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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick
The second volume of the collected stories of Philip K.Dick contains 27 science fiction stories and was written in the period of McCarthyism. His previous novels include "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" which was filmed as "Blade Runner".
1950 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
About the author
Philip K. Dick
1,943 books23.3k 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 wor
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 wor
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 26, 2012
So damn excellent. This is one of those books I never wanted to finish. I was going to make a list of stories which were excellent, but it was like 2/3 of the stories. If you know Phillip K. Dick's style you'll know how these generally go. Odd, out-of-place naive writing style. Authoritarian themes, cold war allegories, nuclear stuff, soft scifi, characters who cant tell illusion from reality. There were a surprising amount of totally fantastical scenarios here. Anyway this book was basically perfect.
October 22, 2010
This, or the later, slightly rearranged, editions by Gollancz & Citadel Twilight are must-haves for Philip K. Dick fans. The stories are quite various in quality, Dick having been a working author usually supported at so many cents per word paid by various science fiction magazine publishers.
I'd read many of these shorter pieces before in other collections or in their original magazine appearances. Those which were entirely familiar, I skipped.
The extraordinary interest in Dick following upon his death in 1982 and reflected in academic studies, republications and cinematic adaptations is not because he was a great writer. He wasn't. Rather, I think, it was because of the terrible earnestness behind some of his admittedly hack works. Dick was a tortured person, a failure academically, in marriage and professionally. The rest of us, most of us, have, I suspect, similar feelings about ourselves--at least after it dawns on us that we are no longer youths with great prospects ahead. Unlike many others, Dick had neither a stable family nor a stable career to hide within. He didn't subscribe to a normative set of religious beliefs or belong to a faith community--religious, political or otherwise. He was essentially alone.
It's not that Dick was a loner, however. He regularly sought out companionship, often lived with others--sometimes a diverse lot, increasingly with persons considerably younger than himself. He was connected, yet not connected--again, a common condition.
Unlike many others who suffer silently, Dick was a reader and a writer. His personal anxieties weren't saleable, not in his lifetime, but the common, public aspects of them were (the fear of nuclear war, of creeping totalitarianism, of commodification, of environmental destruction, of attitude manipulation by governments and corporations). Now, of course, with his death, with the posthumous publication of uncompleted and/or unsaleable works and the creation of a Dick industry, the more personal side of his angst is receiving attention.
Beyond this, beyond Dick being representatively symptomatic, there is also the passionate yearning, reflected in much of his work, for a stable ground and a path to attain to such felicity. Thus, with his ageing, the increasingly religious character of his product.
Dick never found redemption. His work reflects a tension between despair and hope, between falsity and truth which may indeed be resolved in the context of a story or a novel, especially the earlier ones, but which was patently left unresolved in his life.
Unlike most(?) others, however, Dick had a series of visions--real, literal visions--which seemed to proffer a solution to his all-too-common dilemmas. His very last works represent a grappling with this ultimately ungraspable revelation and intrigue readers like myself with their promise. These last works, the VALIS books, are quite unsatisfactory as novels, but also, despite their flaws, quite alluring.
Thus, Dick endures.
I'd read many of these shorter pieces before in other collections or in their original magazine appearances. Those which were entirely familiar, I skipped.
The extraordinary interest in Dick following upon his death in 1982 and reflected in academic studies, republications and cinematic adaptations is not because he was a great writer. He wasn't. Rather, I think, it was because of the terrible earnestness behind some of his admittedly hack works. Dick was a tortured person, a failure academically, in marriage and professionally. The rest of us, most of us, have, I suspect, similar feelings about ourselves--at least after it dawns on us that we are no longer youths with great prospects ahead. Unlike many others, Dick had neither a stable family nor a stable career to hide within. He didn't subscribe to a normative set of religious beliefs or belong to a faith community--religious, political or otherwise. He was essentially alone.
It's not that Dick was a loner, however. He regularly sought out companionship, often lived with others--sometimes a diverse lot, increasingly with persons considerably younger than himself. He was connected, yet not connected--again, a common condition.
Unlike many others who suffer silently, Dick was a reader and a writer. His personal anxieties weren't saleable, not in his lifetime, but the common, public aspects of them were (the fear of nuclear war, of creeping totalitarianism, of commodification, of environmental destruction, of attitude manipulation by governments and corporations). Now, of course, with his death, with the posthumous publication of uncompleted and/or unsaleable works and the creation of a Dick industry, the more personal side of his angst is receiving attention.
Beyond this, beyond Dick being representatively symptomatic, there is also the passionate yearning, reflected in much of his work, for a stable ground and a path to attain to such felicity. Thus, with his ageing, the increasingly religious character of his product.
