Short Fiction

by Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick built an enduring literary reputation writing powerful science fiction in the pulp magazines of the 50s and beyond. This collection of several of his short works, arranged in chronological order and all published in now-defunct science fiction pulp magazines, is a slice from his early career. Many of these stories explore the themes of war and whether humanity is intrinsically violent and conflict-torn. Each of them is a fascinating jewel of speculative fiction.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories

ebook

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Philip 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 work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a

Reviews

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

ENGLISH: This book contains 14 early short stories by Philip K. Dick. I had read before two of his long novels, and of course have watched the film "Blade Runner," based on one of those two novels I have read, and in my opinion better than the novel on which it is based. Here I'm commenting a few of the stories in this collection, although the novella The variable man is reviewed apart:

Beyond lies the wub: The first story he published, which already outlines the fundamental themes he developed in his later work. What would you do if you met an intelligent, telepathic pig? The ending is surprising.

The gun: The second story he published. An alien spacecraft arrives on an Earth ravaged by nuclear war. The ship is attacked by an automatic cannon protecting Earth's artistic treasures. The argument reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's short story History Lesson, which was published three years before this one.

The defenders: Atomic war has started. People have gone down the bowels of the Earth to escape the effects of war, leaving robots (leadys) to continue the war effort. Eight years later things do not seem to fit, and a small expedition goes up to see what happens.

The hanging stranger: A similar argument to the famous film Invasion of the body snatchers, whose script was based on a novel by Jack Finney that was published one year after this story by Dick.

Mr. Spaceship: This story has a similar argument as I, dreamer by Walter M. Miller Jr., which was published on the same year. I liked Miller's story better than Dick's.

Second variety: Another story about atomic war. In this case, one side has developed machines intended to kill human beings, which start evolving by themselves and create different varieties. This story reminds me of the berserkers by Fred Saberhagen.

Tony and the beetles: Earth is creating a Galactic Empire. There is war around the Orion constellation. For the first time in one century, the Earth army is defeated. The natives (the beetles) revolt. Earthlings born in their planets must consider getting back to Earth.

The prize ship: In a pre-war situation against the inhabitants of Ganimede, a crew tests a ship they have got from the enemy, but their expectations are not fulfilled. A surprising combination of time travel with the expansion of the universe, so as to give the travelers the impression that they had been tranferred to a famous literary work. But Dick didn't care to do the computations, for the difference in size due to the expansion of the universe in 1000 years would be o the order of one trillionth percent, and therefore undetectable.

ESPAÑOL: Este libro contiene catorce relatos cortos de Philip K. Dick, de los primeros que escribió. Había leído antes dos de sus novelas largas y, por supuesto, había visto la película "Blade Runner", basada en una de las dos, y en mi opinión mejor que la novela en que se basa. Comento aquí algunos de los cuentos de esta colección, aunque reviso aparte la novela corta El hombre variable:

Más allá está el wub: El primer cuento que publicó, en el que ya apunta los temas fundamentales que desarrolló en su obra posterior. ¿Qué harías si te encontraras con un cerdo inteligente y telépata? El final es sorprendente.

El cañón: El segundo cuento que publicó. Una nave extraterrestre llega a una Tierra asolada por una guerra nuclear. La nave es atacada por un cañón automático que protege los tesoros de la producción artística de la Tierra. El argumento de este cuento se parece al de History Lesson de Arthur C. Clarke, que fue publicado tres años antes que este.

Los defensores: La guerra atómica ha comenzado. Los seres humanos se han refugiado en las entrañas de la Tierra para escapar de los efectos de la guerra, dejando a los robots (leadys) que continúen el esfuerzo bélico. Ocho años después, las cosas no parecen encajar, y una pequeña expedición sube para ver qué pasa.

El ahorcado desconocido: Un argumento similar al de la famosa película La invasión de los ladrones de cuerpos, cuyo guion se basó en una novela de Jack Finney publicada un año más tarde que este cuento de Dick.

El señor Nave Espacial: El argumento de este cuento me recuerda el de Yo, soñador de Walter M. Miller Jr., que se publicó el mismo año. Me gustó más el cuento de Miller que el de Dick.

Segunda variedad: Otro cuento sobre una guerra atómica. En este caso, un bando ha desarrollado máquinas diseñadas para matar seres humanos, que evolucionan por sí solas y crean diferentes variedades. Este cuento me recuerda a los berserkers de Fred Saberhagen.

Tony y los escarabajos: La Tierra crea un Imperio Galáctico. Hay guerra en la constelación de Orión. Por primera vez en un siglo, la armada terrestre es derrotada. Los nativos (los escarabajos) se rebelan. Los terrícolas nacidos en esos planetas deben pensar en volver a la Tierra.

