The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 2: We Can Remember it for You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I cherry-picked stories out of this collection for a very simple reason. I had read most of the best ones from it already. :)

Interestingly enough, I got to revisit some snippets that later made it into some of his full novels in these previous incarnations. And far from being a chore or a let-down, a few of them enhanced my interest.

Like in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, one story got pretty hardcore into Mercer and Mercerism. I laughed aloud when I discovered that. Another encapsulated PKD's mystical experience in 1974, including the transposition of an ancient time with ours. Yet another made it into Divine Invasion, and another made it into Radio Free Albemuth.

Oddly enough, I got a lot out of these. They aren't one-to-one copy-overs and the differences are interesting to any scholar of PKD. Maybe not to anyone else, but *I* got a lot out of it. :) Added depth, maybe from PKD's deep fascination and some from the cross-overs between his real life and his revisits in his fiction.

The nature of pain and suffering, of being a jerk, of learning from past mistakes, and of transcendence, mainly.

Other than that, the other stories were quite good. I never need to fear PKD. If I need a good read, I can always come back. :)

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