Cuentos completos 1

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

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

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

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

some of these are just so lacking in what makes sci fi such a fun thing to write and to read and I think what is happening here is it’s just a normal world and then one thing is changed, and that’s just so dull and left with no room for inspiration to go anywhere else. Obviously dick proved himself as a writer later on but this is very lackluster to start