Phillip K Dick's life in comparison to the minority report story

Philip K. Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of them for science fiction magazines. His writing career began, and in many ways he found his voice as an author, in 1952-1953, when he wrote and sold 67 stories, five of which have been made into films as of late 2003. A list of all of Philip K. Dick's short stories can be found below, organized by year of first publication. (Carrère, pp23-28)

In 1968, in an introduction written for one of his story collections, Dick said: "What a science fiction story really requires is the initial premise which cuts it off entirely from our present world. This break must be made in the reading of, and the writing of, all good fiction...a made-up world must be presented. But there is much more pressure on a science fiction writer, for the break is far greater than in mainstream fiction."

In 1976, for another collection, he wrote: "The majority of these stories were written when my life was simpler and made sense. I could tell the difference between the real world and the world I wrote about. The stories in this collection are attempts at reception--at listening to voices from another place, very far off, sounds quite faint but important. They only come late at night, when the background din and gabble of our world have faded out. Then, faintly, I hear voices from another star. Of course, I don't usually tell people this when they ask, 'Say, where do you get your ideas?' I just say I don't know. It's safer." (Sutin, pp101-124)

The original story, "The Minority Report", was about 40 pages long, so a goodly length for a short story. It starts with Anderton, who feels he is getting "bald and fat and old". He smokes a pipe and worries that Ed Witwer - young, arrogant - is a threat to his job. The three precogs are "babbling idiots" with wasted bodies and enlarged heads. They babble about ALL crimes from thefts to tax evasions. The last actual murder was 5 years ago. They've been doing this for 30 years.

Dick's stories typically focus on the fragile nature of what is "real" and the construction of personal identity. His stories often become surreal fantasies as the main characters slowly discover that their everyday world is actually an illusion constructed by powerful external entities, vast political conspiracies, or simply from the vicissitudes of an unreliable narrator. "All of his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality," writes science fiction author Charles Platt. "Everything is a matter of perception. The ground is liable to shift under your feet. A protagonist may find himself living out another person's dream, or he may enter a drug-induced state that actually makes better sense than the real world, or he may cross into a different universe completely.

This is definitely a story for a person who loves creative thinking!! It can easily get ...