Warning! Possible spoilers follow (though I will try to keep them to a minimum).

Philip K Dick is one of the more influential science fiction writers, probably ever. His stories have been the inspiration for a number of popular movies, including the Minority Report and Total Recall. They envision a technologically advanced world where what it means to be human is blurred. Many of his stories explore a post-apocolyptic world in which humans are struggling to survive.

The collection Selected Stories of Philip K Dick presents some of his best short stories, including the ones the two movies above were based on. All of his stories cause one to think. Dick lived during the height of the cold war, when the possibility of human self-destruction was at its highest and on the minds of nearly everyone. That, combined with some drug use, led Dick’s imagination to places that are incredible and mind-blowing. Some of his stories are just plain weird. This was epitomized for me by “The Days of Perky Pat”, a story of adults after a nuclear war who spend their times reliving their pre-war lives through the board-game adventures of a doll. The story is just so odd that I could not imagine thinking of such a premise. I mean, some stories, both by Dick and by others, involve a simple premise which the author then explores. The premise isn’t always too radical, it might be something that anyone could dream up. But “Perky Pat” isn’t one of those, at least to me. This story is the product of a mind that just plain sees the world differently.

Not only have Dick’s stories directly inspired mainstream movies, but there are obvious influences his stories have had in a lot of science fiction. The human-looking Cylons of Battlestar Galactica bear an uncanny resemblance to the machines of “Second Variety”, in which a human soldier, at the end, muses that the end of his race might be ok because the robots are already killing one another, already becoming human-like. Some of his stories, such as “Paycheck” (which also inspired a movie), are interesting adventure romps.  All of Dick’s stories, though, convey a unique view of the world, human’s place in it, and the ultimate fate of humanity.

That Dick’s stories provide such an incredible perspective on the human condition begs the question:  how instrumental was his drug use in his ability to devise these stories? It seems to me that many of the great artists, not just authors but painters, musicians, and so on, throughout history used drugs to some extent.  Does this allow a normal human mind to access thoughts and regions of the brain otherwise unaccessible?  Does it allow a person to make connections between otherwise seemingly random ideas to create something new?  If all drug use were completely eliminated, would art suffer?  I personally don’t advocate the use of drugs, but it seems to me that the connections between mind-altering substances and art are pretty strong.

I really enjoyed all of Dick’s stories, even those that start exploring more religious themes.  At least a couple of his stories involve direct interaction between humans and God, with less than predictable results.  But, I was more interested in his commentary on technology and the future of human kind.  I tend not to be a science fiction type of person.  I prefer fantasy.  But, I do enjoy what is termed “cyberpunk” (such as William Gibson and Max Barry) and Dick is a precursor to the cyberpunk genre.   He explores a more immediate future than a Star Wars or Star Trek universe does, though, unlike Gibson and Barry, he does allow aliens in his world.  And the role that aliens play in his world tends to be very disturbing.

I’ll close by saying that a lot of the stories in this collection deal with identity:  what it means to be you, what it means to be human, what separates humans from machines, etc.  These will be important questions as our machines become smarter and smarter and start getting aspects of personality, intelligence and identity.  He also addresses the issues of the individual in society and what role each of us plays in an increasingly technological world.  Again, these questions will become only more important with time.  It thus seems that Dick and his work will continue to reverberate for quite some time.

Matthew Pearl specializes in a somewhat particular sub-genre of fiction, namely historical fiction.  His first book, The Dante Club, was about Longfellow’s translation of Dante’s Inferno to English, which is historical fact.  He adds, though, a series of gruesome murders seemingly based upon the Inferno which Longfellow and his fellow poets must muster up the courage to solve.  It was a very enjoyable book, fast paced and a bit violent.

Pearl’s newest offering is The Poe Shadow.  Again, it is an actual historical fact, the death of Edgar Allan Poe, that is the catalyst for the story.  And the events of the novel, centering on Quentin Clark, are entirely fictional.  Or, are they?  This novel is more than a fictional account of what might have happened to Poe in Baltimore in 1849.  It is Pearl’s hypothesis on what happened, developed after much careful research and the unearthing of new facts connected to Poe’s death.  That he chooses to present his theory in a novel rather than a journal seems to be due more to his desire to use fiction to present his theory than any real weakness in what he has uncovered.

Quentin, a lawyer in Baltimore, is somewhat obsessed with Poe and his writings.  Upon Poe’s death, which is very mysterious, Quentin takes it upon himself, with no small cost to his career and reputation, to uncover what happened to Poe.  This takes him to Paris, where he finds the supposed inspirations for one of Poe’s most famous characters, the detective C. Auguste Dupin.  Much adventure follows as Quentin and the detective return to Baltimore and try to uncover the truth behind Poe’s death before a charlatan beats them to it, or, worse yet, reveals some fictional account of Poe’s death that is believed more than the truth.

There are many subtle twists and turns that occur as Quentin discovers small facts about what happened to Poe during the mysterious 5 days between his first setting foot in Baltimore and his death.  The one unfortunate aspect of the novel, for me, was that the “truth” is revealed at the end of the novel in a very expository way.  The final story behind Poe’s death is related by the detective, Auguste Duponte, in a relatively dry account.  That the hypothesis had to be directly narrated to Quentin, and thus the reader, in this way was somewhat anti-climactic.

However, overall, the book was very interesting and the theory on Poe’s death proposed by Pearl makes good sense, mostly for the fact that it is not sensationalist at all.  All of the mysterious facts surrounding Poe’s death are attributed to relatively minor occurances, each of which, individually, are nothing extraordinary.  It is the accumulation of such details that lead to the mystery surrounding Poe’s demise.