Customer Reviews

The Minority Report

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Minority Report is one of Philip K. Dick's masterpieces, and one of the greatest science fiction stories ever written. It is tightly-written, action-packed, and fast-paced - everything one could ask for in adventure SF. So why the low rating? Well... it's just a short story. I'm not sure of the exact length, but it's something along the line of 30 or 40 pages. What this edition attempts to do is fluff the book out with a bunch of screwy packaging, filling it out to a somewhat respectable book length. What it is, obviously, is a cheap and sorry attempt by the publisher to cash in on the recent Spielberg movie based on this story. Now, the story itself is certainly great and essential; I highly reccommend you read it if you have not already. However, there are much better (not to mention more economical ways) of acquiring it. The also recently-released book "The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories" or the older "Philip K. Dick Reader" both contain The Minority Report, as well as a series of other worthwhile stories. You would be far wiser to purchase one of those books than this cheap piece of marketing.

With all the hype of the movie coming out, I wanted to read the original story beforehand. Being that I work at a book store, I was able to read it during my 1 hour lunch break. The layout is definitely unique and eye-catching, but hard to read (and hold) vertically. If it was a book of pictures then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. However, the story itself deserves the unique layout to complement it. It is a very intriguing story and since it is a short story the events kept moving along at a nice pace. As a short story, it is more likely that the movie will actually expand on the original story. Nevertheless, the story does make you think along with Anderton as he figures out what happened in the reports. With that said, I don't think our store has sold a copy of this version yet. But we have sold out of the book containing "The Minority Report" and other stories by Philip K. Dick. Obviously, people know a better value when they see it. Buying this version would simply be for the novelty of the layout--at least at this price.

I love "The Minority Report," and other stories by Philip Dick, but this version is just plain bad.

First off, the book is designed to be read vertically with the book open like a centerfold.

Second, you are getting only one short story (about 30 pages) for [a price]. It would better to buy a Philip Dick short story collection that has "The Minority Report in it."

Very Bad

+++++

This short science fiction story was published in 1956 and written by Philip K. Dick (1928 to 1982).

In the future, murderers are caught before they actually commit the murder. How is this achieved? By harnessing the extraordinary power of mutant humans who have the ability of precognition (the perception of an event, a murder in the story's case, before it occurs). These mutant humans are called "precogs."

The police force utilizes these precogs (there are three) by developing a "Precrime" unit where the precogs are connected to a bank of computers that reads the precog visions and processes the future murders that will happen. The only part of the story that is dated is that punch cards are used in the computers. Otherwise, this story could have been written for the present (2005).

Police Commissioner John Anderton finds that this new Precrime system is working well until the precogs have a prevision that the commissioner himself will commit a murder. The rest of the story is about the commissioner running from the Precrime unit and trying to find proof of his innocence.

Now that you know what the story is about you might ask why it has such a strange title. When two or all three precogs agree on a prevision of murder, a "majority report" is generated. If one precog disagrees, then a "minority report" is generated. As we are told in the story:

"Unanimity of all three precogs is a hoped for but seldom-achieved phenomenon...It is much more common to obtain a collaborative majority report of two precogs, plus a minority report of some slight variation, usually with reference to time and place, from the third mutant. This is explained by the theory of multiple-futures. If only one time-path existed, precognitive information would be of no importance, since no possibility would exist, in possessing this information, of altering the future."

It is this minority report that the commissioner is after to prove his innocence.

The story is an interesting and fast read. It can be appreciated not only by science fiction fans but mystery fans as well.

The movie "Minority Report" directed by Steven Spielberg expands this short story. Spielberg and friends effectively create a futuristic society only hinted at in Dick's short story.

Finally, there are two main problems with the book. First, the layout. It flips like a legal pad when read. I found this unnatural and distracting since I'm used to book pages flipping from right to left not up and down. Second, the price. This book costs just over $10.00. And you get only one story! An anthology of Dick's works that I found sells at a higher price but has twenty-one of his short stories (including this one). The price works out to 80 cents per story.

Thus my recommendation is to not buy this book new (unless you have money to burn). Instead:

(1) Buy this book used. As of the date of this review, used copies are selling for 1 cent!!
(2) Check out a Dick anthology (that contains this short story) from the library. Then photocopy this short story.

In conclusion, this short story is a very interesting and forms the basis of a good science fiction movie. However, the book itself is laid out badly and is too expensive.

