cometer um homicídio. Será mesmo verdade? Ia mesmo fazê-lo? Só a leitura do relatório minoritário permitirá saber quem anda a tramar Anderton.
Já não me recordava do filme, que vi há muitos anos, e foi curioso entrar neste mundo imaginário criado pelo hábil Philip Dick. As coisas não batem sempre certo e a atribuição de poderes premonitórios a idiotas faz-me imensa confusão, mas siga para bingo. Foi divertido e surpreendente. São 4 estrelas.
Já não me recordava do filme, que vi há muitos anos, e foi curioso entrar neste mundo imaginário criado pelo hábil Philip Dick. As coisas não batem sempre certo e a atribuição de poderes premonitórios a idiotas faz-me imensa confusão, mas siga para bingo. Foi divertido e surpreendente. São 4 estrelas.
March 23, 2024
This short story novel is very different than the movie adaptation. I think the only things the book have in common with the film is some of the character names & the theme of precrime /precog. The Steven Spielberg film staring Tom Cruise as Anderton has a very rich complex storyline & multiple fascinating subplots. I think whoever wrote the screenplay for the movie did a really excellent job. If anyone is curious of the book after watching the film, I would just say you’re not missing much by skipping it.
July 25, 2023
Clever and original as always, but he really did rush them sometimes. This quickfire style is fine for sci-fi short stories, as PKD showed us many times with classics like Second Variety. But this could have just done with an extra 30 to 50 more pages of relatively neutral descriptive padding, just to slow the whole thing down a bit and stop me from coming away feeling like every character other than the hero was a kind of 2 dimenionsal useful idiot, simply used as a peg to hold up the rough presentation of an idea. It's the length that's the problem, it reads like a long short story that wants to be a more suspenseful, fleshed out novella.. I feel that the philosophical implications behind the presented technology demand a more measured, maturely written piece. I appreciate that back at these times he was publishing in sci-fi mags which probably had allotted space not much better than the back of a cereal box but still..
There are also some discrepancies- army convention where all the soldiers are scared and confused by the sight of someone being shot? The idea that this strange malfunction of the 'pre-cogs' could only happen to the chief of the department because they would be the only ones with pre-knowledge of the pre-cognition is flawed too- any normal citizen bring first approached by police and informed they were under arrest for a future crime would potentially change their course of behaviour if they managed to be freed or escaped.
When PKD did write longer fiction, it tended to be imbued with a real melancholic dreamy quality which personally I love, but might have gotten a bit predictable if he did it with everything. In the world of 21st century literature it would be nice to see more of an accepted culture of simply rewriting other people's books under modern authorship, in the spirit of a musical 'cover'. Just make that anything over 50 years old is fair game as long as you give credit, who cares? I'm not talking about a subtle, self conscious homage, just rewrite the bloody thing properly. This argument has particular weight in sci-fi, as technological concepts are at risk of getting 'bagged up' by dead writers, leaving current authors scared to encroach and being forced into more obscure and implausible terrain. And prolific 'ideas men' like Dick and Stanislav Lem have sure done a lot of bagging.
There are also some discrepancies- army convention where all the soldiers are scared and confused by the sight of someone being shot? The idea that this strange malfunction of the 'pre-cogs' could only happen to the chief of the department because they would be the only ones with pre-knowledge of the pre-cognition is flawed too- any normal citizen bring first approached by police and informed they were under arrest for a future crime would potentially change their course of behaviour if they managed to be freed or escaped.
When PKD did write longer fiction, it tended to be imbued with a real melancholic dreamy quality which personally I love, but might have gotten a bit predictable if he did it with everything. In the world of 21st century literature it would be nice to see more of an accepted culture of simply rewriting other people's books under modern authorship, in the spirit of a musical 'cover'. Just make that anything over 50 years old is fair game as long as you give credit, who cares? I'm not talking about a subtle, self conscious homage, just rewrite the bloody thing properly. This argument has particular weight in sci-fi, as technological concepts are at risk of getting 'bagged up' by dead writers, leaving current authors scared to encroach and being forced into more obscure and implausible terrain. And prolific 'ideas men' like Dick and Stanislav Lem have sure done a lot of bagging.
February 16, 2016
Wow, this was surprisingly bad. The movie was pretty terrible, so I assumed that the short story had to at least be somewhat better... I was horribly wrong.
First of all, this was so fucking boring that I stopped reading TWO PAGES FROM THE END. It was so terribly dull that by the time I got to page 18, the number of fucks I gave had actually dipped into the negative range and I just could not continue.
