Fiction Reviews


Three Early Novels

Beyond Lies the Wub

Second Variety

The Father-Thing

Minority Report

We Can Remember it for you Wholesale

(2000) Philip K Dick, Millennium, £7.99 each, pbk

The three novels in Three Early Novels are The Man Who Japed (1956), Dr. Futurity (1960), and Vulcan’s Hammer (1960). I’ve not seen copies of any of these novels in years, including my frequent trawls through second-hand shops, so this is a very welcome re-issue. The other five titles represent the collected and complete short stories of Dick. The reason I mention them is that, over the years, the collected stories have appeared under many titles, with differing contents lists, with subsequent frustration among collectors. Millennium have, wisely, gone back to basics and reissued the titles as they were originally, with the correct contents lists. Therefore collectors need suffer no confusion - buy these editions and you’ve got all Dick’s shorts. As an aside, Millennium have, in their SF Masterworks series, also reissued four other Dick novels: Dr. Bloodmoney (1965), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Ubik (1969), and A Scanner Darkly (1977). Needless to say, all highly recommended.

Tony Chester

Editor's note: Regarding "Millennium have, wisely, gone back to basics and reissued the titles as they were originally, with the correct contents lists."  Actually, as a point of pedantry to avoid confusion, Millenium have re-issued the titles of the orginal Miller-Underwood published five-volume collection of Dick shorts but not with the original titles. In addition there is another quite separate Dick collection out there with the same title as one of the re-titled original collections.  Confused? You may well be.  For a quick shorthand, the Dick collections you want are the ones with a 'note's' section at the collections' ends. Having done that, you also need to check the short story contents that you have not already got this collection as another title. A little more information can be found here.


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