I have to admit that I've read very little Philip K. Dick before - only Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - and while I was vaguely aware that he wrote short stories I don't remember ever reading one. Now I want to read them all. They're very, very good. In a way he reminds me a little of John Wyndham in that many of his stories fall back onto ordinary people and domestic life, as well as a sort of general sense of the humane. (Otherwise, they're quite different writers.)

It's that domestic element that most appeals to me, and the two stories that got the biggest reaction from me - "Foster, You're Dead" and "The Days of Perky Pat" - represent this in spades. The former is one of the most horrifying stories I've read in ages, as a little boy is terrified by the fact that his dad can't keep up with the Jones' when it comes to safety measures at home in case of war. It's clear that the father is right, in that it's all just a big con to sell more useless crap, but the manufactured threat of war is enough to drive that poor child out of his mind with fear. What a fantastic, awful story that was; I'll be thinking about it for a long time. You can keep your "Minority Reports" and "Adjustments Teams", compelling as they are. "Foster" is the pick of this bunch.