The Philip K. Dick Reader by
Philip K. Dick (4/5)
One of the great tragedies of Philip K. Dick’s life is that
he died shortly before Hollywood
started pumping out adaptations of his work.
This means that he has become far more popular posthumously than when he
was alive. For most of his time as a
sci-fi author, Philip K. Dick both lived to write and wrote to live. He was an incredibly prolific artist who, at
times, seemed to have an unending supply of ideas, but at the same time he also
had to write in order to provide himself shelter and food. This means that PKD’s naturally productive
nature was bolstered by the fact that he was also forced to produce. While PKD
turned in a number of masterpieces in his time, his writing could often be hit
or miss. This makes it difficult for
fans of his writing to navigate his body of work past some of the more well
known novels. PKD’s prolific nature
makes it especially tough to find a satisfactory collection of his short
stories. Out of the seemingly endless
collections of PKD short stories, The
Philip K. Dick Reader isn’t a bad place to start.
The one thing that The
Philip K. Dick Reader has going for it that many other PKD collections
don’t is the fact that it includes a number of short stories that later served
as the blueprints for film adaptations. Of
the stories included in the anthology, the following have been made into
movies: “The Golden Man” (Next), “We
Can Remember it for You Wholesale” (Total
Recall), “The Minority Report” (Minority
Report), “Paycheck” (Paycheck),
and “Second Variety” (Screamers). It’s a joy just to see ways in which PKD’s
vision did or did not make it onto the silver screen. After reading some of PKD’s work, for
example, it becomes apparent that the dark comedy present in Paul Verhoven’s Total Recall is akin to PKD’s similarly
perverse sense of humor.
But the real gems in The
Philip K. Dick Reader are those stories that surprise us with their quality,
the stories that manage to contain PKD’s wit and intelligence, albeit in
miniature. One of the best finds in the
anthology has to be the fantastically titled, “Foster, You’re Dead!” Like much of PKD’s work in this collection,
“Foster” is a clear response to the Cold War.
But where most of his stories are interested in what happens after the
bombs hit, “Foster” presents a small town on the edge of a nuclear war. In PKD’s vision of America’s future, the government
and corporations have found a way to make war work for consumerism. Although it is not mandated, each member of
the community is expected to buy their own bomb shelter, and those who don’t
become outcasts. The Foster of the title
is an adolescent whose father refuses to give in to the pressures of
consumerism, despite the toll it takes on his wife and son. “Foster” showcases PKD as a brilliant
observer of power and coercion. He
understands that power over individuals and groups doesn’t always come in the
form of the government. Instead, authority
can manifest itself as our next door neighbors or in the form of a commercial
telling us what we must do to be acceptable in polite society.
Since most of these stories were written during the height
of the Cold War, it’s not surprising how many of them take place after the fall
of civilization. But it is surprising
how many variations on the post-apocalyptic narrative PKD could conjure. In “The Turning Wheel” a devastating war has
upended social order and racial hierarchy, causing the “caucs” to become the
most subordinated racial caste; “The Last of the Masters” pits roving bands of
anarchists against the very last organized government run by a nearly despotic
robot; “To Serve the Master” presents a world where the apocalyptic past is so
traumatic that it is pathologically sublimated; and “Pay for the Printer” is a story of
Marxist alienation where humanity has lost the skills necessary to produce
goods and must rely on aliens to provide necessities. It’s interesting to read PKD’s apocalyptic
fiction at a time when the end of the world—thanks to an influx of
zombies—appears to once again be in vogue.
But where present day stories of the end of the world are obsessed with
complete and total atrophy, PKD seems more concerned with how we will carry
on. There’s a sense in his work that he
believes that the world we live in—with its racial, gender, and economic
inequality—is not a given, that we can transform our society for the
better. Even in his bleakest stories,
PKD often betrays a sense of optimism.
Of course, not every installment in The Philip K. Dick Reader is gold.
Some of the material is just plain weird and there are a few that are
kind of bad. The story “Strange Eden”
ends with a lion-like creature angrily shaking his fist at a departing
spaceship, and I don’t want to even get into how PKD arrives at this scenario. But even in PKD’s worst stories there’s a
nervous energy that always propels it forward.
And his best work vacillates, often uneasily, between pulp trash and
high philosophy. His short stories can
often read like thought experiments with a higher number of robots, mutants,
and schizophrenics. This tension between
the high and the low is a defining aspect of PKD’s work, and instead of
diluting either characteristic, the sensational somehow reinforces the high minded
and vice versa.