I'd like to keep this short, so I'll list the things that sucked about this story:
- 20 pages seems simultaneously too long and too short. Too short because there's no time for anything but plot. No characterisation or actual writing style to be seen. Too long because it was soul-numbingly, dreadfully boring.
- All of the characters were basically the same person. Witwer, Anderton, Lisa, even Page and Kaplan are all just Gary Stus and Mary Sues. They're so homogenised, in fact, that when two characters talk to each other, it reads like somebody talking to their clone.
- The concept of the minority report. Anderton brings up being the Police Commissioner for thirty-something years at every turn, but how in hell is it possible that he doesn't know what a minority report is?!
- For some reason, every time Anderton's wife, Lisa, shows up, her slimness always has to be brought up. It was weird and annoying.
To be honest, three words saved this story from getting a solitary star. Because in The Minority Report was the single greatest phrase for "made a mistake" that I've ever read: "pulled a flub." That one had me laughing for at least five minutes.
So it's possible that the ending of this story is totally mind-blowing and fantastic, but even if that was the case it couldn't excuse the shitty buildup to it. Avoid this one.
First of all, this was so fucking boring that I stopped reading TWO PAGES FROM THE END. It was so terribly dull that by the time I got to page 18, the number of fucks I gave had actually dipped into the negative range and I just could not continue.
I'd like to keep this short, so I'll list the things that sucked about this story:
- 20 pages seems simultaneously too long and too short. Too short because there's no time for anything but plot. No characterisation or actual writing style to be seen. Too long because it was soul-numbingly, dreadfully boring.
- All of the characters were basically the same person. Witwer, Anderton, Lisa, even Page and Kaplan are all just Gary Stus and Mary Sues. They're so homogenised, in fact, that when two characters talk to each other, it reads like somebody talking to their clone.
- The concept of the minority report. Anderton brings up being the Police Commissioner for thirty-something years at every turn, but how in hell is it possible that he doesn't know what a minority report is?!
- For some reason, every time Anderton's wife, Lisa, shows up, her slimness always has to be brought up. It was weird and annoying.
To be honest, three words saved this story from getting a solitary star. Because in The Minority Report was the single greatest phrase for "made a mistake" that I've ever read: "pulled a flub." That one had me laughing for at least five minutes.
So it's possible that the ending of this story is totally mind-blowing and fantastic, but even if that was the case it couldn't excuse the shitty buildup to it. Avoid this one.
August 13, 2021
من «گزارش اقلیت» رو از نشر پریان خوندم که سه تا از داستانهای کوتاه فیلیپ کی دیک رو داشت. داستانها ایدههای جذاب داشتن، نوشتار روان و زیبا، ول�� نکتهی مشترک هر سه پایان پیشبینیپذیرشون بود.
در طول داستانها با توییستهای زیادی روبهرو میشیم ولی پایان نهایی اولین چیزیه که به ذهن خواننده میرسه. پس اگه قصد خوندن دارین، از مسیر لذت ببرین نه مقصد
شیاد: همه به یک شخصیتی میگن که اون روباته، و اون باید ثابت کنه که نیست.
دستمزد: شخصیتی در یک شرکت دو سال کار کرده و حالا خاطرهش رو از اون دو سال پاک کردن. خودِ اون دو سالش، بهجای دستمزد یک مشت خرت و پرت تقاضا کرده :)
گزارش اقلیت: اداره پلیس میتونه مجرمان بالقوه رو پیش از اینکه دست به ارتکاب جرم بزنن تشخیص بده و آمار جنایت رو شدیداٌ پایین بیاره...
در طول داستانها با توییستهای زیادی روبهرو میشیم ولی پایان نهایی اولین چیزیه که به ذهن خواننده میرسه. پس اگه قصد خوندن دارین، از مسیر لذت ببرین نه مقصد
شیاد: همه به یک شخصیتی میگن که اون روباته، و اون باید ثابت کنه که نیست.
دستمزد: شخصیتی در یک شرکت دو سال کار کرده و حالا خاطرهش رو از اون دو سال پاک کردن. خودِ اون دو سالش، بهجای دستمزد یک مشت خرت و پرت تقاضا کرده :)
گزارش اقلیت: اداره پلیس میتونه مجرمان بالقوه رو پیش از اینکه دست به ارتکاب جرم بزنن تشخیص بده و آمار جنایت رو شدیداٌ پایین بیاره...
October 26, 2020
Кратката новела „Minority Report“ на Philip K. Dick дава добра основа на филма от 2002 г (един от най-любимите ми филми 😊) – сериалът беше доста неуспешен опит.
