This is the fifth installment in this collection of short stories by Philip K. Dick. Each and every one of them is worth reading, and this one is no exception.
All of Philip K. Dick's short stories have something special… something that only this author is able to achieve from the first paragraphs of his narratives: a promise that something great is going to happen and that he is going to tell us about it. As an example, here is the first paragraph of one of the 24 stories included in this installment, the story is titled “I hope to arrive soon”:
“After takeoff, the ship routinely checked the condition of the sixty people sleeping in the cryogenic tanks. An anomaly emerged in subject number nine. His electroencephalogram showed brain activity.
< >, the ship said to itself.”
These four lines are enough to get you hooked and want to read more. It is not surprising that the author is of the opinion that “The important thing is not what happened, but the way of telling it"Dick is a master storyteller.
Although, as Thomas M. Disch rightly points out in the introduction to this installment, Philip K. Dick's books are written for writers, not for readers. Thomas M. Disch refers to the fact that after finishing reading this author's stories you have the feeling that a very good novel would come out of them.long”. And in fact films like Minority Report, Total Recall (I don't remember its name in Spanish... it's Schwarzenegger's on Mars) or Blade Runner, are based on short stories by Philip K. Dick. All these stories appear in the 5-part collection of short stories of which this latest book is a part. Specifically, this fifth installment contains the stories written between 1963 and 1980.
Some of the stories are hilarious, others leave you perplexed, others are worthy psychedelic stories, so typical of this author… and there are even some of them that surprise with their harshness. I am referring to “The Prepersons”, a story that tells the life of the members of a society in which abortion is allowed for children up to 12 years of age. That is, parents have the option of “abort"freely until children reach the age of 12 and cease to be"pre-people” to become people with rights. A thought-provoking story.
At the end of the book, Philip K. Dick himself comments on each of the stories and helps place them in their creative context.
The book is 100% recommended.
3 responses
Hello Federico!
If I remember correctly, We Can Remember it for You Wholesale was published in volume II… (I can’t look it up now because I’ve borrowed it, if I have time, I’ll look it up on the internet later), but as I said… I think it was in volume II. I can guarantee you that it was included in some volume because I remember that when I read it I thought that it didn’t look that much like the movie. The idea of the movie is developed from the business of implanting memories… but the rest is not that similar anymore. Although I read it about 5 years ago, so my memory may be failing at the volume number level.
Look... now I'm curious... I'm going to claim volume II, look for the story and read the tale again if I find it there.
I'll tell you later.
A hug.
Yes, it is Total Recall. I think the movie is pretty good, but the series (Total Challenge 2070) was a considerable disappointment.
By the way, have Minotauro already included the story on which this story is based (We Can Remember It for You Wholesale)? And in volume V? At least in the first edition they left it out, to the considerable annoyance of some fans, who called the anthology "Incomplete Stories." The publisher then advertisement that they were going to include it in later editions, although in volume II and not V. Hence, those who had already bought volume II... But after reading your review, I have a doubt, maybe in the end they included it in V.
Total challenge…
The film has some good moments.
Cheers!