Title Electric Dreams Series --- Author Philip K. Dick Cover Art --- Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - 2917 First Printing Gollantz - 2017 Category Anthology Warnings None Main Characters See below Main Elements See below

• "Exhibit Piece"
• "The Commuter"
• "The Impossible Planet"
• "The Hanging Stranger"
• "Sales Pitch"
• "The Father-Thing"
• "The Hood Maker"
• "Foster, You're Dead"
• "Human Is"
• "Autofac"

The stories that inspired the original dramatic series.

Though perhaps most famous as a novelist, Philip K. Dick wrote more than one hundred short stories over the course of his career, each as mind-bending and genre-defining as his longer works. Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams collects ten of the best. In “Autofac,” Dick shows us one of the earliest examples (and warnings) in science fiction of self-replicating machines. “Exhibit Piece” and “The Commuter” feature Dick exploring one of his favorite themes: the shifting nature of reality and whether it is even possible to perceive the world as it truly exists. And “The Hanging Stranger” provides a thrilling, dark political allegory as relevant today as it was when Dick wrote it at the height of the Cold War.

Strange, funny, and powerful, the stories in this collection highlight a master at work, encapsulating his boundless imagination and deep understanding of the human condition.

I watched the TV series when it came out and intended to immediately read the anthology...several years later I "immediately" (cough - "finally") grabbed it. Now by now I'll have forgotten most of the episodes, though the pig border guard still stick in my mind. I'm sure reading the stories will jog my memory...well, ok most didn't, after all each story came with a little intro and the person adapting the story sometimes admitted it was very loosely based on. But others they kept true to the original, and I could vividly remember the visuals that went with them. Oddly, if feels very PKD to think "I remember it being this way, but now its actually that way", messes with your head a bit. As usual, the following stories deal with the nature of reality, and what it means to be human.

"Exhibit Piece" - A man works in a museum and walks into an exhibit representing the 20th century. He's a bit confused at first but ends up remembering his family and his job in the 20th century. However if he peers through a rip in time he can still see the time from which he came. Which of the two realities is real? Both? And if he had to choose, where would he want to stay?

"The Commuter" - A train commuter asks for a ticket to a place that doesn't exist. The ticketmaster, intrigued, especially after the second request, starts to investigate, going so far to riding on the train and searching for the elusive station. This one I recall from the TV series.

"The Impossible Planet" - This one is lovely, one that was faithfully reproduced on screen. And elderly lady wants to see Earth before she dies, but everyone is convinced the Earth is very likely a myth and never existing. But she's adamant. So a captain takes her money, looks up a third planet from a sun that happens to have a single large satelite and takes her there. She's disappointed as it is a toxic, devastated world and not the green one she had hoped for. But then it was just an old lady's folly and that couldn't really have been Earth...could it?

"The Hanging Stranger" - A man spends a day deep in his basement digging out his foundations. When he comes up and goes to work he finds a man hanged from a lamppost. However no one but him seems to notice or care. As he starts to think he's going crazy the police pick him up. But suspicions something is not right leads him to believe they are possessed by some alien influence.

"Sales Pitch" - Seriously distrubing. Not only are ads now streamed right into your head so you cannot just close your eyes and not see them. Not only are there robots all over the streets trying to get your attention to sell you something, following you around until they find a likelier target. No. Robots will now come into your house to sell themselves. And simply by letting them in the door to hear their pitch, you have, for all intents and purposes bought the darn thing. Since it isn't going to go away until you buy it, so you might as well give in now.

"The Father-Thing" - Talking of disturbing. A boy is concerned his father is no longer his father but a father-thing. In a barrel in his garage he finds a kind of shed skin, of his real father, so the creature inside his house clearly isn't. The boy must both deal with the loss of his father, but at the same time, also the fact that this "thing" is trying to take over...and there might be more. This definitely slips from pure SF into the horror genre. I'm glad I don't remember this episode.

"The Hood Maker" - Due to a radation event in one area, telepaths are born into the world. They work their way up into the government to hunt out people with dissedent thoughts, hence the hoods, a metal ring that prevents telepaths hearing your thoughts.

"Foster, You're Dead" - you know how companies try to convince you to buy the latest and greatest version of their product? They try a lot of ways, the cool factor, the new features, the celebrity spokespeople. But wouldn't it be so much more convincing if you need to buy this item, not to be cool, but simply to stay alive? A perpetual cold war, uncertain that it is even real, means you have to keep buying the latest protections against the newest weapons, a never ending force consumerism. And another story I felt within the story, about an introverted boy whose favorite place to be is hidden deep in the earth within a shelter, alone and isolated from the rest of the world.

"Human Is" - A woman's husband is so dedicated to his work he has no time to be bothered by little things, you know, like her, or raising a family, those kids will just distract him. But he goes off on a business trip to another planet and comes back...changed, perhaps, oddly enough, more human than when he left.

"Autofac" - Thie one I remember from the TV series, where automated factories designed to take care of us, make sure we have all the provisions we need, whether we want them or not. They won't let us raise our own crops, or milk our own cows, and the factories themselves decide what items we need. The problem is, as these factories keep doing their business, they don't care if they are using up the last of the Earth's resources for things that people don't really need or want anymore. But convincing the factories of what is best for us is not as easy at it seems...when you program something with a single purpose, it clings to it single-mindedly.