Praise the mice! (We Can Remember It for You Wholesale - Philip K. Dick)

Member Name: threadgill

Product:	We Can Remember It for You Wholesale - Philip K. Dick
Date:	07/09/01 (116 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: twisted

Disadvantages: twisted

This title belongs both to the story on which Total Recall was based and to the collection (Vol 5) in which it appears.
All five books of Dick's collected short stories are excellent, the fifth has the added bonus of being extremely weird. I defy anyone to read the story of "Cadbury, the beaver who lacked." without being moved to laughter tears and confusion, often in the same paragraph.

This collection also contains the short which later became "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", in this form containing the "Mood Organ" which people use to decide how they feel.

And the title story, no Arnie, no special effects, a much better twist to a gentle, low key tale. At this stage in his writing, Dick was less into reflecting the cold war paranoia that was all around him in the fifties and sixties, and much more into externalising his own life and dilemmas. Thus the stories, while just as imaginative, take on a new strangeness.

For an insight into Dick's life at this stage, read the excellent "Divine Invasions- a life of Philip K Dick" by Lawrence Sutin. This was Sutin's first effort after giving up law to be a writer, and it shows he made the right choice. (He has since done a couple more books about Dick and a rather useful bio of Aleister Crowley)

For a brief intro to the weird(er) parts of Dick's life, see also my op on "the divine invasion", one of his last books.

But most importantly, read everything he ever did. The man was a genius. And the short story collections represent an excellent place to start.

Collect those blue chips!

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