Philip K Dick's "The Minority Report" (novelette, conspiracy, free): Don't invite death; it might oblige!

A country whose administration was once dominated by military, but military had its wings clipped after a devastating war. What was then military's turf is now divided up with police.

And police here aren't the kind you're familiar with. These guys prosecute people for "precrimes" - crimes they're yet to commit! But it's sure that if left free, they will commit these crimes! This prediction is done using 3 "precog mutants" & some complicated machinery.

Now a band of military veterans have decided to get back their former glory...

Fact sheet.

First published: Fantastic Universe, January 1956.
Download full text from C. W. Aanderson (dot) org, or read online at Google cache.
Rating: A. 
Related: Stories of Philip K Dick.

"Galaxy Science Fiction", September 1954 (ed H L Gold) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Where I've read the story, my rating appears in brackets. Links on author fetch more fiction by author.

Table of contents (6 stories, best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Philip K Dick's "Shell Game" (B): A group of stranded spacemen somewhere is being repeatedly attacked by...
2. [novella] F L Wallace's "The Man Who Was Six": "There is nothing at all like having a sound mind in a sound body, but Dan Merrol had too much of one--& also too much of the other!"
3. [novelette] Clifford D Simak's "Dusty Zebra": "Who or what the trader was & where he came from, nobody knew--or cared--until one of his gadgets began to play dirty!"
4. [novelette] Daniel F Golouye's "Satan's Shrine": "No torment that had ever been inflicted on mankind was more feindish than Satan ... for he was worse than a devil ... he was a man!"
5. [ss] Arthur Sellings' "A Start in Life": "What a problem for a robot ... having all of the answers, but not knowing when to give them!"
6. [ss] Robert Sheckley's "Milk Run": "What are Smags, Firgels & Queels? Cats in a bag ... & Gregor was holding the bag!"

Fact sheet.

Download whole issue from Internet Archive. [via Michael@ClassicScienceFiction]
This issue is labeled Vol 8, No 6.
Related: Fiction fro Galaxy, pulps, 1950s.
Legend: ss = short story

Philip K Dick's "Adjustment Team" aka "The Adjustment Bureau" (novelette, free): A man accidentally watches God in action

God, with the help of his team, sometimes adjusts reality, to set up a chain of events towards a desired outcome. These adjustments are localized, done in "sectors".

One of these adjustments went a little wrong, in that it didn't change all that needed changing. One "element" remained unchanged! Element that's a man named Ed Fletcher.

This is the story of Fletcher's nightmare that results.

See also.

1. Eric Frank Russell's  "Hobbyist": A man accidentally meets God.

Fact sheet.

First published: Orbit, #4 (September-October 1954).
Download full text from Southern Cross Review or scans from Wikimedia Commons.
Credits: I looked up this story after seeing its mention in David Langford's Ansible, November 2011. Link to scans at Wikimedia is via Best Science Fiction Stories (I personally haven't read these scans).
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Philip K Dick.

"Startling Stories", Winter 1955 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Scans of the magazine are online as a CBR file.

Note: This issue includes a table detailing Poul Anderson's Future History - pattern to which some of his stories fit.

Table of contents.

1. [novel] Poul Anderson's "The Snows of Ganymede": "They came to the hostile, frozen moon of Jupiter to solve an engineering problem - & ran into a political puzzle".
2. [novelet] Robert F Young's "More Stately Mansions": "The poor girl & the rich man's son both faced an age-old situation - & each with a different idea of happiness!"
3. [ss] Winston Marks' "Only with Tine Eyes": "George was certainly able to kill a bottle with a glance".
4. [ss] Philip K Dick's "Human Is": "Her husband changed, but she had married for better or worse".
5. [ss] Robert Zacks' "Have Your Past Read, Mister?": Why read the future when you don't really know your past?"
6. [ss] Thomas Kersh's "Audrey's Moon": "She loved him - until the day she began to read his mind!"

See also.

