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Cargando... We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Vol. 2) (1987 original; edición 2002)por Philip K. Dick (Autor)
Información de la obraWe Can Remember It for You Wholesale and Other Classic Stories por Philip K. Dick (1987)
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. I cherry-picked stories out of this collection for a very simple reason. I had read most of the best ones from it already. :) Interestingly enough, I got to revisit some snippets that later made it into some of his full novels in these previous incarnations. And far from being a chore or a let-down, a few of them enhanced my interest. Like in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, one story got pretty hardcore into Mercer and Mercerism. I laughed aloud when I discovered that. Another encapsulated PKD's mystical experience in 1974, including the transposition of an ancient time with ours. Yet another made it into Divine Invasion, and another made it into Radio Free Albemuth. Oddly enough, I got a lot out of these. They aren't one-to-one copy-overs and the differences are interesting to any scholar of PKD. Maybe not to anyone else, but *I* got a lot out of it. :) Added depth, maybe from PKD's deep fascination and some from the cross-overs between his real life and his revisits in his fiction. The nature of pain and suffering, of being a jerk, of learning from past mistakes, and of transcendence, mainly. Other than that, the other stories were quite good. I never need to fear PKD. If I need a good read, I can always come back. :) My reactions to reading this collection in 2000. “Introduction”, Norman Spinrad -- A very useful introduction in which Spinrad points how Dick’s short stories, right from the beginning (these stories are from 1952 through 1955), were different artistically and thematically from others sf writers. While author collections, as Spinrad rightly notes, often have a sameness of style, incident, theme, and character and Dick was no exception, his sameness was unique. Spinrad sees Dick’s overarching theme to be a concern with empathy, the quality that distinguishes man from the mechanical, sometimes thinking, “pseudo-life” (particularly weapon systems) that menace his heroes. And those heroes are usually ordinary people trying to survive worlds of time paradoxes and shifting realities or the menacing security state. Spinrad notes that Dick didn’t do “action-adventure formula” stories or space operas or mad scientists or “fully-developed alien civilizations” or stories with “real good guys versus bad guys”. Dick did not write stories in a consistent universe or future history or feature recurring characters. But the most interesting claim by Spinrad (and I tend to believe he’s studied the matter) is that he invented the multiple viewpoint technique in sf. Spinrad claims “few if any writers” used it before Dick and that all writers who used it afterwards owe a debt to Dick. “The Cookie Lady” -- “Beyond the Door” -- “Prominent Author” -- I was amused to see that even in 1953 (evidently the year the story was written) people hated their long commutes to work and the traffic congestion. Here “monojets” are replaced by the “Jiffi-scuttler” uses extra-dimensional to enable to walk a few steps through another dimension and emerge hundreds of miles away. All this is a setup for hero Henry Ellis to encounter strange little people. Given the title and other clues, it isn’t long before we guess the gimmicky ending. “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” -- The unnamed editor of this five volume collection sort of cheats by including this story in this volume. Generally, the stories are arranged chronologically by the date they were submitted to Dick’s agents (and, thus, closely corresponding to their creation date). This story, with its completion date of 1965, falls outside the 1952-1955 range of the rest of this collection. This is the first Dick I read, and, though I haven’t read it in years, I was pleased how well this paranoid tale held up – and how much of the plot found its way into the movie Total Recall. The plot does have a problem in that Interplan is willing to risk security breachesby going through Rekal, Inc to reimplant memories in Quail. The thought occurs to me that, in its own way, this story, with its implanted, repressed memory of alien contact and gifts, may stand close to the wellspring of the modern folklore about alien abduction. “Jon’s World” -- This story, as Norman Spinrad notes in the introduction to this volume, is vaguely related to Dick’s “Second Variety”. The “claws” in that story (the relationships are probably similar terminology and imagery; this is probably not a sequel) became sentient weapons and began to turn on their creators. Here, in a typical Dickian slagged out, post-nuclear war future, two time travelers go back to get the plans for the claws in order to build tame labor units to restore Earth’s surface. (The claws turned on each.) “The Cosmic Poachers” -- “Progeny” -- This is a creepy story that displays some of Dick’s characteristic themes and, in some ways, turned out to be prescient and more relevant today, perhaps, than when it was written in 1952. The story takes place in the centrally planned (at least for social engineering if not all economic activity) future of so many Dick stories, an oppressive regime where children are taken away at birth, raised by experts to be properly educated in the area best suited to their talents and away from neuroses-induced by subjective parents. (Dick’s nightmare futures are often run by progressive-style experts. I suppose it’s a vision of the corporate, expertly managed vision of the future that was present in the 1950s) Besides being a scary depiction of the modern (and old) “school to work” idea and a tyranny of psychologists and social workers (similar to the drug rehab villains of Dick’s A Scanner Darkly), it’s a parody of a public gullible to the suggestions of social “scientists”. The story also deals with social future shock since protagonist Ed Doyle spends a lot of time in the backwaters of human space where things are as they were in 1952 Earth, and he’s unprepared for new ideas on modern Earth. “Some Kinds of Life” -- A sf fable, partly a