Philip K. Dick
The Collected Stories
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, a collection in five volumes first published in 1987, contains almost all of Dick’s published short stories. However, the following five stories are missing:
- “Time Pawn” (1954)
- “Vulcan’s Hammer” (1956)
- “Cantata 140” (1964)
- “The Unteleported Man” (1964)
- “Goodbye, Vincent” (1988)
“Goodbye, Vincent” was written in 1972, but unpublished at the time of the first publication of The Collected Stories. When Subterranean Press reissued this collection in 2011 to 2014, the story was finally included.
The other four stories were apparently excluded because they were expanded by Dick after their initial publication and published as novels. However, the original versions of these stories are clearly novellas and thus should have been included in The Collected Stories.
There are also several items that are sometimes wrongly ranked among Dick’s short stories:
- “A Glass of Darkness” (1956), an early version of the novel “The Cosmic Puppets” (which is actually shorter than “A Glass of Darkness”)
- “All We Marsmen” (1963), first publication of the novel “Martian Time-Slip”
- “Project Plowshare” (1965), first publication of the novel “The Zap Gun”
- “A. Lincoln Simulacron” (1969), first publication of the novel “We Can Build You”
- “Fawn, Look Back” (1987), an outline for a novel
- “The Different Stages of Love” (1992), an outtake from the novel “Flow My Tears the Policeman Said”
- “The Name of the Game Is Death” (1993), another novel outline
Since none of these items is a short story, they cannot be considered missing from The Collected Stories.
Expansions
There are five short stories and novellas by PKD that were originally published in magazines and that Dick later expanded into novels:
| Original Version | Expanded Version | ||||
| Title | Published | Words | Title | Published | Words |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shell Game | 1954 | 05,000 | Clans of the Alphane Moon | 1964 | 67,000 |
| Time Pawn | 1954 | 21,000 | Dr. Futurity | 1960 | 47,000 |
| Vulcan’s Hammer | 1956 | 21,000 | Vulcan’s Hammer | 1960 | 47,000 |
| Cantata 140 | 1964 | 24,000 | The Crack in Space | 1966 | 60,000 |
| The Unteleported Man | 1964 | 28,000 | Lies, Inc. 1 Published in several versions. The 2004 edition “Lies, Inc.” represents the most complete version. | 2004 | 63,000 |
As explained in the section The Collected Stories, “A Glass of Darkness,” “All We Marsmen,” “Project Plowshare” and “A. Lincoln Simulacron” cannot be considered short stories/novellas that were expanded into novels, because they had novel length to begin with.
Fragments
Several story fragments, unfinished stories and deleted sections were published over the years. The following table provides an overview.
| Title | Written | Published | First published in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Menace React | early 1950s | 2011 | The King of the Elves |
| Today the World | ca. 1963s | 1989 | PKDS Newsletter #20 |
| The Different Stages of Love | 1970s | 1992 | PKDS Newsletter #28 |
| The Two Completed Chapters of a Proposed Sequel to The Man in the High Castle | 1974s | 1995 | The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick |
| Deleted Section from the Draft of Deus Irae Chapter 3 | ca. 1975s | 2007 | PKD Otaku #18 |
| Untitled [Contribution to Confessions of a Troublemaker] | 1978s | 1995 | Search for Philip K. Dick, 1928–1982 |
Outlines and Treatments
The following is an overview of all published plot outlines and treatments by PKD:
| Title | Domain | Written | Published | First published in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Zap Gun: Outline | Novel | 1963-11 | 1988 | PKDS Newsletter #16 |
| Warning: We Are Your Police | TV Show | 1967-02 | 1985 | PKDS Newsletter #7 |
| Joe Protagoras Is Alive and Living on Earth | Novel | 1967-05 | 1992 | New Worlds 2 |
| The Name of the Game Is Death | Novel | 1967-05 | 1992 | New Worlds 2 |
| TV Series Idea | TV Series | 1967 | 1995 | The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick |
| Plot Idea for Mission Impossible | TV Show | 1967 | 1995 | The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick |
| Outline for: Our Friends from Frolix 8 | Novel | 1968-11 | 1989 | PKDS Newsletter #19 |
| Fawn, Look Back | Novel | 1980-08 | 1987 | Science Fiction Eye #2 |
| The Acts of Paul | Novel | 1982 | 1987 | The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (Limited Edition) |