This volume would act as a great introduction to PKD for those unfamiliar with his work. All his main themes are represented and the average standard of the stories is very high. I'd read most of them before in one place or another but none of it was time wasted for me.

This is a short story in e-book form, probably transcribed into some project like Project Gutenberg from its original existence in a science fiction periodical, though there's no indication of provenance whatsoever in the version provided free by Kindle. An internet search uncovers that it was apparently published in December 1953 in the magazine Science Fiction Adventures, Given the date of publication, and the fact that Dick didn't die until 1982, I suspect the copyright status of the free version on Kindle may also be a bit questionable.

The story is of the sub-genre "banal ordinary life with a dire secret", and it has a twist ending of the sort that no-one of my generation would fail to predict.

Dick doesn't try very hard with his aliens - they are just standard winged creepy-crawlies who can adopt a human body - but that is not the point of this short work. It is the insidiousness of the takeover (not unlike the silent undermining of a house by termites, if you think about it) that provides the horror - that, and the primary image of a hanging body in a public place to which no-one pays any attention whatsoever.

This was such an enjoyable read. The writing style was the sort that pulls you in right from the beginning and completely immerses you in its world. The worldbuilding was truly incredible, and the plot was full of surprising twists. There were some really cool ideas in the story, like owning real animals being a sign of social status and controlling emotions by dialling a certain code into a device.

I probably should have read this before I watched the Amazon series of the same name, as the series reveals the hidden plot in the book in much more detail. I think I missed out on how Dick constructed this novel with interesting, conflicted characters that are trying to find the truth and exist in a world vastly different than ours post World War II. This reminds me again how reading the novel first is the best course of action.

PKD - one of the most inventive SF authors ever and a prolific writer of novels and short stories. Unfortunately some of these stories have become predictable because since they were written the ideas have been recycled too many times. Others are unintentionally amusing as 1950s gender roles survive unchanged several centuries into the future - but people will say the equivalent about much contemporary SF in 70 years from now, too. Although some of the stories are conventional (e.g. consequences of nuclear war) Dick, like Bradbury, also wrote a different kind of SF from most of his contemporaries. Not interested in pulp adventure stories or stories that turn on some application of science, Dick instead starts to question identity and reality. These themes began in this volume (1950s) and came to dominate later. Of course, this is a new viewpoint on the age-old question of what it is to be human? An angle that also was adopted and developed into a staple SF theme by those who came after.

Which is all to say PKD was a pioneer in many ways and I should read more.