Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

I have written previously about how much I like the work of Philip K. Dick.  I just finished a collection of his short stories, Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick.  It is almost 500 pages of excellent storytelling, with only a few stories, for me, not living up to the rest.  This collection also contains several tales which were made into movies.  Often these adaptations fall flat (the main exception being Blade Runner), and I have to wonder if it is because they deviate so much from the originals, which are all quite good.  Many of these stories revisit common ideas in Dick's writing- war, Mars, reality, time travel.  Some of the stories are utterly bleak.  I'll highlight some of the stories I liked best from this compilation. 

"Beyond Lies the Wub" and "Roog"
If there is a talking animal or an intelligent dog, it is probably a story I will like.  The Wub is a Martian pig-like creature who tries to convince people not to eat it.  Boris the dog tries to save his oblivious owners from the Roogs.  These two stories were both very short but entertaining.

The next three stories were my favorites.  They were so good that the rest of the collection seemed to go downhill from here.  "Paycheck" and "Second Variety" were two of the longest stories in the book, giving Dick more room to develop the characters and plot.  They were 40-50 pages, whereas the rest averaged around twenty.  "Impostor" was the one I liked most.  

"Paycheck"
A man agrees to work for a company for two years for an extraordinary sum, but at the end of his contract, the memory of these two years will be erased from his mind.  The story starts as he goes to collect his compensation.  He finds that instead of the money, he has elected to take an envelope containing a few seemingly worthless items as pay.  He soon learns that these trinkets are vital to his survival and that he must find out what he has been up to for the past two years.  Philip K. Dick's portrayal of the power of corporations in this story is incredibly prescient.  I enjoyed this story immensely.  I've never seen the movie, but after reading what happens in it, I don't want to.  The movie guts the heart out of the story and takes away its deeper meaning.  It changes the characters and ideas which are at its very foundation.  It becomes the exact opposite of the story upon which it is based. 

"Second Variety"
Like many of Dick's stories, this one takes place on a future Earth which has been decimated by war- this time between the U.N. and the Russians.  Earth is a wasteland, and only small groups of troops remain, continuing the war.  The Americans have started a new colony on the Moon and direct things from there.  The tide has turned in their direction because they have developed a new weapon.  It is a flying sphere with blades, it attacks anything alive, and it is made in automated robotic factories underground.  They call them claws.  The U.N. forces have wrist transmitters that keep them safe, but anything else is killed by the claws.  A Russian soldier brings a message to the local U.N. base, getting killed by the claws in the process.  There must be a meeting between the two sides immediately.  It's urgent.  The highest ranking officer traverses the wasteland to the closest Russian base and makes contact with the only three people there left alive.  What they say startles him.  The claws have started to make new varieties of themselves, and these new varieties are like people.  The don't just look like people, they are indistinguishable from people.  The remainder of the story involves the American and the Russians trying to get back to where the American came from to warn them about the new varieties of claws.  I thought this story was great, even though the reader can see the twist ending coming from a mile away.

"Impostor"
This story revisits a recurring theme in Dick's work, the nature of reality.  Spencer is on his way to work in the morning with his best friend.  They both work on a special project for the war against Alpha Centauri.  His friend has brought someone new along with him today.  All of a sudden, his friend and the stranger are arresting Spencer, telling him that he isn't Spencer.  They tell him that he is a robot from Alpha Centauri who killed Spencer and is now impersonating him.  They tell him that he has a bomb inside of him and that he will be killed.  Spencer knows this isn't true and must do everything he can to escape.  He knows that there was a forest fire in the woods near his house, and he thinks the robot's ship must have crashed.  If only he can get to the woods and prove that the robot was destroyed in the crash, then he could save his life.  This story was outstanding.  The reader doesn't know if this is really Spencer or a robot who thinks he is Spencer, and yet you feel sympathy for this character even though it could be an assassin with a bomb.  This is truly Dick's writing at its best.  The last sentence gave me chills. 

