Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

my becoming-a-genius project, part 17!

the background:
i have decided to become a genius.

to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collected stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity.

i have strayed far away from my intentions by binge reading one book and reading several more that don't even pretend to meet this project's standards, so we're getting back to business.

i love the man in the high castle so much i would kiss it on the mouth if it had one, and do androids dream of electric sheep? is also a book that exists that i have read, so this is exciting stuff.

PROJECT 1: THE COMPLETE STORIES BY FLANNERY O'CONNOR
PROJECT 2: HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES BY CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
PROJECT 3: 18 BEST STORIES BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
PROJECT 4: THE LOTTERY AND OTHER STORIES BY SHIRLEY JACKSON
PROJECT 5: HOW LONG 'TIL BLACK FUTURE MONTH? BY N.K. JEMISIN
PROJECT 6: THE SHORT STORIES OF OSCAR WILDE BY OSCAR WILDE
PROJECT 7: THE BLUE FAIRY BOOK BY ANDREW LANG
PROJECT 8: GRAND UNION: STORIES BY ZADIE SMITH
PROJECT 9: THE BEST OF ROALD DAHL BY ROALD DAHL
PROJECT 10: LOVE AND FREINDSHIP BY JANE AUSTEN
PROJECT 11: HOMESICK FOR ANOTHER WORLD BY OTTESSA MOSHFEGH
PROJECT 12: BAD FEMINIST BY ROXANE GAY
PROJECT 12.5: DIFFICULT WOMEN BY ROXANE GAY
PROJECT 13: THE SHORT NOVELS OF JOHN STEINBECK
PROJECT 14: FIRST PERSON SINGULAR BY HARUKI MURAKAMI
PROJECT 15: THE ORIGINAL FOLK AND FAIRY TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM
PROJECT 16: A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN BY LUCIA BERLIN
PROJECT 17: SELECTED STORIES OF PHILIP K. DICK

DAY 1: BEYOND LIES THE WUB
is this a pun or am i stupid?
still not sure if it's a pun but i'll tell you what's not stupid - this kickass story!
rating: 4.5

DAY 2: ROOG
two days, two stories including talking animals and species names i hate the sound of.
but also...two days with really fun and clever stories that make me :).
so wins and losses.
rating: 4

DAY 3: PAYCHECK
i already skipped a day...slumping so hard i can't even read short stories if they're on the longer side. just take me out back at this point.
hot damn the way PKD's mind works!
rating: 4

DAY 4: SECOND VARIETY
playing catch-up!
okay damn it's another long one.
the moral of this story is girls rule, boys drool.
rating: 4

DAY 5: IMPOSTER
i mean, the title kind of spoils the whole thing.
rating: 3.5

DAY 6: THE KING OF THE ELVES
you really do have to respect the fact that i have never once managed to read a story on a saturday. seemingly in the whole of this project.
everyone thinks they want to be king of the elves but then they become it and it's all, oh no, my gas station, oh no, the quirky characters about town think i'm crazy, nooo, my best friend is a troll. enough already.
rating: 3

DAY 7: ADJUSTMENT TEAM
caught up on a sunday only to skip a monday and a tuesday. folks, we are falling apart.
this is a whole ride, but the BEST part of the whole thing is the idea that dogs aren't barking at people coming - they bark to summon the event that IS a person's arrival. lit.
rating: 4

DAY 8: FOSTER, YOU'RE DEAD
feels like we'll be living this future within a year. we kind of already are.
not a fun read, for that reason.
rating: 4.5

DAY 9: UPON THE DULL EARTH
PKD's sci-fi stories are like "we are in eternal war. technology is an alien force that will drive us apart and ruin the world around us." and his fantasy stories are like "what's the weirdest thing you can think of? is it this?"
rating: 3.5

DAY 10: AUTOFAC
sounds both robotic and inappropriate.
knowing that a story is objectively interesting but still not being able to get into it...it's a weird feeling.
rating: 3

DAY 11: MINORITY REPORT
so while i've never seen the movie minority report, per se, i have seen the title approximately 1,000 times, and every single one of those times i assumed it was like, a business drama. because of the word report, i guess.
file under no reason to be mind-blowing but still is that the movie is actually presumably based on a PKD story, which is actually presumably sci-fi-adjacent.
even wilder that it's only thirty-eight pages long.
also also, this continually refers to the army as "Army" and every time i think:

other than that i didn't actually like this much.
rating: 3.5

DAY 12: THE DAYS OF PERKY PAT
once again missed a saturday. baby, i'm nothing if not consistent.
if you've ever wondered, "what if adults played dolls and took it so seriously it ruined their lives?" this is the story for you.
rating: 3

DAY 13: PRECIOUS ARTIFACT
nevertheless we persist.
either i am getting tired of these or they're getting less fun or both. but maybe spending day after day reading about the inevitable apocalyptic ruin and dystopian future bearing down upon us wasn't my best idea.
rating: 3.5

DAY 14: A GAME OF UNCHANCE
it's honestly believable to me that all of human civilization could be taken down by an inability to resist a carnival.
rating: 3.5

DAY 15: WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE
according to the dust jacket, this story is the basis for the film Total Recall. PKD was the master at writing stories that inspire well-known movies i've never seen.
this was cool, but i couldn't shake picturing tom cruise, that creepy little elf. and he's not even in Total Recall.
rating: 3.5

DAY 16: FAITH OF OUR FATHERS
feeling a little and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past rn.
speaking of gatsby, to be honest i'm not typically a reader who really cares about how classic white male writers write women, but it is getting REALLY hard to ignore in this one.
rating: 3

DAY 17: THE ELECTRIC ANT
ok...adorable?
oh. never mind. electric ant is a term for "organic robot," and i am disappointed beyond human comprehension.
at least the idea of a currency called frogs is still cute.
rating: 3

DAY 18: A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR US TEMPUNAUTS
the singular female character in this story is simultaneously the most interesting one by a country mile AND a sex object who changes her appearance based on her boyfriend's request and drives him around while commentating on her own inability to drive as a woman.
it is with grave disappointment that i say i'm looking forward to this being over.
rating: 3

DAY 19: THE EXIT DOOR LEADS IN
well, it's a saturday, and i'm actually doing this project. if that doesn't reflect my eagerness to finish this i don't know what does.
this does contain the sentence "It was hell living in the twenty-first century." PKD, you don't know the half of it.
this one finally broke the structure, which i appreciate.
rating: 3.5

DAY 20: RAUTAVAARA'S CASE
alien spaceship cannibal jesus!!!
rating: 4

DAY 21: I HOPE I SHALL ARRIVE SOON
the final day!
i've been thinking both more fondly about this book (i saw an amazon commercial yesterday in which a man was paid to claim it was actually nice to work there and got to thinking about propaganda) and less fondly (i read PKD's wikipedia page and turns out all that on-page misogyny has a real-life counterpart!) so we'll see how this goes.
i do think this is a great name for a last story, though. but that's more credit to the editor than PKD.
solid closer. take me out before the human life span is ever 200 years.
rating: 4

OVERALL
another case where i can't tell if this starts out strong and gets less interesting, or if i just got sick of it. either way it's safe to say i care for PKD's novels over his stories - and that reading them one after the other gets you about sick to death of flat pretty love interest women and normal men thrust into sci-fi heroism and the same very present style.
the rare case in which something is LESS than the sum of its parts.
sheesh.
rating: 3