The Skull by Philip K Dick - Short Story Review

This was a cool time travel story.  One that plays with the grandfather paradox.

A prisoner, his name being Conger, with skills in hunting, tracking and killing is dispatched to the past to prevent the rise of a religion that upsets the status quo.

I liked how so many of the aspects of the story are now hardwired into storytelling today.  Messing with the timeline can have unexpected consequences.

It was well done and terrific to know that Dick helped to lay the foundation in this type of story.

You can read the story online here - https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30255/30255-h/30255-h.htm

Philip K Dick

The Gun by Philip K Dick - Short Story Review

September 1952

A team of scientists are in orbit around an unexplored world.

What they find is devastation.  An atomic war has taken place destroying the entire surface of the planet.

Suddenly they are attacked and shot down.

After safely crash landing, a party is sent to investigate the gun that attacked them.

It was a well crafted story that played on the assumptions most readers bring to a story.

Terrific.

By the way, isn't this one of the greatest things about the written word?  Dick himself died 35 years ago (1982) and the story was published 65 years ago (1952) and here I am, today, enjoying it for the first time.

Cool.

Philip K Dick

Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K Dick - Short Story Review

July 1952

Here's an interesting story, Philip K Dick's first published work, was about a ship's captain who is obsessed with eating an animal that one of his crew has brought on board.

But the creature is intelligent and would rather talk the matter over.

That's about all I can say without revealing too much.

It certainly provided me with a smile at the end.

From The Variable Man and Other Stories collection edited by Gregg Rickman.

Philip K Dick

Surface Tension by James Blish - A Short Story Review

37/150/2016

The story begins with a crashed seed-ship on a new world that was meant to be a new human colony.

With the ship smashed and the cargo nearly destroyed the captain an crew come up with an inventive way of completing their mission.

The story then moves a pivotal moment in the history of these new life forms the human created.

I was, at first instantly bored by the story, it was just another "look how strange my aliens are" tale.  But then a very human adventure began and a familiar story of evolution repeated itself on this new world.

In the end I found the story to be very interesting indeed.

I kept reminding my self of what the influential editor, Gardner Dozois once said; "The nice thing about short stories, even the bad ones, is that they are short."  (Or something along those lines.)

This kept me reading and I am happy I did.

It awoke the sense of wonder of how incredibly big this story was.

Terrific.  A highlight of the collection.

The Wilderness by Ray Bradbury

24/100

A charming story about two women spending their last evening on Earth before they board a rocket destined for Mars.

This story is the first entry in the Fourth Planet From The Sun collection of Mars stories from the lovely people at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine.

Ray Bradbury

Home is the Sailor by Day Keen

Home is the Sailor by Day Keene first published in 1952 and re-printed, by my favorite publisher, Hard Case Crime in 2005.

It's the story of a sailor who retires and wants to settle down.  He meets a nice woman who then gets him to do things he would never have been capable of in the past.

I kept wondering just when he would wake up and see what was going on.

A pretty good read.