by Philip K. Dick, published, 1953-1957 & 2015 
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A selection of (mostly) war stories from the early career of the renowned science fiction author.The Standard Ebook synopsis: “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.”
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 Runneraka Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
in Second Variety.
Second Variety (1991)
In 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
The Variable Man and Other Stories (1957)
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.I reviewed his book Double Star last year. “No insights into the unique nature of interplanetary politics. No speculation on the future of slide rules and solar system-spanning mainframes. No digging into the motivations or shortcomings of Rog or Dak.”
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.According to Wikipedia: “[These stories are] in the public domain in the United States because [they were] published in the United States between January 1, 1950 and December 31, 1963 but copyright was not renewed with the United States Copyright Office within a year period beginning on December 31 of the 27th year of the copyright and running through December 31 of the following year. When renewal registration was not made within the statutory time limit copyright expired at the end of its first term and protection was lost permanently.”
Thus the poor experience of reading this volume is somehow not entirely the fault of the author or the publisher, Standard Ebooks.Note that Standard Ebooks does not assert any copyright by editing and publishing this volume. In their own words: ‘Non-authorship activities performed on items that are in the public domain - so-called “sweat of the brow” work - don’t create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography.’
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.
See also my reviews of
- Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, published 1956
- Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, published 1953