Volume I: The King of the Elves

De: Philip K. Dick

Narrado por: Kate Rudd

Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was one of the seminal figures of 20th century science fiction. His many stories and novels, which include such classics as The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, reflect a deeply personal world view, exploring the fragile, multifarious nature of reality itself and examining those elements that make us - or fail to make us - fully human. He did as much as anyone to demolish the artificial barrier between genre fiction and "literature," and the best of his work has earned a permanent place in American popular culture.

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expanded from the previous Collected Stories set to incorporate new story notes, and two added tales, one previously unpublished, and one uncollected.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.

©2010 The Philip K. Dick Testamentary Trust (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Need headers between stories

Bad editing choices have greatly diminished the narrator's performance, but atleast the chapter skip coincides with the stories

Insights from another era

A good collection of early PKD works and insights associated with them. A solid addition to a PKD Fan's library.

good stories, wrong narrator

the narrator does a fine job. however they choose a female narrator and 90% of the characters are male.

Fun, Strange and Humorous!

Great stories, especially if you enjoy tales that are a bit unusual. Several of the stories featured have some pretty humorous themes, they had me rolling with laughter! Others are creepy and atmospheric, so there's a good variety here.

My only complaint is, the actor reading the stories sometimes has a very strange cadence. It took me a while to get used to it, but the book was still greatly enjoyable.

This is much better

This is much better than I expected for it to be. The stories are good science fiction from the 1950s. I was expecting PKD as an amateur. That is not what I see. These are early PKD compositions but in one way or another they usually contain some of the PKD magic.

I enjoyed the reader’s performance. It is a professional job. Admittedly she has a limited range in creating voices. But her performance is fine for my listening pleasure.

confused but not disappointed

I have made it through about 7 chapters so far and haven't heard any part of the King of the Elves story. I have heard quite a few short stories and am not disappointed but am wondering if I will hear the story I purchased or not.

Good stories by PKD

I really like Philip K, Dick, a lot, and in particular his short stories.

Problem number one with this recording is the story breaks. You can’t tell there’s a break it’s the end of the story title book and moving right along. Just like one solid sheet of paper. I’m really disappointed. This narration really needs to be re-mastered.

2. And the narration is only OK.

3. If you have been reading a lot of PKD you notice this has a lot of repeat stories from other collections on audible.

Worst narrator ever

The male vocalizations were pinched and artificial, so much so that it was irritating, listening to the narration. And the Russian accent was execrable. Don’t you vet these people? Honestly, I want my money back. Listening to this narrator made me angry the entire time.

5 Stars!

Loved listening to every minute of this audio book. What an amazing collection, can't wait to listen to the rest!

PKD Deserves Better

Usually I’m indifferent to the gender of the narrator but I can only restate the complaint made elsewhere in these reviews - since the vast majority of the characters in these stories are male, why did they choose a female narrator for this book ? What’s worse is she seems to lack the ability to give the voices any variety so I’m constantly unsure who’s talking. To cap it off all the male characters (virtually all of them) sound congested and not especially bright. And most annoying of all is that this is a collection of short stories yet none of the titles are listed in the table of contents. Seems to me that at least this minimal convenience could have been provided. Philip K Dick is one of my favorite authors and I wish more than minimal effort had been made in the production of this book. I’ve bought the rest of this series since I’m a completist but I sure hope they’re a lot better presented than this first volume.