Историята разказана в новелата и тази във филма се различават значително.
Основните неща са запазени – отдела Предпрестъпност, тримата провидци, Джон Андертън. От тук нататък всичко е различно, както и посланията, които отправят. Бих казал, че персонажите във филма са разгърнати по-дълбоко, с драма съпътстваща главния герой и определено по-завладяваща история и емоционална развръзка.
Иначе самата идея е страхотна – бъдещите престъпления да могат да бъдат предсказвани и потенциалните извършители залавяни, преди осъществяване им. Макар да има и силно противоречие в тази концепция, която е разгледана и в новелата, и във филма.
В новелата има още и космически кораби и обитаеми далечни планети, което ми хареса.
Историята разказана в новелата и тази във филма се различават значително.
Основните неща са запазени – отдела Предпрестъпност, тримата провидци, Джон Андертън. От тук нататък всичко е различно, както и посланията, които отправят. Бих казал, че персонажите във филма са разгърнати по-дълбоко, с драма съпътстваща главния герой и определено по-завладяваща история и емоционална развръзка.
Иначе самата идея е страхотна – бъдещите престъпления да могат да бъдат предсказвани и потенциалните извършители залавяни, преди осъществяване им. Макар да има и силно противоречие в тази концепция, която е разгледана и в новелата, и във филма.
В новелата има още и космически кораби и обитаеми далечни планети, което ми хареса.
January 3, 2025
Romanian review: Este incredibil cât de profundă poate fi o povestire atât de scurtă, ce tematică diversă poate avea și cu câte întrebări te lasă la sfârșit.
Cartea dezbate moralitatea arestării unor oameni care, până la urmă, nu au comis nicio ilegalitate. Abordează tema destinului și a liberului-arbitru, și te face să te întrebi dacă viitorul este predestinat sau simplul fapt că îți cunoști viitorul schimbă acțiunile tale.
Deși mi-a plăcut filmul lui Spielberg și mi s-a părut distractiv, filmul "Minority Report" tinde foarte mult către un film de acțiune tipic hollywoodian, iar Tom Cruise este, practic, opusul lui John Anderton din carte. În carte, John Anderton trece printr-o criză a vârstei mijlocii și crede că în spatele acuzației că va comite o crimă se află o conspirație a celui care trebuie să-l înlocuiască în postura de comisar-șef al diviziei Precog.
Cu toate că am menționat mai sus temele profunde, povestirea nu este introspectivă/psihologică. Este plină de acțiune și are destule întorsături de situație interesante. Eu nu m-am plictisit niciun moment și am fost complet captivat.
După părerea mea, finalul a fost perfect. Decizia pe care o are de luat John Anderton la sfârșit a crescut cu mult povestirea în ochii mei, deci, dacă aș fi avut vreun dubiu, sfârșitul și alegerea protagonistului m-au făcut să fiu sigur că "The Minority Report" merită cinci stele.
English review: It’s incredible how profound a short story can be, how diverse its themes are, and how many questions it leaves you with at the end.
The book explores the morality of arresting people who ultimately haven’t committed any crimes. It delves into themes of fate and free will, prompting you to wonder whether the future is predestined or if simply knowing your future changes your actions.
Although I enjoyed Spielberg’s movie and found it entertaining, the film "Minority Report" leans heavily toward a typical Hollywood action movie, and Tom Cruise is practically the opposite of John Anderton in the book. In the story, John Anderton is going through a midlife crisis and believes that the accusation that he will commit murder is part of a conspiracy by someone looking to replace him as the Chief of the Precrime Division.
Even though I mentioned the deep themes above, the story is not introspective or psychological. It’s action-packed and full of interesting twists and turns. I never got bored for a second and was completely captivated throughout.
In my opinion, the ending was perfect. The decision John Anderton faces at the end significantly elevated the story in my eyes, so if I had any doubts, the conclusion and the protagonist’s choice convinced me that "The Minority Report" deserves five stars.
December 9, 2015
Between 3 and 4 stars
In the future, there exists a world in which there's no violence as all violent acts are foreseen and stopped before they occur. But what if you are accused of killing a person you've never met for reasons you don't even know? None of this has happened yet, so there's still time to change the course of the future. How would you fight a system you thought was infallible?
While I like the writing and find the idea of a dystopic future where precognition is so reliable that it's used as crime prevention vastly interesting, I don't find this story believable mostly because I can't buy into the idea of precognition as reliable; even cognition (as we know it) suffers from reliability problems. So when things start to unravel for John Anderton, . I do like the world Philip K. Dick built though, but there's just one too many holes in the narrative to keep me from being fully immersed in the story.
