The Electric Ant

Well, it is finally January, and I still can't decide what it is I want to read. I've been reading The Stand, and I'm on pace for January with this epic read. Since I finished How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe I've bounced around trying to decide what I want to invest my time in next. I've read parts of Galactic Pot Healer, Transition, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, but nothing seems to hold my interest. And time is running short, the busy season at work is almost upon us, so I don't have a lot of time to invest; ergo I guess it's time to implement my "one short story a week" strategy.

I received The Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick for Xmas, so I read "The Electric Ant."

Take out his spare ribs for $100.

Garson Poole is the protagonist; he just lost his hand in a hovercar accident. He wakes up in the hospital to find out that he can't be treated there, because he's not human at all: he's a robot. And hospitals are for people, not robots, so he moves on to a robot repair shop. Garson winds up being billed for his treatment at the hospital for the time up until they realized he was a robot; just a funny little detail I liked.

What happens when an android changes his programming, especially in regards to how he perceives his own reality? I won't go into detail in my review here; suffice it to say, I had been looking forward to reading this story for a long, long time, and it more than exceeded my expectations. PKD manages to push all of my favorite PKD buttons in a story just 10 pages long or so: robots who don't know they're robots; identity crisis; paranoia; altered reality; twist ending.

Highly recommended.

Check back at the Reader next week when I review another short story. I don't know which one yet, but I'm going to try to (a) read one per week; (b) never read stories in any two consecutive weeks by the same author; and (c) try not to repeat authors within six weeks of a story by the same author.

Now go read something for yourself today!
rr