"Adjustment Team" and "The Minority Report"
"Adjustment Team" poses the question of what is reality.  A man is late to work and stumbles upon a team of people changing the details of reality.  If he had been on time, he wouldn't have noticed.  He would have been changed, too.  "The Minority Report" is about the head of the Precrime unit.  There is no murder anymore, because three precogs can predict who will commit a murder and who the victim will be.  The murderer is then arrested and put in a camp before the murder can take place.  But the head of Precrime's name comes up for killing a man he doesn't even know.  Is the system flawed?  Is he being set up?  If three different reports of the future are turned out by the precogs, which is true?  These stories were both good and both much shorter than I thought they would be, considering they were made into movies. The movies were not very much like the stories.  They took the main premise of an adjustment team and precogs predicting that someone in Precrime would commit a murder and veered dramatically from there.  I really didn't like either of these movies.  I thought they both started off well and got worse and worse until they were outright terrible by the end. 

"Precious Artifact"
This story is about a man who is helping to terraform Mars after a war between Earth (Terra) and Proxima Centauri.  He's called a reconstruct engineer.  He is finished with his section of Mars, but he suspects something is wrong.  He suspects that Terra actually lost the war and that the Proxmen are posing as humans to get the reconstruct engineers to work for them to make Mars habitable.  He sees a psychiatrist about his worries, who suggests a trip to Terra to ease his mind after the strain he has been under while he has been on Mars.  The story follows his trip home and what he confronts there.  I liked this story a lot, but it had another gut-wrenching ending, as so many of Philip K. Dick's stories do. 

"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale"
I mention this mainly because it's the basis of the movie Total Recall.  A man goes to Rekal, Inc. to have fake memories implanted of being a spy and having an adventure on Mars.  At Rekal he finds out that his life is actually all a fake memory and that he IS a spy who went to Mars.  I don't remember the movie too well, so I can't comment on similarities or differences.  This story was good, but it wasn't one of the better ones in the collection.

"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts"
This is the story of America's first time travelers, or tempunauts.  They run into a little problem, though.  Instead of going one hundred years into the future, they only go about a week.  They turn up after they have all been killed on reentry to the current time.  The government wants them to go to their own memorial service, while one of them is convinced that they are stuck in a time loop and have repeated this same journey countless times.  This whole story has a melancholy air because the entire time the three tempunauts have the spectre of their own deaths hanging over them.  Although, you could say that many of Dick's stories are depressing in that often the characters are in hopeless situations and things don't turn out well in the end. 

The above are only half of the short stories in the book.  It is filled with compelling tales, plot twists, and original ideas, everything you'd expect from the writing of Philip K. Dick.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

I'm a big fan of Douglas Adams, so it's probably shameful of me not to have read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency until last week.  I love The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, whether it be the books, tv series, or movie.  (I haven't listened to the radio shows yet.)  Adams did great work on Doctor Who as both a writer and a script editor, penning some of my favorite episodes.  And yet, for some reason I had neglected his two Dirk Gently books.  When I saw the new British tv show loosely based on Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, I was reminded of my oversight.  

Dirk Gently is a private detective who believes in "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things."  He uses these connections between sometimes seemingly unrelated people or events to solve his cases.  Dirk could be described as eccentric and his methods unorthodox.  Most people just think he is nuts.  The police think he gets in the way.  In this book he has to deal with a ghost, a time traveler, a monk who happens to be an android, and the possible extinction of life on earth.  Plus, there is the matter of the lovely horse who inexplicably appears in an upstairs bathroom. 

This being a Douglas Adams book, it's more science fiction than mystery.  I was surprised to find elements of the Doctor Who stories "Shada" and "City of Death."  The novel is funny, and it's filled with great characters.  Douglas Adams was excellent at creating well-drawn, interesting characters.  I expect the sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, to be just as good.

