Philip K Dick is one of the mosot celebrated science fiction authors of the twentieth century, and most people wil probably have heard of him from the film adaptations that have been made from his books, such as the 80's classic Total Recall, or the more recent Minority Report. Dick was a prolifc author who was driven to write largely as a catharsis for his paranoid delusion and drug induced visions, and had quite a number of novels published which have become cult classics, but my personal feling is that Dick was at his best when writing short stories.
Philip K Dick does not do beautiful descriptive prose, and nor is he particularly good as character development. The genuis of Dick's books is in the ideas, the vision, and how he makes you think about the world in a new way. He was particularly skillful at picking out the darker strands of humanity and weaving them into a dystopian vision at once totally outlandish and yet completely relevant (as they still are today).
The short story format allows Dick to present his dark vision without the lack of in depth characterization or poetic prose taking away from the quality of his work, as you don't really have these things in a short story anyway.
The father-thing is my favourite colection of Dick's short stories with classic tales like Null-O and The Hanging Stranger, amongst others.
The Father-thing: short stories by Philip K Dick
Posted in Science Fiction by kepher 244 days ago (http://www.amazon.com)
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