Product Description
Net proceeds from the sale of new copies of this book have been pledged to support the prevention of child abuse and neglect in the Carolinas.It takes brains, character and extreme courage to succeed at the pinnacle of racing. Don Miller has all three qualities in spades. Roger Penske entrusted him with starting two NASCAR teams, developing their talent, getting the sponsors and turning their drivers into superstars. Rusty Wallace and Ryan Newman both have Don Miller to thank for much of their early success at the highest levels of NASCAR. Along the way, Miller was responsible for key innovations in racing tires, insulating materials to protect drivers, and aero packages. He can even take credit for inventing the souvenir trailer of today. A professional drag racer in his teens and twenties, Miller has always been the hardest of hardcore racers, on every kind of track. That passion has never diminished, even though racing brought him to the very brink of death.Don Miller has never before told his full story. Miller's Time, the memoirs of this hot rodder, racing titan, gifted businessman and car collector who just plain loves people, is one of the most compelling, rewarding and harrowing racing books that you will ever be lucky enough to read. Hard cover with dust jacket, 200 black & white photos, 304 pages ... Read more

Product Description
The second volume of the collected stories of Philip K.Dick contains 27 science fiction stories and was written in the period of McCarthyism. His previous novels include "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" which was filmed as "Blade Runner". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

The real surreal
What is there to say? It is PKD in mid-career short story mode. A must for fans of sci-fi with a human basis, fans of the surreal, or readers who are just ready for some very interesting, well written change of pace. The man is a master.

Considerable Overlap!
I just wanted to make everyone that might be interested in this excellent book aware that there is considerable overlap between it and The PKD Reader:

-= The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Volume 3 (Second Variety) =-
1. Fair Game
2. The Hanging Stranger
3. The Eyes have it
4. The Golden Man
5. The Turning Wheel
6. The Last of the Masters
7. The Father-Thing
8. Strange Eden
9. Tony and the Beetles
10. Null-O
11. To Serve the Master
12. Exhibit Piece
13. The Crawlers
14. Sales Pitch
15. Shell Game
16. Upon the Dull Earth
17. Foster, you're dead
18. Pay for the Printer
19. War Veteran
20. The Chromium Fence
21. Misadjustment
22. Psi-Man Heal My Child!
23. Second Variety

-= The Philip K. Dick Reader =-
1. Fair Game
2. The Hanging Stranger
3. The Eyes have it
4. The Golden Man
5. The Turning Wheel
6. The Last of the Masters
7. The Father-Thing
8. Strange Eden
9. Tony and the Beetles
10. Null-O
11. To Serve the Master
12. Exhibit Piece
13. The Crawlers
14. Sales Pitch
15. Shell Game
16. Upon the Dull Earth
17. Foster, you're dead
18. Pay for the Printer
19. War Veteran
20. The Chromium Fence
21. We can remember it for you wholesale
22. The Minority Report
23. Paycheck
24. Second Variety

So if you already have The PKD Reader you might not want to purchase this book (and vice-versa).

A must
Philip K. Dick's novels I read long ago. And have reread many since. So believe me when I tell you what a treat it is to finally get around to reading some of his short stories. Even if you're not primarily a PKD fan; maybe you're an aficionado of the short story, and this book comes up in the 'we recommend for you ' list. Take it as serendipitous that you've made it this far and buy this book. You will not regret it.

The Third Volume Of An Amazing Collection
In May of 1987 Underwood-Miller published a five volume set titled "The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick".The third volume of the collection was subtitled "The Father-Thing".In April of 1991 the Carroll Group republished the third volume changing the subtitle to "Second Variety".In addition to the change of title this volume now contains the story "Second Variety" which was originally in the second volume of the Underwood-Miller set.It seems clear that they made these changes in order to take advantage of the release of "Total Recall", which was around the time of the Carroll Group's re-release of the second volume of the series, and that did have the cascading effect of destroying the chronological approach that the original set of books used, but that doesn't change the fact that this is an excellent series of books and well worth owning by anyone who loves science fiction.Ultimately, this book contains the same stories as volume 3 in the original set, with the addition of "Second Variety" as the last story in the book.

There are 24 stories in this book, with a greater number of longer stories than were in the first two volumes of the series.While Dick's short stories are excellent, the novelette length gives him a bit more room to really explore some of his ideas, something which he uses to great effect in several of this book's stories.One theme which appears in several of the stories here is that of mutation.Dick clearly rejected John W. Campbell Jr.'s idea that mutations should always be viewed as good and leading humanity into the future.This idea is central to stories like "The Golden Man" , "A World of Talent", and "Psi-man Heal My Child", though that is not to say that Dick viewed mutations as bad either, simply that he used a more balanced and realistic approach to the subject.

