Ok, so I finished reading this collection of 21 short stories by PKD, and after a huge internal strife (which to pick and which to drop: always such an intense debate when one is dealing with such genius) here are my top five favourites from the second half of the book:
5. A Little Something for Us Tempunauts
In a world beyond just astronauts and space travel, three tempunauts are sent into the future, and return to the news of their death during re-entry. Chrononaut Addison Doug realizes that they have been caught in a time loop. Does this realization give them ‘fore’ knowledge to avoid their own death? Or is that just the kind of time paradox one can never get out of?
4. The Electric Ant
Hospitalized after a car crash, Garson Poole wakes up to the shocking discovery that he is an ‘electric ant’ - an organic robot. Poole’s experimenting with the micro-punched tape in his chest cavity challenged Reality in such a brilliant way. The ending left me in as much fear as awe.
3. The Minority Report
John Anderton, creator of Precrime - a system created to foresee crime and punish people before they commit it - gets a report from his three ‘precogs’ that names him as a murderer in the near future. What follows is a great crime/mystery, made more complicated by the existence of multiple timelines in the future.
2. Rautavaara’s Case
I love stories that present an existing fact and question the concept to its very core, and this short story about three earth people stranded in space really shed new light on a centuries-old belief system. A rescue team from Proxima Centauri, comprising of a race of plasma beings that exist only in the form of intellectual consciousness, brings Agneta Rautavaara back to “life”. While monitoring her thoughts - which involve questions of the afterlife - the beings decide to alter her vision of Christ, and introduce their version of God … Would you be horrified by a Christ that eats a human, flesh and blood and all? Or does this ritual sound familiar? And if one is acceptable, can the other not be honourable?
1. Precious Artifact
Such sorrow. Such hopelessness. I was really moved by this story of the complete destruction of Earth in the aftermath of a war between Terrans and Proxmen. Milt Biskle is one of the many terraforming engineers who have been tasked with the job of making Mars habitable for humans. Suspicious about the outcome of the war, he decides to go to Earth. Facade after facade breaks down, and the great illusion is revealed for what it is… Even the one final act of kindness is not all that it seems.
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