I saw the movie right after finishing the book and found it disappointing because Tom Cruise always disappoints. But Tom Cruise in sci-fi? Even more disappointing than usual.
In the future, there exists a world in which there's no violence as all violent acts are foreseen and stopped before they occur. But what if you are accused of killing a person you've never met for reasons you don't even know? None of this has happened yet, so there's still time to change the course of the future. How would you fight a system you thought was infallible?
While I like the writing and find the idea of a dystopic future where precognition is so reliable that it's used as crime prevention vastly interesting, I don't find this story believable mostly because I can't buy into the idea of precognition as reliable; even cognition (as we know it) suffers from reliability problems. So when things start to unravel for John Anderton, . I do like the world Philip K. Dick built though, but there's just one too many holes in the narrative to keep me from being fully immersed in the story.
I saw the movie right after finishing the book and found it disappointing because Tom Cruise always disappoints. But Tom Cruise in sci-fi? Even more disappointing than usual.
July 13, 2024
It is curious that I approached this source material for the Spielberg adaptation with genuine interest. I found it sourced between The Big Sleep (1946) by Hawks and Renoir’s The Grand Illusion (1937) and again I mean the story not the adaptation. Retired military officers believe in entitlement. That’s an element I don’t recall from Minority Report as a film. Perhaps the film more aptly depicts our reality: industry exerts much more influence than the military these days.
I liked the chapter/scene breaks and especially the fugitive atmosphere: the latter was very Graham Greene.
I liked the chapter/scene breaks and especially the fugitive atmosphere: the latter was very Graham Greene.
September 24, 2017
China’s security boss planning to use AI to stop crime before it even happens. Meng Jianzhu says data analysis can predict patterns which could stop terror attacks of social unrest before they happen. (The Independent Sept 2017)
January 18, 2026
Yeah, fun. PKD-lite. I'd rather read his novels.
October 11, 2022
4 Stars for The Minority Report and Other Stories (audiobook) by Philip K. Dick read by Keir Dullea.
This set of short stories includes the inspiration for the movies The Minority Report and Total Recall. I think the author had some really interesting and ground breaking ideas. And I’m glad that Hollywood got a hold of them and turned them into great movies.
This set of short stories includes the inspiration for the movies The Minority Report and Total Recall. I think the author had some really interesting and ground breaking ideas. And I’m glad that Hollywood got a hold of them and turned them into great movies.
June 22, 2021
“‘[…] To repeat: The Precrime Agency of the Federal Westbloc Government is in the process of locating and neutralizing its former Commissioner, John Allison Anderton, who, through the methodology of the precrime system, is hereby declared a potential murderer and as such forfeits his rights to freedom and all its privileges.’”
Even though, generally, it is quite gratifying to know that other people see a lot of potential in ourselves, John Anderton is not too delighted at finding himself labelled as having murderous potential in him – or is he, after all? Admittedly, he is in a very awkward position because while other people were trying to use the ability of precogs to strike home on the stock market, Anderton thought it much more noble to tap the precogs’ ability with a view to the common good, i.e. by using the precogs in order to forestall crimes, like murder, thereby making society a much safer place and eradicating crime completely. In order to achieve this, he selected three precogs – in the wake of the nuclear war that has taken place, a certain part of the population born after the beginning of the war has developed precognitive abilities –, deformed human beings who are rendered autistic because of their special skill and who are referred to as “monkeys”, and has started to collect their predictions on murders and other crimes about to be committed. In general, all three “monkeys” give him the same data, but sometimes, one of them will differ in his prediction, delivering a so-called “minority report”. Of course, this procedure begs two obvious questions, and here is the first, most obvious one: If there can be a minority report, how much reliance may be placed on any particular prediction made by a precog? Suppose one Precog A were frequently to dissent from his fellow-precogs and generally prove wrong – this would cast a shadow of doubt on his reliability. If in his dissent, however, he proved right – would this merely cast doubt on Precogs B and C or on the whole system? And what would the ratio of minority reports be, if Anderton not only employed three, but thirty or three hundred precogs? What at first sight might look like a merely academic question quickly becomes one about the trust we can put in prognostics and scientific models: Is being right or wrong in one’s prognoses a matter of consensus at all? Just consider if Precog A held his ground with his prediction over Precogs B to Z’’’? If this happened only once, would this not discredit the system of, let’s say, Precrime in that in such a case a human being would be made to suffer for a crime they would never have committed in the first place? It would be wise to bear this in mind whenever we are called upon to remodel our ways of running things on the basis of scientific prognoses.