1. Fiction from Startling Stories.
2. Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1950s.

Philip K Dick's "Beyond the Door" (short story + short movie, fantasy, free)

Be gentle to your cuckoo clock...

See also.

1. H L Gold's "Trouble with Water": Much funnier variation of the same general idea - be gentle when dealing with water gnomes!

Fact sheet.

First published: Fantastic Universe, January 1954.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Download MP3 audio of the story, read by Gregg Margarite, from LibriVox.
Watch a 7-minutes movie adaptation of the story at YouTube (bad acting, black & white).
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Philip K Dick.

Philip K Dick's "Piper in the Woods" (short story, free): A world that turns men into plants!

Asteroid Y-3 in asteroid belt is actually an earth-like world - earth gravity, natural air & water, native animals & plants, ... Even native intelligent inhabitants, probably descended from Martians.

Man has set up a sort of immigration station there, The Garrison. All outer space traffic is cleared here.

A mysterious contagion has began affecting the men working here: they claim they've become plants, but are otherwise rational; they bask in the sunlight all day & don't work; it's impossible to awaken them from sleep at night.

Dr Henry Harris on earth is assigned the job of unraveling the mystery. He will succeed, with the results you can already guess...

See also.

1. John Taine's "The Ultimate Catalyst": Technology to actually turn men into plants! Set in a jungle in South America.

Fact sheet.

First published: Imagination, February 1953.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Philip K Dick.

"Fantastic Universe", Vol 1 No 1 (June-July 1953) (ed Sam Merwin, Jr) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Inaugural issue of the magazine. Going by sheer number of stories, this looks more like an anthology than a magazine! Its scans in CBR format are online as part of a larger package.

Table of contents. 

Links on authors fetch more fiction by author. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

1. [novella] Sam Merwin, Jr's "Nightmare Tower" (as by Jacques Jean Ferrat): "Lynne disliked the man from Mars on sight. Yet drawn by forces beyond her control she let him carry her off to the Red Planet."
2. [novelette] A Bertram Chandler's "Vicious Circle": "It's bad to be trapped in a time warp with anyone. And when anyone is Malaprop Jenkins it can adder a man's wits peppermintly."
3. [ss] Frank Belknap Long's "Little Men of Space": "The Children were very young--& the crisis they were called upon to face would have driven most adults into a straitjacket."
4. [novelette] E Hoffmann Price's "The Fire and the Flesh": "Was Agni Deva flame? Or was she flesh? In either case, the woman of volcano was irresistible."
   
   Note: I wonder whatever made the author make "Agni Deva" female? In Hindu mythology, it's a male. Also, "Deva" (also written "Dev" in English) literally means "god" & is clearly male; "Devi" is "goddess" & female.
5. [ss] August Derleth's "The Maugham Obsession": "All inventors seek success. Some few achieve it. And now & then, a Quintus Maugham is a bit too successful for his own health."
   
   From editor's introduction to story: author was the owner of Arkham press at the time the story was published.
6. [ss] Arthur C Clarke's "The Other Tiger": "When a pair of strollers begin to ponder parallel worlds just about anything can happen. And this time about anything does."
   
   From Clarke's introduction to this story in his "Collected Stories": "Originally entitled 'Refutation', this story was retitled by Sam Merwin, editor of Fantastic Universe, as a nod to Frank Stockton's classic but now forgotten 'The Lady or the Tiger'".
   
