The King of the Elves is the opening installment of a uniform, five-volume edition of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, expanded from the previous Collected Stories set to incorporate new story notes, and two added tales, one previously unpublished, and one uncollected. This generous collection contains 22 stories and novellas including Dick’s first published story, “Beyond Lies the Wub,” together with such landmark tales as “The Preserving Machine,” in which an attempt to preserve our fragile cultural heritage takes an unexpected turn, “The Variable Man,” a brilliantly imagined novella encompassing war, time travel, and the varied uses of technology, and the title story, in which Shadrach Jones, owner of a dilapidated gas station in Colorado, stumbles into an ongoing war between trolls and elves, and encounters a fantastic—and utterly unexpected—destiny. Like the best of Dick’s novels, these stories offer a wide variety of narrative and intellectual pleasures, and provide an ideal introduction to one of the singular imaginations of the modern era. Volume 1/5. Includes stories from 1952-1955: - Stability - Roog - Menace React (unique to this edition) - The Little Movement - Beyond Lies the Wub - The Gun - The Skull - The Defenders - Mr. Spaceship - Piper in the Woods - The Infinites - The Preserving Machine - Expendable - The Variable Man - The Indefatigable Frog - The Crystal Crypt - The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford - The Builder - Meddler - Paycheck - The Great C - Out in the Garden - The King of the Elves - Colony - Prize Ship - Nanny Other editions of this volume, that have the same list of stories (without "Menace React"), were published under these titles: - The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford, - Beyond Lies the Wub, - Paycheck and Other Classic Stories. > Volumes published by Subterranean: - Volume 1 ISBN13 9781596063402 - Volume 2 ISBN13 9781596063952 - Volume 3 ISBN13 9781596065123 - Volume 4 ISBN13 9781596065987 - Volume 5 ISBN13 9781596066489
Author
Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. In 1952, he began writing professionally and proceeded to write numerous novels and short-story collections. He won the Hugo Award for the best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Philip K. Dick died on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California, of heart failure following a stroke. In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten of his stories have been adapted into popular films since his death, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
