Yanik’s Reviews > The Philip K. Dick Reader > Status Update

Shell game was fun, in a dark psychological horror kind of way.
Upon the Dull Earth was on another level. Fantastic prose, great characterization for its tiny cast and huge, terrifying implications with its biblical horror fantasy plot.

Oh wow, there has been a lot of hyper-capitalist dystopia and a decent amount of android/robot exploration, but it hasn't come together like this before.
Sales Pitch was an actual 1954 Cyberpunk short story. Yes, it has the gender norms, mid-century trappings and vocabulary of the time, but man is it cyberpunk in everything else, from the visuals and themes to the dark depressive storytelling.

Serve the Master- Post AI/Robot was Apocalypse humanity living in underground shelters/vaults. Very brutal Fallout-esque world.
Exhibit Piece- Escapism from a future dystopia via portal fantasy. Again, Fallouty vibes with the mid-century modern Cold War setting.
The Crawlers- One of the closest to horror so far. Main theme being humanities destructive drive for knowledge and power without heed for the consequences.

Tony and the Beetles is a quick, dark story about humanity's eternal strife and conquest. The need to take, expand, exploit through violence.
There might be nods to the American Civil War in there too.
And it's all wrapped in a young boy's hopeful day of laying with his friends and dreaming of larger things.
Quite a gut punch.

Strange Eden is a short little story that does everything it can to make you hate the blustering, impulsive, rapist POV character and humanity as a whole. Quite cathartic ending.

The Father-Thing was great. Some Edgar-Suit vibes.
I can see a lot of things that these stories influenced. Cyberpunk(of course), Man in Black, Fallout.

Yeah, very interesting but flawed little story.
As much as I despise our late stage capitalism, this was a naïve and rose-glassed take.

Still not entirely sure what this is about. A grimdark post-apo?
Two extremes and no nuance?
Apparently Dick actually identified as a "religious anarchist", I get the hyper-capitalist, soulless, profit over humanity government antagonist.
But the ravaged, dead world could hardly have been his idea of utopia?
Also, gehe, vaporizing high energy small arms..but still bayonets.

The Last of the Masters is really good so far, both incredible worldbuilding and storytelling in a short time.
The idea of humanity being reduced to a listless species fully reliant on AI to do planning and governmental work is sobering. I don't really see the species reverting to a natural state of perceived anarchy. The league is probably just another form government.

These short stories have been great, but The Turning Wheel was on another level.
A post nuclear apocalypse setting where Scientology has become the reigning religion, society is highly segregated and stratified with Asians at the top and Caucasions at the lowest end.
This is a 1954 story, only a few years after Hubbart published his Dianetics.