Review: The Philip K. Dick Reader

This book is amazing. I know the name of course because of how many movies have been made based on his stories -- he could give Jane Austen a run for her money.

Each one of the stories in The Philip K. Dick Reader is a morsel of paranoia and fear covered with Twilight Zone secret sauce. It was interesting to read how much he was a product of his time, with plots centered around a world struggling with the aftermath of a nuclear war between the Russians and the States as well as futuristic dystopian societies.

I actually found myself unable to finish the last story in the set, "Second Variety", because the sense of dread was too much for me to bear. I had to stop reading this book before going to bed because it would rev me up too much to sleep.

Another interesting aspect of reading the book was seeing how the germs of ideas were developed into films such as "Total Recall", "Blade Runner", "Paycheck" and "Screamers". The directions that the screenwriters and directors chose to take are enough to make one very cynical about the whole practice of adaptation to the screen.

At the least the original stories are still out there.