Title: Minority Report
Author: Philip K. Dick
Type: Fiction
Page Count: 292
Rating: 4/5
This book was a little misleading, because it has a movie tie-in cover and only mentions Minority Report in the blurb, but it turns out that Minority Report is a short story and only takes up the first forty pages. They should have called it Minority Report and Other Stories.
Another problem that I had with it was that you can tell that Dick was trying to end each of his stories with a twist, and so you end up expecting them and not being surprised when they happen. It started to feel a little formulaic.
Other than that though, it was a pretty good read and Dick’s writing was consistently top-notch, something which apparently can’t be said of his later stuff. I’m definitely glad that I read it, I just feel as though I was misled going into it.
Still, some of the stories were pretty good, and I liked the way that Dick thought about technology and took it to its logical conclusion. In fact, many of the things that he wrote about could still be future predictions today. Other stories were a little weirder, such as the long old story about politics and what happens after people die.
So would I recommend this one? Yeah, I guess. I think I’d recommend Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? first, but this is a pretty good one when it comes to discovering Dick’s short stories. There’s also plenty of food for thought here, and at times it feels almost philosophical. You might not like it if you’re not particularly into science fiction, but it could also serve as a decent introduction. Cool!
