Free Philip K. Dick: Download 13 Great Science Fiction Stories

Although he died when he was only 53 years old, Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) pub­lished 44 nov­els and 121 short sto­ries dur­ing his life­time and solid­i­fied his posi­tion as arguably the most lit­er­ary of sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers. His nov­el Ubik appears on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 best Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­els, and Dick is the only sci­ence fic­tion writer to get hon­ored in the pres­ti­gious Library of Amer­i­ca series, a kind of pan­theon of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture.

If you’re not inti­mate­ly famil­iar with his nov­els, then you assured­ly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Run­ner, Total Recall, A Scan­ner Dark­lyand Minor­i­ty Report. Today, we bring you anoth­er way to get acquaint­ed with his writ­ing. We’re pre­sent­ing a selec­tion of Dick­’s sto­ries avail­able for free on the web. Below we have culled togeth­er 11 short sto­ries from our col­lec­tions. Some of the sto­ries col­lect­ed here have also found their way into the recent­ly-pub­lished book, Select­ed Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick, which fea­tures an intro­duc­tion by Jonathan Lethem.

eTexts 

Audio

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond


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Comments (24)
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  • Great announce­ment, but I have one small quib­ble: it’s incor­rect to say PKD is the only SF author in the Library of Amer­i­ca. Von­negut is in there with work that seems SF to me (dit­to with Love­craft). There’s also an SF author or two rep­re­sent­ed in the Library of Amer­i­ca’s AMERICAN FANTASTIC TALES boxed set.

  • Amber says:

    As a librar­i­an, I would clas­si­fy Love­craft as HORROR and Von­negut as LITERATURE, so actu­al­ly, that is absolute­ly cor­rect about PKD being the only SF author in the Library of Amer­i­ca.

    Love­craft and Von­negut def­i­nite­ly used SF themes in var­i­ous sto­ries but that ele­ment was not the core of either of their work.

  • eric says:

    can’t things fall in mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories? much love­craft is clear­ly SF by most def­i­n­i­tions, since his con­cep­tion of mag­ic is clear­ly that it rep­re­sents high­er sci­ence; char­lie stross has argued (with tounge ambigu­ous­ly plant­ed in cheek) for his clas­si­fi­ca­tion as a writer of polit­i­cal thrillers; and he’s clear­ly also hor­ror.

    my quib­ble with this is that there are many, many far more lit­er­ary writ­ers in SF. Most of Dick­’s work is styl­is­ti­cal­ly slop­py, his nov­els rid­dled with the plot-holes of some­one who wrote a nov­el a month. much of the lat­er stuff is superb, but the same could be said of almost every­thing delaney’s ever writ­ten. styl­is­ti­cal­ly, dick was a hack. his ideas were bril­liant, and the sto­ries and the metaphors they trade in are often bril­liant as well, but it’s not real­ly a lit­er­ary bril­liance in the usu­al sense.

  • Ron Graves says:

    @eric

    Absolute­ly agree about the plot-holes — Coun­ter­clock World, for exam­ple, has so many it could be used as a sieve.

    Just one exam­ple — there are way too many to list — a guy open­ing a pack­et of whiskers and apply­ing them to his chin. To meet the book’s cri­te­ria (time run­ning back­wards, for those who haven’t read it), he should slosh his razor in a bowl of soapy, whiskery, water, and “shave” in reverse, the razor apply­ing the whiskers.

    As for the dead “undy­ing” while still buried — why would they? It makes no sense.

  • Ron Graves says:

    Oh damn — cri­te­ri­on, not cri­te­ria, and face meant, not chin.

  • tyco_bass says:

    What’s the copy­right sta­tus of these? I pre­sume you’re not just avoid­ing the issue.

  • woo says:

    my lit­tle hatch­et.”

  • Patrick says:

    The Inter­net is glob­al, but not so Apple’s iBook store, so I’m afraid many of us bil­lions out­side the US can­not take advantge of this gen­er­ous offer.

  • Al says:

    As Patrick says, in the UK it’s not pos­si­ble to down­load. Unless there’s anoth­er way of doing it that’s not explained.
    Inci­den­tal­ly, books “culled togeth­er” would usu­al­ly mean that they are picked out as being infe­ri­or, at least as far as my dic­tio­nary is con­cerned.

    • Foo Barr says:

      Or “gath­ered” togeth­er? Con­sid­er con­sult­ing an actu­al dic­tio­nary instead of your inter­nal rec­ol­lec­tions.

    • johnhay says:

      Ah, the “dic­tio­nary of def­i­n­i­tions for the per­son pub­lish­ing pre­ten­tious com­ments.” I know it well. No, “cull” sim­ply means to select a group, and is pre­ten­tious enough in it’s mis­use (you don’t need “togeth­er,” show­ing the per­son does­n’t know how to use it) here to sat­is­fy even you. It’s root is Latin, col­ligere, mean­ing sim­ply “to col­lect.”

  • james michael dupont says:

    hi there,
    video.google.com is gone.
    link is bro­ken.

  • FakeDaveGreen says:

    There are a cou­ple more short PKD read­ings here — slight­ly hokey and imho not as good as Sec­ond Vari­ety or The Vari­able Man (but then again, what is?)

    http://protectingprojectpulp.com/protecting-project-pulp-67-philip-k-dick/
    “Promi­nent Author” by Philip K. Dick, first pub­lished in Worlds of Sci­ence Fic­tion, May 1954

    http://protectingprojectpulp.com/protecting-project-pulp-58-philip-k-dick/
    “Strange Eden” by Philip K. Dick, first pub­lished in Imag­i­na­tion.

  • seyedebrahim says:

    sent for me sto­ries boke thanke

  • seyedebrahim says:

    sent me sto­ries books

  • gerard tierney says:

    Link to ‘A Day in the After­life’ returns 404

  • Lee Colleton says:

    Philip K. Dick — A Day In The After­life (com­plete) is on YouTube:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cK2MPgAHRk

  • Hrithik says:

    where’s ” A Lit­tle Some­thing for Us Tem­pu­nauts”!
    please I request if any­one have it’s link then please give it to me!
    please I request you all..

  • rich says:

    i agree.

  • rich says:

    if that was the case, limo cat­e­gories would occur lead­ing to cat­e­gori­sa­tion becom­ing inca­pable of cat­e­go­ry man­age­ment see

  • Phil Rochester says:

    Cheers dudes / dudettes for a real­ly good col­lec­tion! Much appre­ci­at­ed! Keep up the good work!

  • Tim Underwood says:

    Why not cred­it that B&W illus­tra­tion for PK Dick’s “Beyond Lies The Wub”… it is by H.B. Vestal. http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/2012/03/hb-vestal-1916–2007.html

  • Spencer HIll says:

    Can’t wait for the new dick drop!! cant wait so excit­ed ;)

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