Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Nov 5, 2002 - Fiction - 476 pages

Philip K. Dick was a master of science fiction, but he was also a writer whose work transcended genre to examine the nature of reality and what it means to be human. A writer of great complexity and subtle humor, his work belongs on the shelf of great twentieth-century literature, next to Kafka and Vonnegut. Collected here are twenty-one of Dick's most dazzling and resonant stories, which span his entire career and show a world-class writer working at the peak of his powers.

In "The Days of Perky Pat," people spend their time playing with dolls who manage to live an idyllic life no longer available to the Earth's real inhabitants. "Adjustment Team" looks at the fate of a man who by mistake has stepped out of his own time. In "Autofac," one community must battle benign machines to take back control of their lives. And in "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon," we follow the story of one man whose very reality may be nothing more than a nightmare. The collection also includes such classic stories as "The Minority Report," the basis for the Steven Spielberg movie, and "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," the basis for the film Total Recall. Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick is a magnificent distillation of one of American literature's most searching imaginations.

What people are saying

Review: Selected Stories

User Review  - TrumanCoyote - Goodreads

The early ones were a bit too workmanlike--and later they all tended to sound the same (due to his obsession with his one theme). Like "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon"--which is just A Maze Of Death ...

Review: Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

User Review  - John Bruni - Goodreads

An amazing collection of short stories. Ever want to know how TOTAL RECALL, MINORITY REPORT, and PAYCHECK went in their original short story versions? (All right, maybe you didn't care about PAYCHECK ...

About the author

Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. He briefly attended the University of California, but dropped out before completing any classes. In 1952 he began writing professionally, going on to write thirty-six novels, including Mar-tian Time-Slip, A Scanner Darkly, and Ubik, and five short-story collections. He won the 1963 Hugo Award for best novel for The Man in the High Castle and the 1975 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Philip K. Dick died in 1982.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick
• Author: Philip K. Dick
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2002
• ISBN: 0375421513, 9780375421518
• Length: 476 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Science Fiction / Collections & Anthologies; Fiction / Science Fiction / General; Fiction / Short Stories (single author)