The second question is even more obvious than the most obvious first question, and it is purely philosophical: Can it be right to detain someone on the grounds that he may commit a certain crime, or should we not rather argue that the punishment ought to be as potential as the crime itself? And what would that mean? I suppose there would be hardly anyone who wouldn’t agree that Dick is describing a dystopian society in his short story The Minority Report, because after all the idea of forfeiting your liberty and basic civil rights on account of the mere prediction that you are going to commit a crime sounds presumptuous and preposterous to most of us. Nevertheless, even without Precrime, we are more and more in a position in which we have to ask the elementary question of how much risk propensity can be demanded of a society for the sake of maintaining individual rights, privacy and personal responsibility. How much surveillance can be justified, how deeply can authorities pry into our private lives, in a fight against crime, for instance? Or when exactly is it justified to enforce a lookdown on an entire society, with the writing of a pandemic threat looming on the wall?
In Dick’s short story, Anderton, after initially making an attempt to save his own skin – and suddenly realizing the importance of the rights of the “innocent” individual – proves a true adherent to the system he created and thinks that the hair of the dog is the best cure. He can finally interpret the data provided by his precogs in a way that allows him to keep his trust in the system as such, by entering into dubious horse trading activities. This downbeat ending is far superior to the one chosen by Steven Spielberg in his movie adaptation of Dick’s story, where we eventually see Anderton become a convinced opponent to his own Precrime system. Such a development may be more desirable, but it is infinitely less probable because most of us are far more ready to interpret data in a way that fits in with our habits of viewing things and our basic values than we are to reconsider them from scratch and face the possibility that we may have been wrong on central questions for most of our lives. Paradoxically, we can always call this escape mechanism “responsibility” and “sense of realism” and feel eminently virtuous when making use of it.
Even though, generally, it is quite gratifying to know that other people see a lot of potential in ourselves, John Anderton is not too delighted at finding himself labelled as having murderous potential in him – or is he, after all? Admittedly, he is in a very awkward position because while other people were trying to use the ability of precogs to strike home on the stock market, Anderton thought it much more noble to tap the precogs’ ability with a view to the common good, i.e. by using the precogs in order to forestall crimes, like murder, thereby making society a much safer place and eradicating crime completely. In order to achieve this, he selected three precogs – in the wake of the nuclear war that has taken place, a certain part of the population born after the beginning of the war has developed precognitive abilities –, deformed human beings who are rendered autistic because of their special skill and who are referred to as “monkeys”, and has started to collect their predictions on murders and other crimes about to be committed. In general, all three “monkeys” give him the same data, but sometimes, one of them will differ in his prediction, delivering a so-called “minority report”. Of course, this procedure begs two obvious questions, and here is the first, most obvious one: If there can be a minority report, how much reliance may be placed on any particular prediction made by a precog? Suppose one Precog A were frequently to dissent from his fellow-precogs and generally prove wrong – this would cast a shadow of doubt on his reliability. If in his dissent, however, he proved right – would this merely cast doubt on Precogs B and C or on the whole system? And what would the ratio of minority reports be, if Anderton not only employed three, but thirty or three hundred precogs? What at first sight might look like a merely academic question quickly becomes one about the trust we can put in prognostics and scientific models: Is being right or wrong in one’s prognoses a matter of consensus at all? Just consider if Precog A held his ground with his prediction over Precogs B to Z’’’? If this happened only once, would this not discredit the system of, let’s say, Precrime in that in such a case a human being would be made to suffer for a crime they would never have committed in the first place? It would be wise to bear this in mind whenever we are called upon to remodel our ways of running things on the basis of scientific prognoses.
The second question is even more obvious than the most obvious first question, and it is purely philosophical: Can it be right to detain someone on the grounds that he may commit a certain crime, or should we not rather argue that the punishment ought to be as potential as the crime itself? And what would that mean? I suppose there would be hardly anyone who wouldn’t agree that Dick is describing a dystopian society in his short story The Minority Report, because after all the idea of forfeiting your liberty and basic civil rights on account of the mere prediction that you are going to commit a crime sounds presumptuous and preposterous to most of us. Nevertheless, even without Precrime, we are more and more in a position in which we have to ask the elementary question of how much risk propensity can be demanded of a society for the sake of maintaining individual rights, privacy and personal responsibility. How much surveillance can be justified, how deeply can authorities pry into our private lives, in a fight against crime, for instance? Or when exactly is it justified to enforce a lookdown on an entire society, with the writing of a pandemic threat looming on the wall?