Sadly, there are only two Dirk Gently books.  Douglas Adams died in 2001 at the age of 49, having only completed eleven chapters of the next Dirk Gently story, The Salmon of Doubt.  Although those chapters were published posthumously in a collection with some of his essays and other writings, readers will never know how Douglas Adams intended that novel to end. But to me, Dirk Gently will always be out there, using the interconnectedness of all things to explain the impossible and the improbable.

The beagle has a birthday

Kenobi is turning eleven this week.  Maybe it would be better to say he is turning as close to eleven as close to this week as we know.  That is because my wonderful, loving, gentle beagle is a rescue dog.  He came from BREW, Beagle Rescue, Education, and Welfare.  BREW took him out of a shelter, and his prior history was unknown.  Since the vet estimated him to be about a year and a half old when we got him, we designated his birthday as the day a year and a half before the day we took him home.  I am incredibly grateful to BREW for taking him in, and I am incredibly lucky to have him as my dog.

Kenobi likes to sit on the couch

I feel very strongly that people should consider rescues and shelters when looking for pets.  There are so many animals out there in need of loving homes.  If giving a pet a second chance isn't enough of an incentive, there are other benefits.  Kenobi was already house-trained, and we knew he had a good temperament.  He is also the quietest beagle who ever lived.  Who ever heard of a beagle that didn't howl loudly and often?  No one.  But Kenobi does not.  I've heard him howl or bark only a handful of times in all the years I've known him.  He makes more noise in his sleep.

Kenobi is a one in a million dog.  He is always available for hugs.  He insists on sleeping under the covers.  He likes to crush me as much as a 25 pound beagle can while I'm reading or watching tv.

He often lounges on pillows

He enjoys going for walks.  Kenobi's absolute favorite place for walks is Valley Forge Park.  He tends to stalk the deer.

He is a very happy dog.  His tail wags constantly.  He has had back problems, so his waggy tail doesn't stick straight up like it used to, but he still wags it as much as ever.  Kenobi is so happy that he is even happy when he goes to the vet.  No dog likes to go to the vet!  They hate it.  They are afraid.  Not Kenobi.  Kenobi wags his tail and gets excited to see the vet and the nurses and everyone who works there.

He also likes blankets

Kenobi makes friends wherever he goes, and he goes everywhere.  He is a regular sight at family functions.  I can't say how many times people have told me, "I've never met a dog like Kenobi!"

The beagle is also extremely stubborn and dedicated to following his nose when he is outside.  Little furry creatures interest him the most.  He has seen a horse, but it didn't faze him.  Kenobi is friendly with other dogs, but he'd much rather be with people.  He loves people.  He can't get enough of them.

The reality of Kenobi getting older is starting to set in.  It's upsetting to think about.  I look at photos of him when he was younger and see him before his face turned grey.  I notice him slowing down.  The onset of arthritis has him going up and down stairs more carefully.  That being said, catch him at dinner time or at my grandparents' house where he knows he'll be getting several treats and a continual supply of ice cubes, and it's like he's three again.  That's the thing about dogs, isn't it?  They bring such joy into our lives, but they are destined to break our hearts.  Kenobi is my forever dog.  I cherish each day I have with him.

Chopin, and a visit to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

I've been listening to a lot of Chopin lately.  I like classical music, and I often put it on as background while reading.  Amazon had a whopping eight hours of Chopin for $2, so I couldn't pass that up.  Gorging myself on Chopin for the past few weeks has made me think of my aborted piano lessons.  I wish I could play the piano.  If I tried, I could probably still read sheet music and pound something out, but it would not be good, and I could never play anything like Chopin.  Christmas carols, Beatles songs...Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.  I didn't get far in my musical education.  I know the exact reason why.  I started two things the summer after I turned eleven: piano lessons and riding horses.  Horses won easily, and the piano was abandoned. 