   For me, it's among the forgettable stories of Clarke. It's very small though, probably just above the boundary of flash fiction.
7. [ss] Gene L Henderson's "The Small Bears": "The aliens looked cute as Koalas. But there was a little matter of a graveyard of dead spaceships."
8. [ss] Philip K Dick's "Martians Come in Clouds": "Among Man's noblest dreams is that of making friendly contact with other world creatures. But dreams may become nightmares..."
9. [ss] Roger Dee's "The Minister Had To Wait": 'The Brass said, "Turn it on!" So Doc Maxey could but obey--which created one hell of a big mess.'
10. [ss] Milton Lesser's "Finders Keepers": "Amhurst wanted to get married. But then an invisible ingenue moved in on his wedding day..."
11. [ss] Ray Bradbury's "Time in Thy Flight": "The circus, Hallowe'en, the Glorious Fourth may go--yet eternal is their pull on a child's heart."
12. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "It's in the Blood" (B): "Space may flow in a young man's veins. But at times the laws of heredity can take tragic twists."
13. [ss, reprint] Francis G Rayer's "Of Those Who Came" (as by George Longdon); New Worlds, November 1952: "The alien scheme was perfect--a night landing, infiltration, human disguises. Fortunately for us the Policeman was awaiting them."

See also.

1. Fiction from Fantastic Universe.
2. Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1950s.

Philip K Dick's "The Variable Man" (novella, war, free): A mechanical genius against a machine worshiper

If it were not for the mostly silly later half, I would have put it among the best of PKD. But first half is very good.

Story summary.

It's mostly a contrast of two men:

1. Security Commissioner Reinhart, a warmonger in a position of power around mid twenty-second century. This is an era where few people understand machines, though the world is full of them; too much specialization. Reinhart practically worships "SRB computer" - a machine that can analyze very complex situations & make statistical predictions of likely near future outcomes.
2. Thomas Cole, a mechanical genius from early twentieth century who has been transported to Reinhart's world because of an official's carelessness with a time machine. His presence in this future time has made SRB computer go bonkers - he's a variable about whom machine knows nothing. It was predicting Terra's victory if it raided Proxima Centauri; now it's refusing to say anything. To take this variable from the past (hence title) off the machine's considerations - to fix the machine, so to say - Reinhart wants Cole killed!

Lot of chase, & running around - lone man winning against massive government machinary. Happy ending - Reinhart will be ousted, & Cole will show these men how to win without going to war.

See also.

1. Robert Heinlein's "Misfit": Another story about a mechanical genius.
2. Murray F Yaco's "No Moving Parts" (download) & "Unspecialist" (download): Not very closely related to this, but something is similar, if I recall correctly: a mechanical genius or something, in a world too set in its fixed ways of doing things. Former is funny too.

Fact sheet.

First published: Space Science Fiction (British edition), July 1953. (Wikipedia says it was "sold by Philip K. Dick before he had an agent", but doesn't give date of this self publication.)
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Download audio from LibriVox.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Philip K Dick.

New at Project Gutenberg (16 June 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

Of the less well known authors, I personally have had good experience with Mark Clifton & Winston K Marks. Clifton can sometimes be very good; Marks is generally consistently readable. I haven't read their specific pieces included here, however.

1. [novel] William Richard Bradshaw's "The Goddess of Atvatabar: Being the history of the discovery of the interior world and conquest of Atvatabar" (1891); download: I'm not sure, but it sounds like a genre work. Some sort of adventure involving a polar expedition.
2. Dorothy Quick's "The Lost Door"; download; Weird Tales, October 1936: "An alluring but deadly horror out of past centuries menaced the life of the young American--a fascinating tale of a strange and eery love".
3. Richard S Shaver's "Daughter of the Night"; download; Amazing Stories, December 1948: "The evil magic of the Goddess Diana turned men to stone. Would the power of the strange Eos be strong enough to turn them back to living men?"
4. Philip K Dick's "Piper in the Woods"; download; Imagination, February 1953: "Earth maintained an important garrison on Asteroid Y-3. Now suddenly it was imperiled with a biological impossibility--men becoming plants!"
5. Winston K Marks' "Backlash"; download; Galaxy, January 1954: "They were the perfect servants--they were willing to do everything for nothing. The obvious question is: How much is nothing?"
6. Mark Clifton's "A Woman's Place"; download; Galaxy, May 1955: "Home is where you hang up your spaceship--that is, if you have any Miss Kitty along!"
7. Stephen Marlowe's "Think Yourself to Death"; download; Amazing Stories, March 1957: "If you've never read a Johnny Mayhem story before, you are in for a treat. Johnny, who wears different bodies the way ordinary people wear clothes, is one of the most fascinating series characters in science fiction."