In Dick’s short story, Anderton, after initially making an attempt to save his own skin – and suddenly realizing the importance of the rights of the “innocent” individual – proves a true adherent to the system he created and thinks that the hair of the dog is the best cure. He can finally interpret the data provided by his precogs in a way that allows him to keep his trust in the system as such, by entering into dubious horse trading activities. This downbeat ending is far superior to the one chosen by Steven Spielberg in his movie adaptation of Dick’s story, where we eventually see Anderton become a convinced opponent to his own Precrime system. Such a development may be more desirable, but it is infinitely less probable because most of us are far more ready to interpret data in a way that fits in with our habits of viewing things and our basic values than we are to reconsider them from scratch and face the possibility that we may have been wrong on central questions for most of our lives. Paradoxically, we can always call this escape mechanism “responsibility” and “sense of realism” and feel eminently virtuous when making use of it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 28, 2015
Read on the WondrousBooks blog.
I'd heard so much about Philip K. Dick but this is the first book of his that I actually got to read. In one of my classes he was the main topic too often for me not to find something of his. I kind of expected that the hype would be bigger than the actual greatness of Dick's works. But I'll be the first one to admit my mistake.
I actually liked The Minority Report so much, that I chose the movie as my exam topic. The movie and the book are extremely different. Aside from the very basic idea of Precrime, most of what happens in the two is so different. That's why I can't judge them in comparison to one another. The movie was nice because Spielberg is a great director. Everything inside the frame in that movie is so carefully chosen that it's art.
The book is much more wonderful in terms of the story. Shorter, of course, but a much bigger challenge when it comes to analyzing it. I've been thinking about predestination and self-fulfilling prophecies ever since I finished it and I still can't decide if the ending was just meant to be or a choice which really could have been influenced. I think the same topic is very much black and white in Greek mythology, the "motherland" so to say, of self-fulfilling prophecies. In this book Dick puts a lot more effort if not to answer, but to make US answer for ourselves whether free will exists at all or not.
Overall I still don't have a full picture of his writing, though. The Minority Report is interesting and very clever and Philip K. Dick's creativity is undoubted, but I can't say it keeps you on the edge. Therefore, I think I need to read at least one more of his works, preferably an actual book, to decide what I think of him as a writer.
Do I recommend this? Yes.
Do I recommend the movie? Also yes. Much different, more suspenseful, more thought-through, I guess, in terms of a back story, good, but in another way than the book.
I'd heard so much about Philip K. Dick but this is the first book of his that I actually got to read. In one of my classes he was the main topic too often for me not to find something of his. I kind of expected that the hype would be bigger than the actual greatness of Dick's works. But I'll be the first one to admit my mistake.
I actually liked The Minority Report so much, that I chose the movie as my exam topic. The movie and the book are extremely different. Aside from the very basic idea of Precrime, most of what happens in the two is so different. That's why I can't judge them in comparison to one another. The movie was nice because Spielberg is a great director. Everything inside the frame in that movie is so carefully chosen that it's art.
The book is much more wonderful in terms of the story. Shorter, of course, but a much bigger challenge when it comes to analyzing it. I've been thinking about predestination and self-fulfilling prophecies ever since I finished it and I still can't decide if the ending was just meant to be or a choice which really could have been influenced. I think the same topic is very much black and white in Greek mythology, the "motherland" so to say, of self-fulfilling prophecies. In this book Dick puts a lot more effort if not to answer, but to make US answer for ourselves whether free will exists at all or not.
Overall I still don't have a full picture of his writing, though. The Minority Report is interesting and very clever and Philip K. Dick's creativity is undoubted, but I can't say it keeps you on the edge. Therefore, I think I need to read at least one more of his works, preferably an actual book, to decide what I think of him as a writer.
Do I recommend this? Yes.
Do I recommend the movie? Also yes. Much different, more suspenseful, more thought-through, I guess, in terms of a back story, good, but in another way than the book.
December 18, 2022
Hollywood filmmakers who make movies based on PKD novels are frauds. PKD novels apart from A Scanner Darkly are not fit to be made into movies. All you can do as a filmmaker is steal the unbelievably interesting and original ideas that PKD came up with and make commercial movies based on them. These movies give wannabe film afficionado frauds an opportunity to feel like they watched some great work of art made by some movie maker who never acknowledged PKD's influence. Minority Report and even Inception are below average movies. The moronic fans of these movies will never acknowledge PKD's influence. Just like the directors who made them.