Another theme which appears in several stories in this volume is that of humanity losing control of their technology, and we see this in such stories as "The Last of the Masters",
"To Serve the Master", and the title story "Second Variety", which was the basis for the 1996 film "Screamers".Along the same lines, we see mankind on the brink of elimination in stories like "Tony and the Beetles", and "Pay for the Printer" along with several of the stories which I had already mentioned.It is not surprising that Dick revisited many of these ideas over and over, as most authors do.Dick also had an incredible output of stories during the early fifties was incredible, with nearly all of the stories in the first three volumes were written between 1952 and 1954, so again one would expect a fair amount of repeated themes.What is surprising is that he manages to make the stories fresh by taking the reader in different directions each time.

This is a great volume in a great collection of Philip K. Dick's work.While changed slightly from the original collection, which was ranked 3rd on the Locus poll for collections in 1988, the completeness of the collection is still in tact.Outside of the stories I have already listed, there are other very good ones as well, such as "The Father-Thing", "Foster, You're Dead", and "Shell Game".The longer stories in this volume put it in front of the first two volumes in terms of the overall quality, but the whole series is certainly worthwhile.

A Must for the Dick Fan and a Good Introduction to PKD
There would be little point in giving a synopsis of each of the 24 stories in this book.That would give a false sense of repetition since many feature images of ash and overturned bathtubs -- the aftermath of nuclear war -- or struggles between mutants and normal humans, each fearing their extinction.But they don't seem any more repetitious than a skilled musician working variations on a theme for that is what many are.These stories, written in 1953 and 1954 -- with one exception, are arranged chronologically, so the student of Dick can see him play with an idea for two or three stories in a row.

Along the way we get the humor, intricate plotting, and sudden reversals in our moral sympathies characteristic of Dick.And there are the machines that so often are a force of death in Dick though they behave more and more like life.Such is the case with the title story, one of Dick's most paranoid and basis for the movie _Screamers_.When sophisticated weapons take on human guise and began to stalk man, what Dick calls his grand theme, knowing who is human and who only pretends to be, is starkly exhibited.

Other famous stories are "The Golden Man" with its purging of mutants before they infect the human gene pool, "The Father-Thing" which is what a boy realizes has replaced his real father, and "Sales Pitch", a story which anticipates, with its all purpose android advertising its virtues through rather thuggish means, the work of Ron Goulart.

There are some memorable stories not so well known."Foster, You're Dead" was originally conceived as a protest against a remark by President Eisenhower that citizens should be responsible for their own bomb shelters.Its young hero lives terrified in a world where making knives from scratch and digging underground shelters are parts of the school curriculum and each new year brings the newest model of bomb shelter, terrified because his father can't afford to buy one for the family."War Veteran" reads like a futuristic _Mission Impossible_ episode.The spirit of Charles Fort may be at work in "Null-O", a satire on the absurd philosophy that no distinctions between things are valid, a philosophy practiced by "perfect paranoids".(Fort may have inspired the weakest and first story in the collection, "Fair Game", with its van Vogtian plotting giving way at the end to a silly twist.)

Dick fans will see "Shell Game", with its colony of paranoids, as sort of a test run for Dick's _Clans of the Alphane Moon_, and the time jumping child of "A World of Talent" is reminiscent of Manfred Steiner in Dick's _Martian Time-Slip_.This collection also features one of Dick's occasional fantasies, "Upon the Dull Earth".

Any admirer of Dick will want to read this collection, and those needing an introduction to his work will find no bad stories in this exhibit of 14 months in Dick's career. ... Read more

Product Description
The third volume of Dick's stories, this book features 23 stories most of which were written before his first novel appeared. The author's novels include "The Man in the High Castle", "Martian Time-Slip", "A Scanner Darkly", and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", filmed as "Blade Runner". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Pick up the actual book instead.
Philip K. Dick, The Father-Thing (Rosetta, 1954)

This is one of the oddest packages I have come across. Instead of being a Phil Dick short story collection, or even a single Phil Dick short story (either of which would be a reasonable assumption), this ebook contains Dick's short story mentioned in the title and a completely unrelated (well, it, too, was written in the 1950s) story by John Novotny called "The Bourbon Lake." Go figure.

The Father-Thing is not your typical Phil Dick story; there's very little detail to it. It's almost as if he had the idea and wanted to get it on paper as fast as he could, then never went back and revised it. (Still, someone could turn this into a wonderful movie, given enough artistic license.) The basic idea; a child's father is eaten by an alien (think Invasion of the Body Snatchers here), and the kid has to go recruit some help to get rid of the alien before it takes over the rest of his family. Now, think about all the wonderful ways you could have embellished that into two hundred pages. Dick sticks with all action and it lasts barely twenty. Most of what we can see here is unfulfilled potential.