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

Philip K Dick's "Second Variety" (novelette, doomsday, free): Retelling Joseph Kelleam's "Rust"

While Kelleam's classic is more in the mood of Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" (download text/MP3), & Arthur Clarke's "The Curse" & "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth ...", Dick's version has more action. Kelleam's version is told a long time after humanity is gone, killed by its own war robots gone berserk, this one is told while the process is still happening. And the robots here are more resourceful.

Notes.

1. While there is the suspense about the "second variety" of robots that is supposed to be revealed only in the end, it was actually clear about half way through the story - just a little after the idea of varieties comes up.

Fact sheet.

First published: Space Science Fiction, May 1953.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks, Internet Archive.
Caution: HTML version of the story at Project Gutenberg contains an illustration that is a story spoiler.
Download audio from LibriVox.
Rating: A. 
Related: Stories of Philip K Dick.

New at Project Gutenberg (24-25 May 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. Seabury Quinn's "Pledged to the Dead"; download; Weird Tales, October 1937: "A tale of a lover who was pledged to a sweetheart who had been in her grave for more than a century, and of the striking death that menaced him".
2. Philip K Dick's "Mr Spaceship"; download; Imagination, January 1953: "A human brain-controlled spacecraft would mean mechanical perfection. This was accomplished, and something unforeseen: a strange entity called--"

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

Free fiction: Philip K Dick's "Second Variety"

At Internet Archive. [via Best Science Fiction Stories]

Related: Stories of Philip K Dick.

Philip K Dick's "The Eyes Have It" (flash fiction, humor, free): Beware of the aliens masquerading as humans

Humor & Philip K Dick! First time I've seen this combination.

Narrator is describing how he learnt of the existence of aliens among us...

Fact sheet.

First published: Science Fiction Stories, #1 (1953).
Download full text from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Philip K Dick; fiction from 1950s.

Philip K Dick's estate threatens Google

From The Wall Street Journal: "As Google Inc. launches its Nexus One phone, one call that the company hasn't made is to the family members of science-fiction author Philip K. Dick, who complain the device's name infringes on one of Mr. Dick's most famous novels." "Ms. Hackett argues the association between the phone and the book are cemented by the fact that the Nexus One runs Google's Android operating system."

Novel in question is "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (troublesome androids in the story are equipped with "Nexus-6 brain unit"). "Ms. Hackett" is "a daughter of Mr. Dick and the chief executive of Electric Shepherd Productions, an arm of the Dick estate devoted to adapting the late author's works."

[via Boing Boing]

Philip K Dick's "Paycheck" (novelette, treasure hunt, free)

Jennings doesn't remember anything from last 2 years of his life, but knows that he's an electronic technician who signed a contract for a large sum of money with Rethrick Construction Company. He doesn't remember what the company does, & as payment now, he's received 7 bits of apparently useless trinkets instead of the money he was promised! Looks like he waved the money during the contract period. Was he swindled by people who can make him forget things?

On top of it, he finds the cops are interested in him - trying to get information about the company & the work he did for them, information he no longer remembers.

That's when the trinkets begin to do their magic - helping him out of tricky situations & serving as clues to help unravel what he saw in those 2 lost years - a future viewer, a Robin Hood style corporation, ...

See also.

1. Robert Heinlein's "Life-Line" (download) & Henry Kuttner's "What You Need": Well known stories where a future viewer plays a central part.
2. A E van Vogt's "The Weapon Shop": A .. sort of ... corporation(?) ... powerful enough to resist a bad government is playing Robin Hood, helping ordinary people repressed by the government.

Fact sheet.

First published: Imagination, June 1953.
Rating: B.
Download full text. [via Best Science Fiction Stories]
Adapted into a movie of the same title in 2003, directed by John Woo.
Related: Stories of Philip K Dick.

