Other famous stories are "The Golden Man" with its purging of mutants before they infect the human gene pool, "The Father-Thing" which is what a boy realizes has replaced his real father, and "Sales Pitch", a story which anticipates, with its all purpose android advertising its virtues through rather thuggish means, the work of Ron Goulart. When sophisticated weapons take on human guise and began to stalk man, what Dick calls his grand theme, knowing who is human and who only pretends to be, is starkly exhibited. Such is the case with the title story, one of Dick's most paranoid and basis for the movie Screamers. And there are the machines that so often are a force of death in Dick though they behave more and more like life. These stories, written in 19 - with one exception, are arranged chronologically, so the student of Dick can see him play with an idea for two or three stories in a row.Īlong the way we get the humor, intricate plotting, and sudden reversals in our moral sympathies characteristic of Dick. But they don't seem any more repetitious than a skilled musician working variations on a theme for that is what many are. That would give a false sense of repetition since many feature images of ash and overturned bathtubs - the aftermath of nuclear war - or struggles between mutants and normal humans, each fearing their extinction. There would be little point in giving a synopsis of each of the 24 stories in this book.
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