The CollectedStories of PhilipKDick are an essential read for any science fiction fan. Starting in the 1950’s, Philip K Dick was a successful science fiction short story writer and a failed mainstream novelist. His success as a short story writer is in his ideas. Philip K Dick was always one of the best idea writers of the 1960s. And in the short stories, his ideas are the focus and they truly shine through.

The five books follow Dick’s stories in chronological order. From his first stories and sales, to his later work. In these books, you will be able to follow the progression of his ideas. What Dick had more than any other writer was a sense of paranoia. His stories caught you up in the sense of paranoia that maybe your life wasn’t real. That maybe you were a robot without knowing it. That theme shows up in his stories over and over.

There is the story Second Variety (made into the movie Screamers) where a war between man and machines have the machines turning themselves into human shapes and believing they were human in order to destroy other humans (shades of Terminator).  Or the story Total Recall (made into the movie Total Recall), where a man gets false memories of being a super spy on Mars to get him out of his boring life. Only it turns out that he truly was a super spy who had memories implanted to cover it up. So they decided to plant false memories that he saved Earth from invaders only to find out that he truly had saved Earth from invaders.

Dick also like playing around with predestination, such as the story Paycheck (made into the movie Paycheck) where a man awakens with his memories of the last couple years removed and a bag of trinkets instead of a paycheck. The bag of trinkets help him figure out what happened and make him richer than any paycheck would have. Or The Golden Man (made into the movie Next) with a man who can see a short time into the future, which makes him almost impossible to catch.

These stories (mostly from the 1950s and 1960s) are classic science fiction at its best. Any fan of Philip K Dick must have this five book collection. It’s a must read.