The Collected Stories, Volume 5: The Eye of Sibyl and Other Stories
Philip K. Dick
Language: English
Pages: 464
ISBN: 2:00074034
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A collection of stories by the celebrated science fiction writer includes never-before-published selections as well as the author's standards—"The Little Black Box" and "The Pre-Person" among them.
Introduction by Thomas M. Disch
EPUB without TOC, apparently based on scan.
loved. Something depressed me. I took a mental audit. Everything was, in fact, fine; this would be a good month. But I felt the chill. Oh Christ, I thought. Today is the day they evict the Lysol Lady. Nobody likes the Lysol Lady. She is insane. No one has ever heard her say a word and she won't look at you. Sometimes when you are descending the stairs she is coming up and she turns wordlessly around and retreats and uses the elevator instead. Everybody can smell the Lysol she uses. Magical
No response. Except for himself, the house was empty. Empty, he thought, and collapsing. Oh my God. He seated himself at the kitchen table and felt the chair give slightly under him; it did not give much, but he felt it; he felt the sagging. I'm afraid, he thought. Where did she go? He returned to the living room. Maybe she went next door to borrow some spices or butter or something, he reasoned. Nonetheless, panic now filled him. He looked at the poster. It was unframed. And the edges had
struggled to escape and yet, reflexively, he held onto it. The microrob had been scurrying toward the parked ship, and he thought, the ship's picking them up. So they won't be found by the UN. They're getting away; then the carnival can go on with its plans. A calm voice, a woman's, said from close by, "Put it down, please. It wants to go." Jumping with shock he released the microrob and it scuttled off, rustling in the weeds, gone at once. Standing before Fred the thin girl, still wearing
Randomness at work, through hundreds, even thousands of games. . . through person after person, player after player. Until at last it reached critical direction, and the last person to play it, also selected by the process of randomness, became welded to it in a contract of death. In this case, himself. Unfortunately. Ted Donovan said, "We'll spear its power source from a distance; that shouldn't be hard. You go on home, forget about it. When we have its tropic circuit laid out we'll notify you.
the Imperialist puppet troops of long ago phrased. "I know what you gave me," Chien said. "And I don't want any more. If I change my mind I can pick it up at a pharmacy. Thanks." He started on, but the cart, with the legless occupant, pursued him. "Miss Lee was talking to me," the peddler said loudly. "Hmmm," Chien said, and automatically increased his pace; he spotted a hovercab and began signaling for it. "It's tonight you're going to the stag dinner at the Yangtze River villa," the peddler