La nave capturada: En una situación prebélica contra los habitantes de Ganimedes, una tripulación prueba una nave obtenida del enemigo, pero sus expectativas no se cumplen. Una sorprendente combinación de viajes en el tiempo con la expansión del universo, para dar a los viajeros la impresión de haber sido transportados a una famosa obra literaria. Pero Dick no se molestó en hacer los cálculos, pues la diferencia de tamaño debida a la expansión del universo en 1000 años sería del orden de una billonésima por ciento y por tanto indetectable.

[Martin Doudoroff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not remarkably moving or evocative work, but it held my interest—speculative ideas, economically explored through fiction. The shadow of the Cold War is ever present, here.
NB: this was the lovingly cleaned up ebook version from the Standard Ebooks project—nicely done. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/phi...

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The airships rose in a thick swarm, black gnats shooting up in triumph from a dead carcass.

Reading Dick's classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? earlier this year and loving it made me curious to explore more of his bibliography. Checking out this freely available short story collection seemed like a great idea to get a good overview of his general writing.

The short stories in this ebook vary in length and quality. From lengthier texts about the cultural impact of war to brief pages that feel like a Goosebumps story. Not everything lands and some stories are just lukewarm, but others are very engaging and present more unique ideas from this creative author.
If you've never read another Dick text before though, you'll get a pretty clear overview of his typical themes including the theoretical parts of large-scale conflicts, interplanetary contact, existentialism, and high concept technology.
Besides writing engaging conflicts and vivid world-building, he seems to be really good at pulling together established sci-fi concepts in unique combinations.

If you like reading science fiction, this collection is a pretty easy pick-up to get through bit by bit.

[D Schmudde · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was originally published on Beyond the Frame.

A selection of (mostly) war stories from the early career of the renowned science fiction author.

Short Fiction was compiled from short stories published between 1952 and 1957 by Philip K. Dick. The collection begins strong. Beyond Lies the Wub features a charming alien and a potent ending.

“We are a very old race,” the wub said. “Very old and very ponderous. It is difficult for us to move around. You can appreciate that anything so slow and heavy would be at the mercy of more agile forms of life. There was no use in our relying on physical defenses. How could we win? Too heavy to run, too soft to fight, too good-natured to hunt for game.”

Piper in the Woods is equally playful. A colonizer “see(s) the natives and unconsciously thinks of his own early life, when he was a child.” This trope of primitive locals with (literal) roots in the earth is a mixed bag in our post-colonial reality. But what really exhausted me was the fact that both Wub and Piper trade in military themes just as almost every other story in the collection. Dick doesn’t have much to say about this militarized future. It is simply the waters in which the characters swim.

Dick explores a prototype of Blade Runner in Second VarietyIn this world, three varieties of androids, each indistinguishable from humans, have become the perfect killing machines. The problem is that no one has ever seen the “second variety” of android. Each person in a small group quickly becomes skeptical of the other.

The Wub and allusions to Blade Runner are among the collection’s few highlights. As mentioned, story after story is set with the backdrop of epic war. Intercontinental conflict (The Cold War), inter-planetary conflict, and inter-galactic conflict - clashes of civilizations where the enemies are caricatures of complex conscious beings. As the three varieties of androids take over the Soviet state, one presumably American character makes a quintessential observation about his enemy:

“Perfect socialism,” Tasso said. “The ideal of the communist state. All citizens interchangeable.”

Dick doesn’t show much cognitive empathy or intellectual understanding of any enemy in this book. Whether they be Soviets or Martians or Beetle-people. His black and white universe isn’t even entertaining; story after story is a bland soup of conflict.

Tony and the Beetles exemplifies this issue. The story deals with colonizers in retreat. Tony has interpersonal conflict with the children of the beetle race. Like the British empire in decay, Tony’s father struggles with the loss of power. But Dick goes no deeper than what I described. The author’s focus quickly turns to the war at hand.

The Variable Man may be the worst offender of the bunch. It’s an interesting enough premise. But human life doesn’t prove to be worth much in a war of civilizations. Countless lives are lost on the front when a weapon goes awry but that pales in comparison with a surprise leap in technology. As the leader Margaret Duffe explains, “We have lost the war, but this is not a day of defeat. It is a day of victory. The most incredible victory.”

The stories lose track of their humanity again and again. It’s even more of a shame because Dick is clearly a stronger writer than a contemporary like Robert Heinlein. The agony of death by immolation is written in dramatic prose:

A flash, and a blinding spark of light around him. The spark picked him up and tossed him like a dry leaf. He grunted in agony as searing fire crackled about him, a blazing inferno that gnawed and ate hungrily through his screen. He spun dizzily and fell through the cloud of fire, down into a pit of darkness, a vast gulf between two hills. His wiring ripped off. The generator tore out of his grip and was lost behind. Abruptly, his force field ceased.
Cole lay in the darkness at the bottom of the hill. His whole body shrieked in agony as the unholy fire played over him. He was a blazing cinder, a half-consumed ash flaming in a universe of darkness. The pain made him twist and crawl like an insect, trying to burrow into the ground.

