The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 2

I've read a few of Dick's novels, but this is my first time checking out one of his short story collections. They were not as engrossing as his longer works.

The stories are very short indeed; 27 of them in a book of less than 400 pages. Mostly they are just concepts with a twist. The characters don't matter much and are not memorable.

In the introduction by Norman Spinrad, he explains that these stories were written between 1952-55, before Dick's first novel. He describes them as having a “repetitive, sameness” and show the author “staking out his own territory.” That sounds about right to me.

A few themes that repeat throughout the stories are Cold War paranoia, fear of destructive effects of the future and technology, and marital strife.

A few stories that did stand out for me or are worth noting were:

“The Cookie Lady”: A variation on Hansel and Gretel in which an old lady tempts a little boy with cookies and cannibalizes his youth. My favorite in the collection.

“Behind the door”: A paranoid marital-strife fantasy with a cuckoo clock.

“Prominent Author”: A man discovers and becomes a god to a tiny civilization.

“We Can Remember it for You Wholesale”: The story upon which the film Total Recall was based.

“Trouble with Bubbles”: People build tiny living worlds and destroy them for a pastime.

“Adjustment Team”: Story was the inspiration for the film The Adjustment Bureau, though more loosely than Total Recall.