Book Review: Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/10/book-review-selected-stories-of-philip-k-dick/
Imagine a world with inter-city rockets, where tourists still use film cameras. Where self-driving trucks sport a wide array of sensor apparatus and record all their data onto miles of magnetic tape. Where the latest Androids are life-like and can perfectly clone a dead man's speech, yet are powered by punch-cards. People make video calls from public booths which eagerly accept coins as payment.
At the heart of nearly every story is paranoia and poor mental health. Perhaps I am a robot? Or perhaps there is a conspiracy against me? Or perhaps the aliens really have invaded? But... What if it is all in my mind?
Women - what little there are of them - are crude caricatures. The robots get better lines and more realistic motivations.
You have to remember that these are cheap pulp stories. Designed for manly-men who can't go five minutes without a cigarette.
The stories are a mixed bag. Some high-concept sci-fi which have been butchered into equally pulpy films. Others - like Roog are just bizarre.
And yet, throughout, there's a very definite sense of what the future will be. How was this man able to predict security fuzzing?
It's a semantic garble—the factory won't be able to understand it. Maybe we can jam the works
Or that TVs would be able to do facial recognition?
With a groan, Chien rose to his feet, bowed the mandatory bow of response; each TV set came equipped with monitoring devices to narrate to the Secpol, the Security Police, whether its owner was bowing and/or watching.
Every story is peppered with details like this. But, to my mind, it is "The Exit Door Leads In" which has the most predictive power in a few short pages. Going from the mundane nature of robots:
Bibleman had to order lunch from robots, since vending ranked too low on the wage scale to attract humans.
To the total prevalence of loot boxes:
You want to buy into this week's contest while you're waiting?
All the way through LLMs and automated commerce:
Bibleman's older brother had once fed a ten-word plot outline into a robot fiction machine, changed his mind as to the outcome, and found that the novel was already in print. He had had to program a sequel in order to make his correction.
Pick up a bunch of PKD stories - any collection will do - and gasp in wonder at his imagination.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/10/book-review-selected-stories-of-philip-k-dick/
#BookReview #SciFi
Terence Eden’s Blog /
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2023-10-27 11:34:47
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"content": "Book Review: Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick\nhttps://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/10/book-review-selected-stories-of-philip-k-dick/\n\nImagine a world with inter-city rockets, where tourists still use film cameras. Where self-driving trucks sport a wide array of sensor apparatus and record all their data onto miles of magnetic tape. Where the latest Androids are life-like and can perfectly clone a dead man's speech, yet are powered by punch-cards. People make video calls from public booths which eagerly accept coins as payment.\n\nAt the heart of nearly every story is paranoia and poor mental health. Perhaps I am a robot? Or perhaps there is a conspiracy against me? Or perhaps the aliens really have invaded? But... What if it is all in my mind?\n\nWomen - what little there are of them - are crude caricatures. The robots get better lines and more realistic motivations.\n\nYou have to remember that these are cheap pulp stories. Designed for manly-men who can't go five minutes without a cigarette.\n\nThe stories are a mixed bag. Some high-concept sci-fi which have been butchered into equally pulpy films. Others - like Roog are just bizarre.\n\nAnd yet, throughout, there's a very definite sense of what the future will be. How was this man able to predict security fuzzing?\n\n It's a semantic garble—the factory won't be able to understand it. Maybe we can jam the works\n\nOr that TVs would be able to do facial recognition?\n\n With a groan, Chien rose to his feet, bowed the mandatory bow of response; each TV set came equipped with monitoring devices to narrate to the Secpol, the Security Police, whether its owner was bowing and/or watching.\n\nEvery story is peppered with details like this. But, to my mind, it is \"The Exit Door Leads In\" which has the most predictive power in a few short pages. Going from the mundane nature of robots:\n\n Bibleman had to order lunch from robots, since vending ranked too low on the wage scale to attract humans.\n\nTo the total prevalence of loot boxes:\n\n You want to buy into this week's contest while you're waiting?\n\nAll the way through LLMs and automated commerce:\n\n Bibleman's older brother had once fed a ten-word plot outline into a robot fiction machine, changed his mind as to the outcome, and found that the novel was already in print. He had had to program a sequel in order to make his correction.\n\nPick up a bunch of PKD stories - any collection will do - and gasp in wonder at his imagination.\n\nhttps://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/10/book-review-selected-stories-of-philip-k-dick/\n\n#BookReview #SciFi",
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