Dick never intended these stories to be bound together in this way. It’s simply an accident of history and United States’ copyright law. Thus the poor experience of reading this volume is somehow not entirely the fault of the author or the publisher, Standard Ebooks. I could imagine a volume that selected the strongest stories coupled with Dick’s later works. This might build a coherent vision of Dick as an artist. But unreasonable copyright law prevents us from honoring him in novel ways. So this is the best we can do.

[Nick Carraway LLC · Rating 4 out of 5]

1) "'This is an unusual situation,' the Speaker said. 'You see, the person you are after—the person that we are sending you to find—is known only by certain objects here. They are the only traces, the only means of identification. Without them—'
'What are they?'
He came toward the Speaker. The Speaker moved to one side. 'Look,' he said. He drew a sliding wall away, showing a dark square hole. 'In there.'
Conger squatted down, staring in. He frowned. 'A skull! A skeleton!'
'The man you are after has been dead for two centuries,' the Speaker said. 'This is all that remains of him. And this is all you have with which to find him.'
For a long time Conger said nothing. He stared down at the bones, dimly visible in the recess of the wall. How could a man dead centuries be killed? How could he be stalked, brought down?
Conger was a hunter, a man who had lived as he pleased, where he pleased. He had kept himself alive by trading, bringing furs and pelts in from the Provinces on his own ship, riding at high speed, slipping through the customs line around Earth.
He had hunted in the great mountains of the moon. He had stalked through empty Martian cities. He had explored—
The Speaker said, 'Soldier, take these objects and have them carried to the car. Don’t lose any part of them.'"

2) "Reinhart watched, tense and rigid. For a moment nothing happened. 7–6 continued to show. Then—
The figures disappeared. The machines faltered. New figures showed briefly. 4–24 for Centaurus. Reinhart gasped, suddenly sick with apprehension. But the figures vanished. New figures appeared. 16–38 for Centaurus. Then 48–86. 79–15 in Terra’s favor. Then nothing. The machines whirred, but nothing happened.
Nothing at all. No figures. Only a blank.
'What’s it mean?' Reinhart muttered, dazed.
'It’s fantastic. We didn’t think this could—'
'What’s happened?'
'The machines aren’t able to handle the item. No reading can come. It’s data they can’t integrate. They can’t use it for prediction material, and it throws off all their other figures.'
'Why?'
'It’s—it’s a variable.' Kaplan was shaking, white-lipped and pale. 'Something from which no inference can be made. The man from the past. The machines can’t deal with him. The variable man!'"

3) "Between the three people lying in the grove of dead trees and the City was a barren, level waste of desert, over a mile of blasted sand. No trees or bushes marred the smooth, parched surface. Only an occasional wind, a dry wind eddying and twisting, blew the sand up into little rills. A faint odor came to them, a bitter smell of heat and sand, carried by the wind.
Erick pointed. 'Look. The City—There it is.'
They stared, still breathing deeply from their race through the trees. The City was close, closer than they had ever seen it before. Never had they gotten so close to it in times past. Terrans were never allowed near the great Martian cities, the centers of Martian life. Even in ordinary times, when there was no threat of approaching war, the Martians shrewdly kept all Terrans away from their citadels, partly from fear, partly from a deep, innate sense of hostility toward the white-skinned visitors whose commercial ventures had earned them the respect, and the dislike, of the whole system.
'How does it look to you?' Erick said.
The City was huge, much larger than they had imagined from the drawings and models they had studied so carefully back in New York, in the War Ministry Office. Huge it was, huge and stark, black towers rising up against the sky, incredibly thin columns of ancient metal, columns that had stood wind and sun for centuries. Around the City was a wall of stone, red stone, immense bricks that had been lugged there and fitted into place by slaves of the early Martian dynasties, under the whiplash of the first great Kings of Mars."

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siempre me resulta difícil valorar una antología de relatos y esta vez no es diferente. Además de gustarme bastante, este libro me ha dejado varías cosas claras:
1. Philip K Dick es mejor escritor de relatos que de novelas. En los textos cortos es más directo y centrado evitando las divagaciones a las que es tan aficionado en sus novelas.
2. Es una autor con unas obsesiones evidentes, la guerra en todas sus variantes y el miedo/respeto por la tecnología y las consecuencias sobre la raza humana.

Individualmente cada relato es muy disfrutable, y algunos de ellos son maravillosos, pero agrupados en un solo libro pueden llegar a cansar, porque tienes la sensación de que los temas se repiten. A pesar de ello es una lectura muy recomendable sobretodo para todos aquellos que quieran conocer algo de este autor.

[Luiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice collection of short stories. Sometimes they don’t seem very interesting, feel dated and slow - but even these stories have great twists and fantastic worlds! At the very least, these stories are great because they explore concepts and flesh out ideas that eventually pop up in sci-fi elsewhere - he did it first, and usually better!

[Arthur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting stories, but often poorly written and set up with unlikely premises.