Free fiction: Audio: Huffduffer

Link. [via Free SF Reader]

Many desperate things, but a few interesting ones too. Audio links below are probably all radio adaptations.

1. Arthur Clarke's "Rendezvous With Rama"; download MP3 - part 01, 02: I'm not sure the two parts cover the whole novel, but if they do, it's a big catch.
   
   One of the most important novels of the genre, but only for readers with a taste for hard sf (that would be very small percentage of sf readers, though).
   
   There is also a very good 3 minute movie online, showing the approach & landing of human spacecraft on Rama, & entry of human explorers through airlock into the ship. Or was, when I last played it over a year ago.
2. Philip K Dick's "Beyond Lies The Wub"; download MP3: Not read. I think its text version is already online, probably at Project Gutenberg.
3. Murray Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe"; download text/MP3: Fun early story about interconnected computers. I've linked both versions in the past.
4. Orson Welles' famous radio show inspired by H G Wells' "War of the Worlds" that caused panic in the US when first broadcast in 1938.
   
   Arthur Clarke's humorous apocalypse story, "Publicity Campaign", is apparently a reaction to the panic this broadcast caused.

Philip K Dick's "The Indefatigable Frog" (short story, science fiction): Most of the matter is space!

This rather funny & entertaining tale actually has a very farcical plot. But beautifully told.

Story summary.

In the background is the ancient "Dichotomy paradox" of Zeno: You want to go from point A to point B. You will first go half way through. Then half of the remaining. You can approach point B, but not reach it!

The variant used here is of a frog's attempt to jump out of a well: "As Zeno showed, the frog will never reach the top of the well. Each jump is half the previous jump; a small but very real margin always remains for him to travel."

Two college professors are having a rather serious fight over this argument: Professor Hardy of Physics says "In this class the frog will never reach the top of the well. I have examined the evidence myself." Professor Grote of Philosophy says the frog will.

They keep fighting at the unlikeliest places - even in front of students. Dean is disgusted: "you two are going to be the first to lower the frog into his well and actually see what happens." They have a fortnight's time to settle the question, & cease their fights.

To settle the question, a very elaborate laboratory set up ("Frog Chamber") is devised!!! A long tube with an entry & an exit. Frog will be left inside one end, & that end will be shut tight. To motivate frog to move towards exit, it will be tortured - by heating the lower side of the tube! To get away from heat, it must move towards the exit. Entrance to the tube is actually very big - big enough to let a man in, even though experiment is meant for frogs - apparently, to aid trouble shooting.

OK - a frog is let in, entry sealed, bottom heated. Frog begins moving forward. Part way through, we discover the cheating - there is a force field inside tube that keeps reducing the frog to half its size periodically! "The frog is made smaller the farther he goes... It's the only way the jumping span of the frog can be reduced. As the frog leaps he diminishes in size, and hence each leap is proportionally reduced. We have arranged it so that the diminution is the same as in Zeno's paradox."

Set up is such that if the frog gets out of tube, it will revert to original size - field works only inside the tube.

Frog keeps reducing in size - ultimately is so small it can no longer be seen from the vantage point of experimenters. Another argument between the antagonists. Hardy says frog is "still hopping, somewhere in a sub-atomic world." Grote says "Some place along that tube the frog met with misfortune." Grote says he will go inside the tube & find out.

Grote enters. Wily Hardy shuts the entry door, & begins heating the floor! Grote is now in place of frog. And keeps getting reduced in size by the field - as he moves. Field is such that only he reduces in size, not his clothes, etc - so soon he will be naked & made to cope with rugged surface of tube at microscopic level. And ultimately he will "became so reduced in size that he passed through the" inter-molecular spaces, & out of tube wall! Back to original size as he gets out of tube, but nude.

The villain professor will have the fun taken away when Grote meets him again. But Hardy gets off the hook easily, because Grote wants better experiment since the matter is not yet settled; "The Chamber's no good"!