social satire, partly a political satire. “Martians Come in Clouds” -- Dick, influenced by the twisting plot machinations of A.E. van Vogt, loved twists and turns in his stories, and he also liked to play around with readers’ sympathies and moral perceptions. This story combines both of these characteristics. The balloon-like Martians (Mars always, in Dick’s works, is a symbol of death and decay) blow to Earth, withered harbingers (and creepy, too, given their telepathy) of an alien invasion. “The Commuter” -- A sf story involving alternate histories though here Dick approaches the story in a general philosophical way rather than relying on a turning point hinging on a famous historical event. An official of a rail line begins to investigate why people ask for tickets to a non-existent place. He finds that the suburb project was defeated by a single council vote (even in 1952, downtown merchants knew suburbs cost downtown business). “The World She Wanted” -- An interesting fantasy of a subjective, solipsistic nature that you would expect from Dick. Larry Brester meets a woman who insists that Larry inhabits a universe where everything magically arranges itself for the greatest happiness of the woman, Allison Holmes. Allison has worked up an elaborate argument for this view and why Larry will marry her immediately and, thus, satisfy her marital desires. Allison explains that everyone inhabits an universe arranged for their benefit though versions of themselves exist in other universe arranged for other people’s benefits. “A Surface Raid” -- This story uses a variation of an idea in Dick’s The Penultimate Truth: in the wake of a nuclear war, man’s civilization has fragmented into two groups – one above ground and one below ground. “Project Earth” -- An interesting fantasy with Christian overtones. “The Trouble with Bubbles” -- Philip K. Dick must have been contemplating the rather gnostic theme of a malevolent god playing with the world he created since this story and the similarly themed “Project: Earth” deal with that notion and were submitted to his agent a week apart. “Breakfast at Twilight” -- Sobering political tale of a family thrown into a nasty, post-nuclear war, repressive future of seven years hence. “A Present for Pat” -- “The Hood Maker” -- A. E. van Vogt was an inspiration to Dick, and this is a very van Vogtian story. There is a persecuted minority, a group of people wearing “hoods” that screen them from the prying examination of a cadre of telepaths, and the secret group conspiring to distribute those hoods. “Of Withered Apples” -- There is a whiff of H. P. Lovecraft in this moody horror tale of a woman molested by a malevolent apple tree with sexual designs on her. “Human Is” -- In the notes to this story, Dick cites this as one of his touchstone story since it deals with a major Dick theme: What is human? “Adjustment Team” -- This fantasy, again one with Christian overtones, takes up a notion that Dick mentioned in an interview (and that Theodore Sturgeon based a story on): the world we see is an elaborate stage dressing. Here the manipulators seek world peace, a process that starts with a real estate deal. “The Impossible Planet” -- “Imposter” -- This plot manipulates the reader’s sympathies in ways similar to Dick’s "The Golden Man". “James P. Crow” -- This story, with its title a play on the phrase Jim Crow, is a sf parable on racism. Humans are a persecuted group, allegedly allotted jobs via tests in a centrally planned technocracy of the sort that frequently shows up in Dick’s stories, but they never rise – with the exception of Crow who cheats – above menial jobs. They are further burdened by a mythology that the dominant race of robots created humans as weapons in the “total war of the 11th Millibar”. “Planet for Transients” -- The notes say this story was reworked into Dick and Roger Zelazny’s Deus Irae. I enjoyed this story of humans from underground dwellings emerging onto the surface of an Earth ravaged by nuclear war and inhabited by interesting mutants. I like the story’s main idea that man created this Earth and its mutants and now doesn’t have the right to repossess their land. “Small Town” -- I liked this fantasy of an embittered man in a dead end job and with an adulterous wife (not that he notices). “Souvenir” -- Another centrally managed Dick technocracy, the “uniform Galactic culture” mediated by the “Relay” so information is distributed and keeps culture homogenous. It’s tempting to see this as a very wrong-headed speculation on the effects of Internet-like technology. However, in vague terms, we are told the information is studied and selected and co-ordinated at a central location, the conclusions sent everywhere to maintain peace and coherence. “Survey Team” -- Sort of a shaggy god story. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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Countless readers worldwide consider Philip K. Dick the greatest science fiction writer on any planet. Since his death in 1982, interest in Dick's work has continued to mount and his reputation has been enhanced by a growing body of critical attention as well as films based on his stories. Featuring the story 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale', which inspired the film Total Recall, this collection draws from the writer's earliest fiction, written in 1952-55. Also included are The Adjustment Team (basis of the film The Adjustment Bureau), Impostor (basis of the 2001 movie), and many others. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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My favorites include “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” (on which the 1990 film Total Recall was based), “The Cookie Lady,” “Jon’s World,” “The Cosmic Poachers,” “The Commuter,” “The World She Wanted,” “The Adjustment Team” (on which the 2011 film The Adjustment Bureau was loosely based), “A Present for Pat,” “The Hood Maker,” “Human Is,” “The Impossible Planet,” “Imposter,” “Small Town,” and “Survey Team” (albeit, the ending was predictable).
Of those mentioned above, it should be noted that “The Commuter,” “Human Is,” “The Hood Maker,” and “The Impossible Planet” were among ten Phil K. Dick stories adapted for the 2017 Netflix mini-series Electric Dreams. ( )