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 Darkly and 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 collection of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books. And, just as an fyi, you could always snag one of Dick’s novels (in audio) by signing up for Audible.com’s no-strings-attached Free Trial program. Get details here.
eTexts (find download instructions here)
- “Beyond the Door” – Multiple formats – iTunes
- First published in 1954, the text is not usually found in collections of Dick’s writings.
- “Beyond Lies the Wub” – Multiple formats – iTunes
- Dick’s first published story. Originally appeared in Planet Stories in July, 1952.
- “Mr. Spaceship” – Multiple Formats
- Appeared first in Imagination in 1953, and later in The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick.
- “Piper in the Woods” – Multiple Formats
- First published in 1953 in the fantasy and science fiction magazine, Imagination.
- “Second Variety” – Multiple Formats
- Influential short story first published in Space Science Fiction Magazine in May 1953.
- “The Crystal Crypt” – Multiple Formats
- Sci-fi story published in the January 1952 edition of Planet Stories.
- “The Defenders” – Multiple Formats – iTunes
- A 1953 sci-fi story that laid the foundation for Dick’s 1964 novel The Penultimate Truth.
- “The Eyes Have It” – Multiple Formats – iTunes
- One of the shortest, if not the shortest, of all of Philip K. Dick’s many short stories.
- “The Gun” – Multiple Formats – iTunes
- A 1952 sci-fi story that later appeared in The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick.
- “The Skull” – Multiple Formats – iTunes
- Same as right above.
- “The Variable Man” – Multiple Formats
- A 1953 novella written/sold by Philip K. Dick before he had an agent.
Audio
- “Beyond Lies the Wub” – Free MP3
- “Beyond the Door” – Free MP3
- “Second Variety” – Free MP3 Zip File – Stream Online
- “The Defenders” -Â Free MP3
- “The Variable Man” – Free MP3 Zip File – Stream Online
P.S. Don’t miss the film Philip K. Dick: A Day in the Afterlife (1994), a documentary appearing in our collection of Free Movies Online.
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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.
“Adjustment Team” is also available for free at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Adjustment_Team. Click on “print/export” at left side of page to download.
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.
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.
Thanks! : )