Reading Philip K. Dick is to gradually have the ground under you tilt away from you. As you keep reading, the ground feels the same, still solid and supportive, but before you know it the tilt is just enough that you slide off your feet and land someplace you don’t recognize. Just a moment before you thought you were in control but Dick has taken over. The stories in this collection do a nice job representing Dick’s strength as a writer. My favorite is THE VARIABLE MAN where decisions are not made based on a human intuition for what’s right but on the probability of success. A sudden unexpected variable throws everything out of whack. Next favorite would be THE DEFENDERS where the Earth has been destroyed by war and the remaining combatants strike at each other from societies underground. Both these stories and much of his work deal with mankind abdicating his responsibility toward other humans, toward his planet and even himself and the inescapable price to be paid. This particular collection I got free on my Nook and is not the best. A couple of the stories are clunkers like THE EYES HAVE IT and THE CRYSTAL CRYPT but the highs are very high.