My mother, however, could play quite well when she was younger.  I'm allowed to say that because she would be the first to admit that she is out of practice from not playing for years.  But, I have seen the impressive and intimidating sheet music from all the classical composers she used to play.  The piano in my parents' house is the one on which she herself learned.  In fact, the thing I still play the best is the duet she taught me when I was eleven.  After hearing the stories about her piano teacher, I'm amazed my mom learned anything.  Well, maybe they were more about things being done to her piano teacher.  I seem to remember one about someone hiding on the stairs of my grandparents' house and sending spitballs her way.  The teacher blamed it on my uncle, but it was my grandfather!  Anyway, having attempted to learn to play the piano myself, I feel like I have a greater appreciation for Chopin.  I experienced firsthand how difficult it is and how accomplished you must be to play his music.  And, ultimately, how beautiful and moving it is. 

Now, having said all that about Chopin, I'll share a photo I took of his grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.  I should note that Chopin's heart is buried separately in Warsaw.

Père Lachaise is an extraordinary cemetery situated on over one hundred acres in eastern Paris.  It's in the 20th arrondissement, if you want to get technical.  It can be overwhelming.  To find specific graves, the purchase of a map is a must.  The cemetery is a who's who of impressive people.  There is an exhaustive list here, but the non-famous far outnumber the famous.  Let me share a few more photos I've taken there.  First up is Oscar Wilde.  Wilde is brilliant and witty and known for writing The Picture of Dorian Gray, among other things.  This is how his grave used to look.

All those red marks- those are kisses.  People put on lipstick and kissed his monument as a tribute.  Someone had even drawn a face on it here.

The caretakers of the cemetery kept finding it necessary to clean the grave, so Père Lachaise recently decided to do something about it.  The stone was made pristine again, and a glass barrier was erected to prevent further graffiti.  No, I did not add my lips to those seen above.  But, knowing that now I never can kind of makes me wish I had.  Père Lachaise says that the grease from the lipstick and the cleaning it necessitated were eroding the stone, but the kisses were such a touching display of adoration from Wilde's fans.  This was a man who was sent to jail for being gay, was forced out of England, and died in poverty.  I wish he could have seen this outpouring of love. 

Molière was one of the first "big names" to be buried in Père Lachaise.  He and Jean de La Fontaine are buried next to each other.

Honoré de Balzac and Gertrude Stein are also buried here.

You can see in the photo of Gertrude Stein's grave how crowded Père Lachaise Cemetery is.  Jim Morrison's grave has been repeatedly vandalized.  It used to have a bust of Morrison.  Now it is a simple stone marker.  A guard is stationed there, and a metal barrier keeps visitors from getting too close. 

I could go on and on about all the people buried here, so let me just mention a few more:  Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Bizet, Colette, Eugène Delacroix, Ferdinand de Lesseps (architect, Suez Canal), Edith Piaf, Camille Pissarro, and Georges Seurat. 

Bellini and Rossini both were originally interred in Père Lachaise but later had their remains moved to Italy.  You can still see their tombs.  Maria Callas, also from the world of opera, had her ashes buried here.  After the ashes were stolen and later recovered, they were scattered at sea, but her memorial remains.  

It's not only the graves of these inspiring people who contributed so much to our culture which makes this cemetery a great destination.  It is a serene place in a busy city.  It is so large that while a lot of people may visit every day, it doesn't feel packed with tourists.  There are unique headstones and mausoleums.  Père Lachaise is a beautiful place. 

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

I blew through Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in virtually one sitting.  This is the book on which the movie Blade Runner is loosely based.  I was surprised to see how different they were.  The main character's name is Rick Deckard.  He "retires" humanoid robots.  That's about where the similarities end.  They kept some of the characters' names the same in the movie, and Deckard does have a test that he administers to determine if someone is an android.  They aren't called replicants in the book, and they aren't on a quest to find their maker, like they are in the movie.  The term "blade runner" only exists in the film.  When Deckard goes after the androids, he is referred to as a bounty hunter.