"The Bourbon Lake" is nothing more than your typical pastoral shaggy-dog story. Two men (who like their drink) are dragged by their wives on a week's vacation to a town that has no tavern. Lo and behold, while walking in the woods, they discover a lake made of pure bourbon. There are some nifty touches (especially the cantankerous beaver), but there's really not much to the story. Still, the reading of it is a minor pleasure if you can get past the stereotypes (amazing how the two tipplers continuously maintain Irish accents, for example).

You're probably better off finding The Father-Thing in one of the larger collections of Dick's short fiction. ** ½ ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of short stories from the author of numerous science fiction novels, including early tales written in 1951 and 1952 which have not been published previously. This volume is the first in a series of the collected works of Philip K. Dick. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Must for any Science Fiction fan
The name Philip K Dick emerges quite frequently in any debate over the identity of the world's greatest science fiction author.Consider, then, the claim that Dick short stories are actually a more impressive achievement than his novels.Excessive, you say?I think it's true.Dick's one hundred-odd stories contain at least one mention of most of the ideas that shaped modern imaginative fiction.As such, the five-volume collection of his stories, of which "Beyond Lies the Wub" is the first volume, must be centerpiece of any serious scifi collection.

Dick's prose is never lavish, but always plain and workable.In a sense this merely disarms us, as we don't expect such wondrous invention from apparently normal writing.Aside from that limitation, however, these stories range over everything imaginable: from fantastic to prosaic, from the present time to far future settings, and from horror to tragedy to light-hearted wry humor.Two of the best comedy stories in this volume feature Dr. Labyrinth, a kooky inventor who sees problems and solutions quite differently from the rest of the human race.In "The Preservation Machine", he invents a method for converting musical works to animals, so as the great classical masterpieces can have better odds of survival in a Darwinian world.In "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford", he discovers that inanimate objects will come to life if they are sufficiently irritated."The Preservation Machine" ends with the discovery that the struggles of a dog-eat-dog world have transformed the works of Bach and Schubert into hideous bits of cacophany, a prime example of how even Dick's humorous tales are not without their bite.

On the horror end we have "Colony" and "Meddler".In "Colony", a exploration team on a new planet finds that murderous blobs of protoplasm are capable of imitating any inanimate object.As Dick himself says is the end notes: "The Ultimate in paranoia is not believing that everyone is out to get you, but rather that everything is out to get you."Meddler" tells the tale of reckless engineers who build a mirror scoop for observing the future.Regrettably, their own observations guarantee that the future will be a worse place.How can this be?Dick explains the enigma in high style.

Among the more solid hard sf stories is "Mr. Spaceship".An elderly professor agrees to have his brain donated to a cause; it will be installed as the command unit for a spaceship, where its intelligence will allow it to navigate alien minefields.However, the titular vessel has plans of its own, and may prove capable of outwitting both the humans and the aliens.It's a fine example of Dick's faith in individual cleverness against the mass stupidity of government, bureaucracy and corporatism.

It's hard to pick a best story from such a volume; it's a classic case of 'they're all so good'.Top honors would have to go to "The Little Movement".A bizarre old man sells toy soldiers to unsuspecting children.But who's really in charge of the operation, and how can such a sinister scheme be stopped?In second place comes "Nanny", a triumph of wicked humor and shrewd observations of human nature.Mechanical nannies are sold to suburban families, but (as always) there's more going on than meets the eye.In this one, Dick correctly anticipated how parental obsession with child safety would come to overrule common sense.

His Master's Voice
These are the earliest stories PKD wrote, starting with the previously unpublished 1947 story "Stability" and ending with "Prize Ship", written in 1952. There are 25 of them in the lot, most withcomments from the author. Some real gems are collected here (like"King of the Elves" and the pulpy "The Infinites"), butalso some rather, ah, unpolished work.

But the thing is that this isnot just interesting because of the actual stories but it gives a directline to the developing talent of the man and that man at this point in hislife was blossoming with ideas.He just hadn't yet gotten to the pointwhere he knew how to express them.But that really doesn't stop one who iswilling to drop those preconceived notions as to what constitutes goodscience fiction; this is FICTION with a capital letter, imagined from theget-go and heading towards uncharted waters. Reading this stuff made melong for such stuff today - most of what you get these days is pale andboring, closer to science fact and lacking in any true originality. ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of 19 stories dealing with mental powers-in mass hypnosis, telepathy, seances, precognition, levitation, predestination, ghosts and magic. ... Read more

Product Description
This fourth and penultimate volume of Dick's collected stories covers a much wider span that its predecessors - 1954 to 1963. The author has written several novels including "The Man in the High Castle", "Martian Time-Slip", and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (filmed as "Blade Runner"). ... Read more