Philip K. Dick - The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Volume 4: The Minority Report (Citadel Twilight)

The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol. 4

by Philip K. Dick

By James Tiptree,Jr.

How do you know you'rereading Philip K. Dick?

I think, first andpervasively, it was the strangeness. Strange, Dick was and is. Ithink it was that which kept me combing the SF catalogs for more byhim, waiting for each new book to come out. One hears it said, "Xjust doesn't think like other people." About Dick, it wastrue. In the stories, you can't tell what's going to happen next.

And yet his charactersare seemingly designed to be ordinary people -- except for theoccasional screaming psychotic female who is one of Dick'sspecialties, and is always treated with love. They are ordinarypeople caught up in wildly bizarre situations, running a police forcewith the help of the mumblings of precognitive idiots, facing aself-replicating factory that has taken over the earth. Indeed, oneof the factors in the strangeness is the care Dick takes to set hischaracters in the world of reality, an aspect most other writersignore.

In how many otherscience fiction stories do you know what the hero does for a livingwhen he isn't caught up in the particular plot? Oh, he may be amember of a space crew, or, vaguely, a scientist. Or Young Werther.In Dick, you are introduced to the hero's business concerns on pageone. That's not literally true of the short stories in this volume (Iwent back and checked), but the impression of the pervasiveness of"grubby" business concerns is everywhere, especially in thenovels. The hero is in the antique business, say; as each new marvelturns up, he ruminates as to whether it is saleable. When the deadtalk, they offer business advice. Dick never sheds his concern thatwe know how his characters earn their bread and butter. It is a partof the peculiar "grittiness" of Dick's style.

Another part of thegrittiness is the jerkiness of the dialog. I can never decide whetherDick's dialog is purely unreal, or more real than most. His people donot interact as much as they deliver monologs to carry on the plot,or increase the reader's awareness of a situation.

And the situations arepurely Dick. His "plots" are like nothing else in SF. IfDick writes a time-travel story, say, it will have a twist on it thatmakes it sui generis. Quite typically, the central gee-whizmarvel will not be centered, but will come at you obliquely,in the course, for instance, of a political election.

And any relationbetween Dick and a nuts-and-bolts SF writer is a pure coincidence. Inmy more sanguine moments, I concede that he probably knows whathappens when you plug in a lamp and turn it on, but beyond that thereis little evidence of either technology or science. His science, suchas it is, is all engaged in the technology of the soul, with asmattering of abnormal psychology.

So far I have perhapsemphasized his oddities at the expense of his merits. What keeps youreading Dick? Well, for one thing, the strangeness, as I said, butwithin it there is always the atmosphere of striving, of mendesperately trying to get some necessary job done, or striving atleast to understand what is striking at them. A large percentage ofDick's heroes are tortured men; Dick is expert at the machinery ofdespair.

And another beauty isthe desolations. When Dick gives you a desolation, say after thebomb, it is a desolation unique of its kind. There is one such inthis book. But amid the desolation you often find another of Dick'scharacteristic touches, the little animals.

The little animals arefrequently mutants, or small robots who have taken on life. They areunexplained, simply noted by another character in passing. And whatare they doing? They are striving, too. A freezing sparrow hugs a ragaround itself, a mutant rat plans a construction, "peering andplanning." This sense of the ongoing busy-ness of life, howeverdoomed, of a landscape in which every element has its own life, istrying to live, is typically and profoundly Dick. It carriesthe quality of compassion amid the hard edges and the grit, thecompassion one suspects in Dick, but that never appears frontally. Itis this quality of love, always quickly suppressed, that gleamsacross Dick's rubbled plains and makes them unique and memorable.

James Tiptree, Jr.

December, 1986

I used to believe theuniverse was basically hostile. And that I was misplaced in it, I wasdifferent from it... fashioned in some other universe and placedhere, you see. So that it zigged while I zagged. And that it hadsingled me out only because there was something weird about me. Ididn't really groove with the universe.

I had a lot of fearsthat the universe would discover just how different I was from it. Myonly suspicion about it was that it would find out the truth aboutme, and its reaction would be perfectly normal: it would get me. Ididn't feel that it was malevolent, just perceptive. And there'snothing worse that a perceptive universe if there's something weirdabout you.

But this year Irealized that that's not true. That the universe is perceptive, butit's friendly... I just don't feel that I'm different from theuniverse anymore.

- Philip K. Dick in aninterview, 1974.

(from ONLYAPPARENTLY REAL)

Tension hung over thethree waiting men. They smoked, paced back and forth, kickedaimlessly at weeds growing by the side of the road. A hot noonday sunglared down on brown fields, rows of neat plastic houses, the distantline of mountains to the west.

"Almost time,"Earl Ferine said, knotting his skinny hands together. "It variesaccording to the load, a half second for every additional pound."

Bitterly, Morrisonanswered, "You've got it plotted? You're as bad as it is. Let'spretend it just happens to be late."

The third man saidnothing. O'Neill was visiting from another settlement; he didn't knowFerine and Morrison well enough to argue with them. Instead, hecrouched down and arranged the papers clipped to his aluminumcheck-board. In the blazing sun, O'Neill's arms were tanned, furry,glistening with sweat. Wiry, with tangled gray hair, horn-rimmedglasses, he was older than the other two. He wore slacks, a sportsshirt and crepe-soled shoes. Between his fingers, his fountain penglittered, metallic and efficient.

"What're youwriting?" Ferine grumbled.

"I'm laying outthe procedure we're going to employ," O'Neill said mildly."Better to systemize it now, instead of trying at random. Wewant to know what we tried and what didn't work. Otherwise we'll goaround in a circle. The problem we have here is one of communication;that's how I see it."

"Communication,"Morrison agreed in his deep, chesty voice. "Yes, we can't get intouch with the damn thing. It comes, leaves off its load and goes on-- there's no contact between us and it."

"It's a machine,"Ferine said excitedly. "It's dead -- blind and deaf."

"But it's incontact with the outside world," O'Neill pointed out. "Therehas to be some way to get to it. Specific semantic signals aremeaningful to it; all we have to do is find those signals.Rediscover, actually. Maybe half a dozen out of a billionpossibilities."

A low rumbleinterrupted the three men. They glanced up, wary and alert. The timehad come.

"Here it is,"Ferine said. "Okay, wise guy, let's see you make one singlechange in its routine."

The truck was massive,rumbling under its tightly packed load. In many ways, it resembledconventional human-operated transportation vehicles, but with oneexception -- there was no driver's cabin. The horizontal surface wasa loading stage, and the part that would normally be the headlightsand radiator grill was a fibrous spongelike mass of receptors, thelimited sensory apparatus of this mobile utility extension.

Aware of the three men,the truck slowed to a halt, shifted gears and pulled on its emergencybrake. A moment passed as relays moved into action; then a portion ofthe loading surface tilted and a cascade of heavy cartons spilleddown onto the roadway. With the objects fluttered a detailedinventory sheet.