The Anthology Anthology: Philip K. Dick 1980s-1990s collections!

 

It's the start of an "off week", and I've been feeling like doing some vintage sci fi. As it happened, I had just been digging for some books by perhaps the most famous and admired of science fiction authors, so I had some fresh thoughts. Here is perhaps my most prized volume I ever bought new, a 1997 collection of Philip K. Dick, plus one more. Here's the back cover of the one I have the most to say about.

To explain the history, I suppose I need to start with context. Philip K. Dick was an author with a long and prolific career whose popularity in his own lifetime probably peaked in the 1960s. He died in hardship and some disrepute in the very early 1980s, just before the release of the cult movie Blade Runner. While the film itself was more of a cult movie than an immediate hit, it marked a growing interest in his work that for once got a response from publishers, as both his novels and short fiction were reprinted on a large scale. Given my usual pop culture obliviousness, I didn't pay attention to the movies based on his work, but I did get into his fiction at an early date, after being duly blown away by "Second Variety" in 9th grade. A few years later, I used a gift card on a haul that included the present book, in part because it had several of his "important" works. As we will see in a moment, there is much more than meets the eyes.

In this environment, it's not too surprising that the present anthology had a complicated history. It was originally published as the third volume of Dick's collected short fiction from Citadel Twilight, confusingly both as Second Variety and Upon The Dull Earth (more on that one momentarily). In 1997, the same publisher released the present volume with the additions of "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", "The Minority Report" and "Paycheck", of which the first had been adapted as Total Recall and the others had reportedly been optioned for film. The only thing I will add at the moment is that Paycheck was the movie that stayed closest to the source material, and did it pay.

Turning to the stories, the most intriguing of stories here are about three that fall in dark fantasy/ horror rather than science fiction, "Fair Game", "The Hanging Stranger" and "Upon The Dull Earth". These are certainly among those I remember most vividly from when I bought the book. From my impressions then and now, these feel like an alternate-universe version of Dick's career, what might have been if Weird Tales and Unknown had survived as competitive venues rather than dying or long-dead artifacts. Admittedly, this angle is in many ways more interesting than the stories themselves. "Fair Game" is pretty much a comical squib, albeit a dark one, and deservedly minor. "The Hanging Stranger" has faired deservedly better, enough to get a footing among the author's "classics", but it feels both uncomfortable and on the nose, ultimately not Dick in top form. In my opinion, what make these tales feel fresh compared to his usual science fiction is simply that there's far less that's familiar or self-dating.

Meanwhile, it's "On The Dull Earth" that is most interesting by far, and in many lights the best. I found it all the more striking that I didn't turn up much about it online, most notably a post of the full text, an insightful review, and a mention on a TV Tropes page for the author. The story should definitely be read ahead of any synopsis, if you're going to try at all; I for one will try to be spoiler-free. It starts as an uncomfortable romance between a young man and a woman who traffics with mysterious supernatural entities that are ominously drawn to blood. The man wants to settle down in domestic life, while the woman openly yearns to join her friends on the higher plane of existence. When one of her experiments ends in her death, however, she reaches out to her lover and pleads to return and live out an Earthly life. What follows cannot be described without giving it all away, and is hard to do justice even then. I will quote the TV Tropes contributor, who describes it as "(among) the most bizarre zombie apocalypses ever imagined". On the whole, it's the kind of Dick tale that's better in concept than execution, with a buildup that's longer than needed and weakens the case for ambiguity that some find in the story. One more thing of some note is that it has been described as a very early Dick story. In fact, its November 1954 publication date is more than 2 years after that of his first story, "Beyond Lies The Wub", which makes it more like a "transitional" story, unless, as certainly seems fairly likely, it was an old manuscript the author couldn't sell any sooner.

For the rest of the contents, I've gone on long enough that I'm going to need to go through them quickly. The most interesting are "Foster, You're Dead" and "Sales Pitch", both savage takes on commercialism. The former is a misfire in hindsight, based on what was in reality a very brief craze for commercial prefabricated bomb shelters, though it still reads as pertinent; I still definitely rate it behind the latter tale, a brutally absurd vision of a servant robot that won't take no for an answer until you buy it. Others that read better than usual include "Strange Eden", "To Serve The Master" and "The Crawlers", the last a grisly fable of mutation that I would put ahead of "The Golden Man", also included here. One more I will mention is "Null-O", a story that has made me wonder if Dick somehow encountered C.M. Kornbluth's "The Words of Guru", which I covered last time.

Now, it should be obvious that I'm departing from form by going this long without discussing the other volume, The Short Happy Life Of The Brown Oxford, the first volume in the collected short fiction series. The fact is, this is a volume I've had for a very long time without getting into it. I recognized even in junior high that Dick wasn't that good a writer, and his limitations show more than usual here. As a further consequence, there's not only undoubtedly a number of stories I haven't read but others I probably have at some point but don't recall now. (I keep saying, if I don't remember something I watched/ read, it's a very, very bad sign...) There's classics here, like "Roog", "The Preserving Machine" "Paycheck" (again), and charitably "Beyond Lies The Wub", but the law of averages is not in the volume's favor. It was obviously necessary to do a book like this in a comprehensive survey of Dick's work, but the ordinary reader would do better moving forward. While I'm at it, here's a pic of the back cover, complete with the sales sticker.

With that, I'm ready to call it a day, as I'm already working later than usual. Needless to say, I absolutely recommend the author and these books, which are accessible both in print and in ebook form. For me personally, Dick was a very important influence on me, my interest in science fiction, and my own writing. At a certain point, however, part of maturing as a fan and a writer was recognizing that what I wanted to do lay in other directions. He's a fun author to read and come back to, perhaps best in relatively small doses. With that, I finish my tribute. Question reality!