Both book and film deal with the subject of what makes us human, but they do it in different ways.  The book really hits home the fact that humans have the ability to feel empathy, and androids do not.  Animals, real and artificial, play a large part in the novel.  Animals are a luxury because most of them died after the world war which made a large part of the earth uninhabitable and caused people to emigrate to off-world colonies.  Nonetheless, everyone feels they must have an animal to look after, even if it is an android animal.  It is mentioned that any time an android has tried to keep an animal as a pet, it has died, because the androids don't bother to care for them.  There is even a scene in which a human who is with three androids finds a spider and gets very excited about having this living thing around.  The androids take the spider and, wondering if it could still walk with fewer legs, proceed to cut the legs off of the spider with scissors.  The human gets very upset, but the androids don't understand what the problem is.  The androids don't even really care what happens to other androids, and yet Deckard comes to realize that he needs to find a new job when he starts developing empathy for his targets.

The androids don't come off very well in the book.  I felt more for Rutger Hauer's character at the end of Blade Runner than I did for any of the androids in the novel.  His Roy Baty is nothing like that of the book.  None of the androids in the book come close to any kind of "tears in the rain" speech, nor do they seem capable of it.  The replicants of the film are much more complex emotionally. 



The author Roger Zelazny wrote the introduction to the edition I have of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and I'd like to quote him here:

"His management of a story takes you from here to there in a God-knows-how, seemingly haphazard fashion, which, upon reflection, follows a logical line of development- but only on reflection.  While you are trapped within the spell of its telling, you are in no better position than one of its invariably overwhelmed characters when it comes to seeing what will happen next."

Zelazny ends the introduction with this:

"...that which is left of a Philip Dick story when the details have been forgotten is a thing which comes to me at odd times and offers me a feeling or a thought; therefore, a thing which leaves me richer for having known it."

Fragile Things

I like short stories.  I know a lot of people who like to read, and most of them stick with novels and don't give much thought to short stories.  I think people are missing out if they don't give this literary form a chance.  All of us have had to read short stories in school- Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "The Lady, or the Tiger?" by Frank R. Stockton, various tales by Edgar Allen Poe or Guy de Maupassant, or the majority of stories starring Sherlock Holmes.  I like all of these, but they were written a long time ago, and there is still good short fiction being written today.  One of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, writes a fair amount of short stories.  I just finished reading his second collection of short stories and poems, Fragile Things. 

I had read his first short story collection, Smoke and Mirrors, a while ago.  It's great, and it contains one of the best short stories I've read, "The Wedding Present," hidden in the introduction to the book.  It's his twist on a Picture of Dorian Gray-type theme.  So, I read Fragile Things, and the book turns out to have another of my all-time favorite short stories, "A Study in Emerald."  You may notice the title resembles that of a Sherlock Holmes story, and yet it is set in the world of H.P. Lovecraft.  "A Study in Emerald" is available to read on Neil Gaiman's website here. The book also has a fantastic poem, "The Day the Saucers Came," which you can see the author reading below:



Hearing Gaiman read his poem is a real treat.  For those who liked his novel American Gods, there is a novella featuring Shadow, the main character, called "The Monarch of the Glen." It was outstanding, and just like American Gods, it left me wanting more stories about Shadow.  I also liked how it revisited two characters from an earlier story in Fragile Things.  Reading the book was worth it for this story alone.

A few other notable stories include "October in the Chair," in which the months of the year sit around entertaining themselves by telling tales, "Closing Time," about four boys and an abandoned playhouse (which made me want to sleep with the lights on that night), and "How to Talk to Girls at Parties," in which the girls at the party are not what they seem. 

Gaiman's introductions are interesting reading- not just because he hides short stories there.  He takes each story or poem and explains why it was written or the inspiration behind it.  In the blurb on "The Monarch of the Glen," he talks about an unfinished novella which returns to the world of Neverwhere, "How the Marquis Got His Coat Back."  He says he will finish it one day.  Sadly, Fragile Things was published in 2006, and "How the Marquis Got His Coat Back" still has not seen the light of day. 

As with any collection, there are hits and misses, but Fragile Things was enjoyable reading.  There were only a couple of things I didn't like that much, and it comes down to one's personal taste, anyway.  It's safe to say that anything Neil Gaiman creates will be well-written and imaginative.