- Title:
- The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 1: The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford
- By:
- Philip K. Dick
- Pages:
- 432
- Rating:
- 3
Many thousands of readers consider Philip K. Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in his works has continued to mount, and his reputation has been further enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. Dick won the prestigious Hugo Award for best novel of 1963 for “The Man in the High Castle,” and in the last year of his life, the film Blade Runner was made from his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This volume includes all of the writer’s earliest short and medium-length fiction (including some previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1952-1955.
n Volume 1/5. Contents:n
n – Stability
– Roog
– The Little Movement
– Beyond Lies the Wub
– The Gun
– The Skull
– The Defenders
– Mr. Spaceship
– Piper in the Woods
– The Infinites
– The Preserving Machine
– Expendable
– The Variable Man
– The Indefatigable Frog
– The Crystal Crypt
– The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford
– The Builder
– Meddler
– Paycheck
– The Great C
– Out in the Garden
– The King of the Elves
– Colony
– Prize Ship
– Nannyn
Other editions of this volume have the same list of stories, and were published under these titles:
– Beyond Lies the Wub,
– Paycheck and Other Classic Stories,
– The King of the Elves (+1 extra story).
There’s always something worthwhile in a Dick reread. In this particular volume, I especially enjoyed The Skull and The Infinites, but for top place I have to say it’s a toss-up between Paycheck and The Variable Man. I’ve got the second volume to flip through between other novels but have deliberately snipped the contents page out of my flow so I don’t skip over stories I originally found less than thrilling.