** 1/3

(book first published 2002; short story published 1956; other Philip K. Dick short stories; 10 chapters; 105 pages)

+++++

Just want to warn people to ignore dolts who claim this book doesn't help them understand the movie, or who think the book was written after the movie, or who think the brilliant author Philip K. Dick is still alive. This is an incredible short story, written decades ago, but if I were you I'd buy an anthology of Dick's stories and stay away from this weird marketing gimmick. The only merit it has, perhaps, is as a collector's item for fans of things like that. I enjoyed the spin Spielberg and his fellow writers used for the story, but found the movie version less interesting than the story. If you really want to bend your mind, buy a Philip K. Dick anthology or his "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich." Cheers!

There is an incredible amount of insight that went into this short story. Everyone likes the idea of fighting crime: politicians get re-elected fighting it; police receive praise for attacking it at every nook and corner; citizens feel safer when, as a society, we are defeating it.

Given this context, what would happen if a politician were to endorse the idea of locking up criminals before they engange in their criminal acts? It sounds good: after all, aren't they likely to engange in the act if they are locked up?

Forget the issue as to whether such acts are constitutional (they clearly they are not), the question is, is it good policy? Dick points to the idea that it clearly isn't, and that while it may seem like a good idea to completely eradicate crime, the practice of doing so would clearly create far more harm than good.

For instance, if we label someone as extremely likely to engange in the act and arrest them before they committ it, we are saying that people essentially have no free-will and we eliminate the possibility that they may change their thinking before they engange in the behavior. What we would be doing is, in a sense, locking people up for poor thoughts--no--dangerous thoughts.

This is an important lesson for all those closet utopians who believe that an intellectual can come up with an idea and cure all of society's ills. This book clearly errs in being skeptical of those in power who would sacrifice our freedom in the name of temporary security. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for temporal safety deserve neither to be safe or free."

Michael Gordon

I'm reading several complaints here about this little book containing only the one story and nothing else, and being pricey to boot. But, you know something? So what? The book is cleverly designed and laid out, it's a cute size, and you STILL get a good hundred-plus pages to read. Okay, so maybe a bigger font was used and there are larger than usual spaces between lines to stretch the story to a decent number of pages. But again, so what? It's easier to read that way. I bought this little book both as a way to experience the original story before seeing the new movie and to obtain an interesting-looking movie tie-in. It really is an eye-catching book. Oh, the story? I liked it just fine. What is interesting is that the story itself doesn't make any overt judgements about that whole future world and its "pre-crime" system of law enforcement. The characters simply find ways to deal with the problems created by the system, and happily move on (well, those that survive, that is). I'm thinking that the movie will have more to say about the dangers of trusting technology too much and giving the police too much power. Which could mean that the movie could be even more complex and interesting than the original story, or conversely, too "preachy" and overstated. We'll see. But don't be afraid to pick up this book. Despite some of the comments here, I nevertheless think it's an interesting, fun way to get hold of the original story.

I just read The Minority Report and thought it was a fairly good story. I liked the way the whole system was set up and thought he covered details really well without going into excessive detail. It is a short story and events happen rather fast but I don't think it takes away from the story any. Plus, I rather think the design and layout of the pages were great (easy to read while laying down! huzzah!) and made the feel of the book and story interesting.

There is some confusion with this title, Volume Four of The Collected Short Stories of P.K.D. Originally published in 1987 as "Vol. 4: The days of Perky Pat", it was changed to "Minority report" to benefit of the movie. I have the 2000 Gollancz edition, with an uncredited cover by Chris Moore (that appears in a Moore book as "The days of Perky Pat"), and in the copyrights page says: previously published as "The little black box", which must be a mistake, as that is the original title of Vol. 5 of the collected short stories, changed to "We can remember it for you wholesale" after the Total Recall movie.
There are 19 short stories, and it reads as a book should. Contents:
Autofac
Service Call
Captive Market
The Mold of Yancy
The Minority Report
Recall Mechanism
The Unreconstructed M
Explorers We
War Game
If There Were No Benny Cemoli
Novelty Act
Waterspider
What the Dead Men Say
Orpheus with Clay Feet
The Days of Perky Pat
Stand-By
What'll We Do with Ragland Park?
Oh, to Be a Blobel!
All this refers to the Underwood-Miller and Millenium-Gollancz editions. There is another five-volume collection by Citadel-Twilight, with basically the same stories.

Reading this book is like watching a short film. It takes about two hours to finish and each minute is filled with heart-thumping situations. There are so many suspects in the story that the mind works overtime in such a short span. It is very interesting and a good detection exercise. Philip K. Dick was a marvelous science fiction author and this particular tale of his is captivating. A police commissioner finds himself in trouble on the day his new assistant arrives at the office. He starts suspecting everybody due to his age and politics but eventually answers his own questions. At the end, with a little bit of twists and turns here and there, he gets what he wants. The book layout is different from a normal design. At times it is difficult to hold it and turn the pages. But, that doesn't change the beauty of the narration.