How does it compare to audio works by the same author?
Excellent
Advantages:
Thought - provoking and entertaining
Disadvantages:
None, unless you can't appreciate the time - shift
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
It's some five years now since the first dark trailers for Spielberg's film hit the screens. Although intrigued by the concept, I never did get to see Minority Report. What I did not know at the time (to my eternal shame) is that the film was based on a story by Philip K Dick.
For those unfamiliar with the name, Dick was one of the most prolific science fiction writers of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. He gave us Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (better known to film-goers as Blade Runner) as well Total Recall (from one of the stories in this collection 'We Can Remember it for You Wholesale), Screamers, Impostor… the list goes on.
I first came across both Dick and Sci-Fi generally as a child. 'Do Androids Dream…' was one of the first books I borrowed from the adult section on our local library. Seeing the words Minority Report & Dick's name on the same cover, therefore, brought me up short. How come I didn't know he'd written it? And even in checking out the book, indeed well into I still hadn't cottoned on to the fact that this was a short story ~ or at most a novella ~ rather than a full scale epic. Does this mean I felt short-changed? No, I got more than I bargained for.
CAVEAT: The collection reviewed is not that illustrated, but rather the one which you will find in the 'similar offers' Ciao page showing the purple cover, with abstract designs and giving Orion as the publisher. (See ISBN at the foot of this page for specific information). Although many of the comments will hold true for whichever collection you pick up, this reviewer has been unable to verify whether the exact same stories are included in the book depicted.
The Orion-published collection of tales is named for 'Minority Report' but includes others which have become famous in their own right, including those mentioned above. All of the stories have been previously published, with copyright dates ranging from 1953 to 1969. This collection was first published in 2002 by Gollancz, with the reviewed edition by Orion following in 2005.
For those familiar with Dick's work, the collection comprises: • Minority Report - this is the film, pre-cognitive information to arrest folks for crimes not yet committed....
• Impostor - how do you prove you're who (or even what) you say you are?
• Second Variety - fighting vicious little bots in the deserts of the post-apocalypse
• War Game - what is a game, and what is something more sinister...how to manipulate the child in us all...
• What the Dead Men Say - a voice from beyond the grave is now a common occurence, but what it says is not...
• Oh, to Be a Blobel! - (a joy that you just have to discover for yourself!)
• We Can Remember it for You Wholesale - but can you trust your memories?
Each of the tales running for an average of fifty pages, not quite a novella, but more than a short story.
It is said that the strength of Dick's writing is that he doesn't put concepts at the centre of his stories, but rather people, and ordinary people at that…not gung-ho heroes but clerks, and minions. That is slightly disingenuous though, not least because many of his clerks and minions turn out to be so much more (or possibly less) than that…and the 'concept' is the true heart of all of Dick's stories.
He is a true product of his time, when atomic theory and relativity, space-travel at light speed and the bending of time were new ideas…when robotics and the exploration of the universe were the future…when the Communist threat was still an American pre-occupation….and when psychotropic drugs were leading everyone (not least the author) to question the nature of reality.
All these elements come through in the tales. If we can predict the future, will that prediction, by definition, change it? Could an android be made to believe it is human, and if so, would it be damaged by learning otherwise - and if that were so, what then is the nature of humanity? Is there a God, or a god…and would we wish to meet him/her/it? Is death the end…and if not, what is beyond, and do we want it? Is what we know to be real, really real…or a mass delusion? What indeed is reality ~ if it is the sum of our perceptions and we all perceive a different reality, what then? And what if those perceptions are interrupted for a time, does reality cease? Are we the product of our own perceptions…or of some-one else's? If memory can be manipulated, what happens when memories conflict? What, ultimately, is the nature of identity?
In each story, Dick uses a situation to explore an idea. It is classic 'what if' story-telling. This is why the tales survive and are still being used as the basis for highly-successful films. He takes difficult philosophical questions and plays around with them in ways that result in either the deeply dramatic (Minority Report) or the mildly comic (Bloble).
Whilst the man has been called a genius, do not expect literary excellence from these pages. That is not the point. Dick was not a great wordsmith, indeed if you read several tales at a sitting you will find some words and phrases being done to death (I could live without hearing 'prophylactic' for quite some time!) He was a craftsman, rather than an artist. He knew how to play out a tale, how to keep you interested in the characters and how to twist plot successfully within fairly short constructs. Not only that, but to leave a final twist that really could make you think about whether he really was saying what you'd spent the last 50 pages coming to understand, or whether he maybe meant something else again.
In truth, he probably meant both. Reality shifts.
Whilst clearly aimed at the Sci-Fi fan and (no doubt originally re-issued to cash-in on the popularity of the Tom Cruise portrayal) the collection should be of wider interest. It is said that Sci-Fi dates - quickly and badly - that it does not age well. I would argue something slightly different: that Sci-Fi is time-fixed, and because of that it becomes of interest to scientific and social historians. In the pages of these stories you can see the pre-occupations of the day: space travel, robotics, atomic bombs, the communist threat. You can also see the assumptions about tomorrow. Most of the stories are set well into the future…but everyone still smokes cigarettes. There is intelligent life on Mars. People not only still watch television sets which have scarcely advanced beyond their 1960s selves ~ they still watch a form of entertainment known as "a kirk" (ah well, he got that bit right, I guess!). The time-line of development as it was anticipated then was all about the space race…about going beyond. It turned out that the revolution would all be about going within: about bio-genetics (rather than robotics), about miniaturisation and speed of communication. The computers and comms devices Dick uses are no better than radio and telephones. Even when he died in 1982, the mobile phone and the internet were in their infancy.
Does this matter? I think so. It shows us just how far we have really come, and that we have travelled a completely different road to the one envisaged. That is interesting for its own sake, but it should also remind us to look at where we might be going….which means not only looking at the road we're on…but trying to figure out what other off-shoot tracks there might be around us, because it's almost certain that we'll take another tangential shift.
Read the stories. Enjoy them…for their drama and humour and perception. But think also about what they tell us - about 1950s/60s America, and about the possibilities for 21st century planet earth.
~
Published in paperback by Orion ISBN 0-75286-431-9 pp 290 Cover price £6.99
