Adjustment Team [short story]

I'd been meaning to start reading Philip K. Dick for a long time now, at least for the twenty-plus years since I realized that Blade Runner and Total Recall were based on books by the same guy. Two decades and probably three or four more Dick film adaptations later, including the excellent A Scanner Darkly, the decent Minority Report, and the mediocre The Adjustment Bureau, and I'm finally getting started.

This story, the basis for that last film, was rather disappointing. It just felt skeletal and underdeveloped, almost like a draft version where the author was spitballing ideas ("Hey, wouldn't it be cool/crazy if..."). And, don't get me wrong, it is a cool/crazy idea, but once he came up with the premise, the story itself couldn't have show more taken him much longer to write than it took me to read it. Combine the overly sparse narrative with the stilted dialogue and some very dated, 50s-feeling touches, and it came off more like a script for an episode of The Twilight Zone than a fully-realized work of speculative fiction.

Having said that, it was a fun half-hour read, and I am certainly not deterred from trying out more of Philip K. Dick's work. show less

Very interesting. After seeing the movie, I expected something philosophical along the lines of free will vs. predestination. It is more of a psychological story, and although it does not present an orthodox picture of God (at least from a Christian standpoint) it does present a very traditional picture of sovereignty. I especially like the dog.

Decent short story but not the best PKD has ever written. Apparently the movie is better? There is a decent concept here, and I guess it works in short story format, but enough time has passed that the whole thing seems rather dated.

Interesting, but the ending was a bit abrupt.