Dick never found redemption. His work reflects a tension between despair and hope, between falsity and truth which may indeed be resolved in the context of a story or a novel, especially the earlier ones, but which was patently left unresolved in his life.
Unlike most(?) others, however, Dick had a series of visions--real, literal visions--which seemed to proffer a solution to his all-too-common dilemmas. His very last works represent a grappling with this ultimately ungraspable revelation and intrigue readers like myself with their promise. These last works, the VALIS books, are quite unsatisfactory as novels, but also, despite their flaws, quite alluring.
Thus, Dick endures.
January 31, 2010
Adjustment Team is by far my favorite short, though there are others.
April 6, 2012
Hollywood has made movies of many of the short stories in these volumes. What they tend to do is take the basic premise and add a long chase. You might be surprised just how good these stories are without the chases.
Not always great writing, but PKD had some wild premises and these stories are must reading for anyone who loves science fiction.
Not always great writing, but PKD had some wild premises and these stories are must reading for anyone who loves science fiction.
April 14, 2023
I’m a bit conflicted on this review, but let me start by writing what was more or less my thoughts up until “The Pre‐Persons” near the end of the final volume… and then return to that.
The collection is structured in as close to chronological order (of their writing) and it’s been interesting to see how Dick explores and returns to ideas and concepts and will in a few cases even reuse characters/settings (in whole or in part) between stories, in at least one case telling the same story but from the point of view of two different characters.
His works are created starting from the early 1950’s, in the aftermath of WW2 and during the Cold War and the McCarthyism of the US and a lot of the stories certainly reflect this with their anti‐war messages as well as frequent exploration of themes like authoritarianism and surveillance. He also references communism and anarchism in a few of the stories in a way that suggests that he’s at least familiar enough with them to not fully fall into the narratives prevalent during McCarthyism, and some of the stories also seem like straight critiques of US imperialism.
With this in mind, I was overall really happy with this collection and while there were a few misses, they’re overall good stories, several of which useful for sparking further thought/discussion.
And then there’s “The Pre‐Persons”. Published in 1974, following SCOTUS’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, Dick established himself in the forced birth(/anti‐abortion) camp. If that was all, then maybe his thought experiment could be applicable, but he seems to have firmly believed in this stance—which also goes “well” with the very present‐day manosphere misogynist/anti‐feminist talking points of women having the desire “to destroy their own”:
This one story really tainted my impression of the overall collection and if this hadn’t been in there, it would have been an easy 4‐stars—but it also wouldn’t have been (as) accurate of a journey through Dick’s (short story) authorship. If I were to read all of this over, I would be way more wary of sexist tropes and what‐nots that I may have written off as sign‐of‐the‐times and definitely also something I will be keeping in mind for readings of his novels when/if I ever get around to that.
The collection is structured in as close to chronological order (of their writing) and it’s been interesting to see how Dick explores and returns to ideas and concepts and will in a few cases even reuse characters/settings (in whole or in part) between stories, in at least one case telling the same story but from the point of view of two different characters.
His works are created starting from the early 1950’s, in the aftermath of WW2 and during the Cold War and the McCarthyism of the US and a lot of the stories certainly reflect this with their anti‐war messages as well as frequent exploration of themes like authoritarianism and surveillance. He also references communism and anarchism in a few of the stories in a way that suggests that he’s at least familiar enough with them to not fully fall into the narratives prevalent during McCarthyism, and some of the stories also seem like straight critiques of US imperialism.
With this in mind, I was overall really happy with this collection and while there were a few misses, they’re overall good stories, several of which useful for sparking further thought/discussion.
And then there’s “The Pre‐Persons”. Published in 1974, following SCOTUS’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, Dick established himself in the forced birth(/anti‐abortion) camp. If that was all, then maybe his thought experiment could be applicable, but he seems to have firmly believed in this stance—which also goes “well” with the very present‐day manosphere misogynist/anti‐feminist talking points of women having the desire “to destroy their own”:
It's a certain kind of woman advocating this all. They used to call them ‘castrating females.’ Maybe that was once the right term, except that these women, these hard cold women, didn’t just want to—well, they want to do in the whole boy or man, make all of them dead, not just the part that makes him a man.
This one story really tainted my impression of the overall collection and if this hadn’t been in there, it would have been an easy 4‐stars—but it also wouldn’t have been (as) accurate of a journey through Dick’s (short story) authorship. If I were to read all of this over, I would be way more wary of sexist tropes and what‐nots that I may have written off as sign‐of‐the‐times and definitely also something I will be keeping in mind for readings of his novels when/if I ever get around to that.
May 27, 2025
"I just don't feel that I'm different from the universe anymore."
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews