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A review by jayme
Minority Report and Other Stories by Philip K. Dick, Keir Dullea
adventurous
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.0
Oh PKD, you were so good at ideas and so terrible at writing. It was cool to read some of the source material for so many adaptations though.
Minority Report was the best of the bunch by a long shot. Possibly my favourite PKD story to date. The premise here is so great, but the execution was still mediocre. I liked the movie more, including their choices to vary from the original.It was much more interesting to see Tom Cruise try to clear his name, but instead wind up solving a mystery and condemning himself as predicted in the process, whereas in the book, the MC is always clearly the wronged person.
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale was another intriguing idea, but not very exciting or satisfying to actually read. And it gets weirder as it goes, but not in a good way. It did make me want to watch Total Recall though.
Paycheck, I don't have much to say about. Again, I liked the idea of having someone arrange to give themselves clues and objects to navigate known future events, knowing that they themselves are soon going to have their mind wiped. It's an idea that's been done many times since, and done better. This short story gets the prize for worst ending sentence ever. I'm too lazy to look it up, but basically the MC was having an awkward conversation where he was blackmailing the owner of a company and his daughter, and the MC ends the conversation, and the story, with a very cringe-y hint that he was now part of the family and soon there would be "even more" members of the family. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Gross.
Second Variety was a hot mess. What was even happening here. The premise was a super familiar humans build robots, robots infiltrate and kill all the humans...Terminator, Battlestar Galactica, etc. Watch those, avoid reading this.
The Eyes Have It...I don't know. Honestly pretty checked out by this point. It was really short, there was something about a species that could take apart there own body maybe? Were they invading? Who knows.
Minority Report was the best of the bunch by a long shot. Possibly my favourite PKD story to date. The premise here is so great, but the execution was still mediocre. I liked the movie more, including their choices to vary from the original.
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale was another intriguing idea, but not very exciting or satisfying to actually read. And it gets weirder as it goes, but not in a good way. It did make me want to watch Total Recall though.
Paycheck, I don't have much to say about. Again, I liked the idea of having someone arrange to give themselves clues and objects to navigate known future events, knowing that they themselves are soon going to have their mind wiped. It's an idea that's been done many times since, and done better. This short story gets the prize for worst ending sentence ever. I'm too lazy to look it up, but basically the MC was having an awkward conversation where he was blackmailing the owner of a company and his daughter, and the MC ends the conversation, and the story, with a very cringe-y hint that he was now part of the family and soon there would be "even more" members of the family. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Gross.
Second Variety was a hot mess. What was even happening here. The premise was a super familiar humans build robots, robots infiltrate and kill all the humans...Terminator, Battlestar Galactica, etc. Watch those, avoid reading this.
The Eyes Have It...I don't know. Honestly pretty checked out by this point. It was really short, there was something about a species that could take apart there own body maybe? Were they invading? Who knows.