June 30, 2025
We are in the midst of a science fiction story, but also a fascinating detective tale. It was my reencounter with Philip K. Dick, and it was a truly pleasurable moment. We are not seeking the quality of the style (we are far from Flaubert or Faulkner) but rather the clever construction of plots and the confrontation with unexpected and problematic situations linked to the emergence of new technologies and machines. For Dick, science fiction is a means of questioning the world in which he lived (that of the 1950s and 1960s, as reflected in this collection of short stories) to the point of challenging our perceptions of reality and reality itself.
April 5, 2014
What if we can detect crimes before they happen? What if we can arrest criminals before they commit crimes?
Anderton is the commissioner and founder of Precrime, the police force that arrests criminals before they have a chance to commit crime. Computers manipulate “gibberish” from three “precogs,” each one seeing into a possible future, and Anderton determines whether a crime will be committed. When two or more “precogs” agree on an outcome, the resulting agreement is a majority report and the police can act on it. The system has been working fine until one day a majority report indicates Anderton will murder a retired general.
The Minority Report
When he reviews the reports and tried to understand how the minority report differs from the majority. He realizes the fact that he, unlike other criminals, could see the report has altered the results. The first report gives the situation where he doesn’t know he will kill the general and in this scenario he would kill the general to prevent the military from taking over. But the second report, the minority report, considers his seeing the first report and therefore changing the outcome and in this scenario he wouldn’t kill the general. Then the third report, which consider his seeing the minority report, indicates he would kill the general. The very fact that he could see into the “future” changes it.
In this story, Philip K. Dick questions the validity of “seeing into the future.” If we could “see into the future,” we have the opportunity to change that future and therefore create a different future. Hence, the paradox.
Philip K. Dick
I enjoy reading Philip K. Dick because his stories spurs to think about issues in our existence. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it is the nature of being alive and being human. In Ubik, it the nature of reality. And here, it is the paradox of knowing the future.
Anderton is the commissioner and founder of Precrime, the police force that arrests criminals before they have a chance to commit crime. Computers manipulate “gibberish” from three “precogs,” each one seeing into a possible future, and Anderton determines whether a crime will be committed. When two or more “precogs” agree on an outcome, the resulting agreement is a majority report and the police can act on it. The system has been working fine until one day a majority report indicates Anderton will murder a retired general.
The Minority Report
When he reviews the reports and tried to understand how the minority report differs from the majority. He realizes the fact that he, unlike other criminals, could see the report has altered the results. The first report gives the situation where he doesn’t know he will kill the general and in this scenario he would kill the general to prevent the military from taking over. But the second report, the minority report, considers his seeing the first report and therefore changing the outcome and in this scenario he wouldn’t kill the general. Then the third report, which consider his seeing the minority report, indicates he would kill the general. The very fact that he could see into the “future” changes it.
In this story, Philip K. Dick questions the validity of “seeing into the future.” If we could “see into the future,” we have the opportunity to change that future and therefore create a different future. Hence, the paradox.
Philip K. Dick
I enjoy reading Philip K. Dick because his stories spurs to think about issues in our existence. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it is the nature of being alive and being human. In Ubik, it the nature of reality. And here, it is the paradox of knowing the future.
December 15, 2012
This story is difficult to review. On many levels, I really enjoyed it, despite its flaws.
1) It got right what the movie got incredibly wrong.
Namely, that in any story with a character knowing the future (specifically his own) there needs to be the feeling of inevitability. That all events are unavoidable, even when actively avoided. If the outcome foretold is to come true in the story, then the protagonist needs to do everything in his power to make sure it doesn't happen.
And the easiest way to prevent a murder from happening is to not go to the building where the guy lives at the date and time you're supposed to kill him.
This is the problem with Spielberg's version.
There never is any reason for Anderton to kill his intended target. Nor is there ever any reason for him to meet this man at the date and time, other than the protagonist's own morbid curiosity. He goes to meet him out of a choice that seems preposterous, finds a whole bunch of reasons to kill the man, and still doesn't. When he refuses to kill the man, the man essentially kills himself, and the whole precognition aspect of the story seems incredibly contrived.
The movie completely missed the point of the short story.
The short story nails the circuitous nature of fortune telling, precognition, and inevitability.
2) The problem I have with the short story is not the story itself, rather it is the writing.
It is wooden. The characters are flat. The dialogue is stilted. There is a comical overuse of adverbs (Yes, I'm being nitpicky here, but there's misused modifiers that make the "approach" seem breathless rather than the character running).
