The title of this work is REALLY important. The short novel, "The Variable Man," which is the first of five in this collection, has its own entry on LT. I'm probably blind when it comes to most of PKD's works, especially the early ones, but he's a rara avis, even in a world (Science Fiction) that contains plenty.

Read "Autofac." You may look at your fancy 3D Printer differently, in a few years.

The Variable Man (1953)
Second Variety (1953)
The Minority Report (1956)
Autofac (1955)
A World of Talent (1954)

(Yeah, *that* minority report.) ( )

This is one of Dick’s first works and shows only traces of his genius, but those traces stand out above the background of a copy of the old style sci-fi that he must have been reading. The Variable man himself could become really interesting given more emphasis. A throw-away idea at the end, a device that would allow every citizen to vote on political issues, is an anti-establishment theme that will become a signature of his later writing. His faster-than-light travel, ftl (was this the first use of the acronym?), is based on an interesting semi-paradoxical distortion of Einstein’s relativity theory. As an object’s speed increases, its length decreases and its mass increases, so simply keep the speed increasing until the object disappears as it goes faster than the speed of light. The missing concepts are interesting to contemplate. ( )

A very mixed bag of some of Dick's early shorts. I thought the titular story laughably poor. "Second Variety" is much better, a tense tale and probably the best story in the collection. "Minority Report" is a similarly tense story based around identity and motives but I felt the ending, although fully explained, a little weak. The remaining stories were neither here nor there - not as bad as "The Variable Man" or as decent as "Second Variety." A mixed bag of stories that, collectively, aren't anything more than average. ( )

One of my favourite Sci-Fi authors is Philip K Dick. Most of his books I have read have involved dystopian futures providing an undercurrent of paranoia and fear of the authorities. The Variable Man was one of his earlier (short) stories, published in Space Science Fiction in 1953. This was my first venture using an eReader by the way...

The story tells of 'Terra' (otherwise know as Earth) which is, to all intents and purposes, being held hostage by the Centurian Empire - an Empire which refuses to let Terra expand and travel into the wider universe. As a consequence, war cannot be far away. Terra has developed a computer system which uses the law of probabilities and is able to calculate the odds of victory of war against Proxima Centauri and when the odds tip into it's favour, at last, it puts in emergency measures to commence war. However, the result of these 'measures' accidently bring Thomas Cole, a kind of 'handy man' from 1913, into their current day and lead to the probabilities of defeat increasing for Terra and unpredicable and variable calculations - hence the title 'The Variable Man'.

OK, so I have tried, at best, to give a brief synopsis of the tale and, as far as short stories go, it was a good one. I would say it is pure 'hard' sci-fi (as one would expect for said publication) and very different to some of the books I have read by Dick. Naturally, as a short story, one has to get quite a bit in and fast. The Variable Man does so. That said, I feel it is nowhere near as good as later offerings but does show the beginnings of a wonderful author.

A good, quick read but not the best introduction I feel to Philip K Dick's work. For that I would recommend his later works 'Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said' or 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' ( )