The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories

Reader reviewed by Mairi

This is, as the title suggests, a book of short stories by Philip K. Dick, many of which deal with similar themes. The title story, Minority Report, takes place in a world where there is no murder because people called the pre-cognitives (pre-cogs for short) predict them before they happen. It was excellent (I can see why they wanted to make a movie out of it) but, being a nerd, my favorite story was Waterspider, in which the pre-cogs are revealed as the old science fiction greats- Wells, Asimov, and the like.

I read this book because the school librarian pointed it out to me after I mentioned that we had seen Minority Report in English class. I had not known that the movie was based on a short story (after reading it, I'm still not convinced) but naturally I wanted to read it. I checked it out and read it over the course of about two days.

I'm not surprised that I liked this book, as I have always had a weak spot for old sci-fi.