At certain parts of the story I couldn't help but picture Sharon Stone and Arnold Schwarzenegger from the 1990 film TOTAL RECALL as Anderton and his wife. There seems to be as much chemistry, and how quickly they go and forth between being lovers and enemies.
All the characters feel like pawns used to move the plot forward, but none more so than Anderton's wife. (Probably why her part was entirely changed for the movie version).
3) There's also a rather large plothole in who is helping Anderton and who isn't. There are several factions hunting and helping Anderton.
Early in the story one group that helps him and causes the death of a few of his captors, is later revealed to have been on the same side as those captors.
WHAT?!
And your "boss" was totally cool with your plan to take out some of his own employees for no reason, other than making a chapter end with a cliffhanger?
4) I smiled a couple times, knowing that Philip K. Dick was paranoid and delusional in his later years. Something about that fact, makes the read of this short story all the more enjoyable.
Everybody is out to get Anderton and he doesn't know who to trust.
Was it all a setup?
Did they want his job?
Was his wife in on it?
Was his best friend?
In a way, the glaring plothole is more a reflection of Philip K Dick's own paranoia. Logic doesn't matter -- they're all out to get me!
I did thoroughly enjoy this short story, although it took me several times revisiting it, just to slog throught he dialogue in the opening chapter.
1) It got right what the movie got incredibly wrong.
Namely, that in any story with a character knowing the future (specifically his own) there needs to be the feeling of inevitability. That all events are unavoidable, even when actively avoided. If the outcome foretold is to come true in the story, then the protagonist needs to do everything in his power to make sure it doesn't happen.
And the easiest way to prevent a murder from happening is to not go to the building where the guy lives at the date and time you're supposed to kill him.
This is the problem with Spielberg's version.
There never is any reason for Anderton to kill his intended target. Nor is there ever any reason for him to meet this man at the date and time, other than the protagonist's own morbid curiosity. He goes to meet him out of a choice that seems preposterous, finds a whole bunch of reasons to kill the man, and still doesn't. When he refuses to kill the man, the man essentially kills himself, and the whole precognition aspect of the story seems incredibly contrived.
The movie completely missed the point of the short story.
The short story nails the circuitous nature of fortune telling, precognition, and inevitability.
2) The problem I have with the short story is not the story itself, rather it is the writing.
It is wooden. The characters are flat. The dialogue is stilted. There is a comical overuse of adverbs (Yes, I'm being nitpicky here, but there's misused modifiers that make the "approach" seem breathless rather than the character running).
At certain parts of the story I couldn't help but picture Sharon Stone and Arnold Schwarzenegger from the 1990 film TOTAL RECALL as Anderton and his wife. There seems to be as much chemistry, and how quickly they go and forth between being lovers and enemies.
All the characters feel like pawns used to move the plot forward, but none more so than Anderton's wife. (Probably why her part was entirely changed for the movie version).
3) There's also a rather large plothole in who is helping Anderton and who isn't. There are several factions hunting and helping Anderton.
Early in the story one group that helps him and causes the death of a few of his captors, is later revealed to have been on the same side as those captors.
WHAT?!
And your "boss" was totally cool with your plan to take out some of his own employees for no reason, other than making a chapter end with a cliffhanger?
4) I smiled a couple times, knowing that Philip K. Dick was paranoid and delusional in his later years. Something about that fact, makes the read of this short story all the more enjoyable.
Everybody is out to get Anderton and he doesn't know who to trust.
Was it all a setup?
Did they want his job?
Was his wife in on it?
Was his best friend?
In a way, the glaring plothole is more a reflection of Philip K Dick's own paranoia. Logic doesn't matter -- they're all out to get me!
I did thoroughly enjoy this short story, although it took me several times revisiting it, just to slog throught he dialogue in the opening chapter.
July 25, 2023
This is actually a collection of short stories, the best of which is by far the title story eponymous with the Tom Cruise masterpiece film (90% Rotten Tomatoes rating!). I was actually really frustrated that this particular story wasn't developed further by PKD (although he did revisit the "sixes" idea in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said). The other short stories vary widely in quality: all very paranoid and somewhat inventive, but all of them pale in comparison to the first. I really liked the idea of these psychic characters in the background and the crazy precogs ideas.
The other notable stories here were Second Variety, What the Dead Men Say (the half-life aspect also treated in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said), and the silly Oh, to be a Blobel story.
I'd say that it is for fans of the film and hardcore PKD fans primarily.
The other notable stories here were Second Variety, What the Dead Men Say (the half-life aspect also treated in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said), and the silly Oh, to be a Blobel story.
I'd say that it is for fans of the film and hardcore PKD fans primarily.
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