See also.

1. An illustration of this story by Andrew May.
2. All stories by Philip K Dick.
3. Isaac Asimov's "Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain": A submarine will be reduced to microscopic size, along with its human occupants, & injected into the bloodstream of a man in coma!

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF".

Fact sheet.

"The Indefatigable Frog", short story, review
First published: Fantastic Story Magazine, July 1953.
Rating: A

Philip K Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (novel): Bounty hunters on trail of run-away slaves

With a plot like that, I wonder how this book acquired the reputation of a genre classic! Some really good PR work by publishers, probably. I have a feeling the main claim to fame of this book might be the Hollywood movie "Blade Runner" that is based on this story; I have not seen the movie.

Story summary.

Story is set in early 1992; its events take place over a couple of days.

The story is mostly set in Northern California - generally San Fransisco area. It often talks of the state of the world where "world" normally means Northern California, occasionally other parts of US, sometimes USSR, never any other place. So I always mentally replaced "world" with Northern California.

It's a post-nuclear-war society - following WWT (I suppose World War Three; there is a reference to something called "World War Terminus" but I don't know what to make of it). Most dust is still lightly radio active. Most humans have emigrated to other planets in Sol - name of Mars keeps recurring. Sparsely populated earth mostly holds the losers.

This society has peculiar attitudes towards animals - a variant of those held by Jains. Most non-human animals, birds, & insects are extinct; the ones that exist are very valuable. People get creeps thinking of the deaths of even small animals, though they don't think twice before picking up animals in the wild for pets!

Having pets is a status symbol. Since there are not enough natural animals, most people keep robot-animals as pets. Robot technology is very advanced - you can have a robot normally indistinguishable from any animal, including humans!

Androids, also called andys, are human-like robots. Normally indistinguishable. And the recent ones from a company called Rosen Association are fitted with "Nexus-6 brain unit" - that makes them smarter than "several classes of human specials"! But their bodies cannot regenerate cells; so androids live only about 4 years.

These androids are used as slaves by Martian colonists. Because they are sentient & have a survival instinct, they don't like slavery one bit. They keep running off to earth, sometimes by killing their owners. Such a gang had recently arrived on earth - 8 of them; their hunt & killing ("retiring") is the main plot of the story.

Since androids are indistinguishable from humans & can easily mix, how does a bounty hunter identify one? Here we are introduced to a rather extreme version of "empathy" - humans in this society are said to feel empathy for all carbon-based life forms, while androids don't. So "Voigt Empathy Test", originally "devised by the Pavlov Institute ... in the Soviet Union", is given. It involves carefully measuring involuntary facial reactions when questions about animal killings or mutilation are posed to subject. It's only through author's grace that humans giving the test to unwilling androids normally come out alive!

Title of the story comes from this idea of empathy. You are a human because you feel empathy towards all carbon-based life. Can the definition be extended to androids who feel empathy towards a robotic sheep? Story briefly touches upon this interesting philosophical question, but that is just to complicate the character of the protagonist rather than offering anything to the debate on the subject.

Oh - and this human empathy has its exceptions. Like other humans with low IQ that are shunned by so called normal folk! It's a very casteist society.

Story also has a liberal sprinkling of religion & futuristic gadgets - like hovercars & automatic mood changers. Dominant religion in these parts is empathy-centric Mercerism, with Wilbur Mercer as religious leader.

Main plot revolves round Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter with San Francisco Police Department, who will hunt & kill 6 of these 8 android robots in a single day; other 2 were already killed by his senior, Dave Holden. Dave was badly hurt by a quarry during his hunt. Every killing fetches $1000, presumably from local government.

Trivia.

1. The story uses the word "kipple" to mean "entropy"; "nonkipple" is orderliness.

See also.

1. All stories by Philip K Dick.

Fact sheet.

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", novel, review
First published: 1968
Nominated for 1968 Nebula Award in novel category.
Hollywood movie "Blade Runner" is based on this story.
Rating: B