High-Concept Sci-Fi Short Story’s a Bit Short on Details

THE MINORITY REPORT

By Philip K. Dick

Pantheon

104 pages, $12.95

An interviewer once asked Philip K. Dick about the difference between so-called mainstream fiction and the subgenre of science fiction. Dick, who’d recently seen one of his books being published in both formats, wryly noted that the sci-fi edition sold for less.

In the 30-year period that ended in 1982 with his death at 53, Dick wrote 36 novels and five collections of stories that transformed him from an obscure author of pulp sci-fi into a kind of cult hero. Strange and memorable books like “The Man in the High Castle” (1962) and “Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said” (1974) turned casual readers into devoted fans. And stories about Dick himself exercised an equal fascination: his distrust of authority, his misguided attempts to expand his consciousness with hallucinogenic drugs, and the inexplicable, sometimes mystical experiences he had at various points in his life that left him wondering if he was in touch with an alternative reality or suffering from psychotic episodes.

Not surprisingly, some of his visionary fiction has inspired filmmakers, most notably his book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” that served as the basis for Ridley Scott’s 1982 film “Blade Runner” (which lacked, among other things, the electric sheep of the original). Scheduled for release this summer, comes a film version of his short story “The Minority Report,” directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise. In honor of this, Pantheon Books has reissued this longish short story (first published in 1956) on its own.

Set in the aftermath of a major (but far from civilization-destroying) world war, “The Minority Report” introduces us to Commissioner John Anderton, the founder and head of an impressively effective policing system known as Precrime. By catching would-be criminals before they have the opportunity to commit their crimes, Precrime has reduced the murder rate to a single one in five years. As Anderton’s bright new assistant, Witwer, sums it up: “With the aid of your precog mutants, you’ve boldly and successfully abolished the postcrime punitive system of jails and fines. As we all realize, punishment was never much of a deterrent, and could scarcely have afforded comfort to a victim already dead.” On the other hand, as Anderton himself acknowledges, the putative criminals who’ve been placed in preventive detention camps have not actually broken the law and consider themselves innocent.

Then, the unthinkable happens: Anderton sees his own name come up on a list of future murderers. A minor glitch? An indication of something more fundamentally wrong with the system? Or, a malevolent trick by someone who wants to get rid of him? As Anderton scrambles to figure out what’s happening while keeping one step ahead of the system he helped create, former certainties dissolve. Is young Witwer scheming to get him out of the way so he can take over his job and maybe even his wife, Lisa, an attractive policewoman? And whose side is Lisa on, anyway? Or, is someone or something else going on?

“Which means more to you,” Lisa demands at one point, “your own personal safety or the existence of the system?” “My safety,” replies Anderton, without hesitation. But his confidence, even about a question as basic as this, will later be shaken. And so, too, the reader’s idea of what’s going on in this story. It’s not simply that the plot itself is unpredictable, full of twists and turns, but rather that the allegorical focus keeps shifting until, by the end, it is all but dissipated in a welter of contradiction and confusion.

Some of the contradictions offer food for thought: Yes, there is something alarming about a system that detains people before they do anything wrong; but perhaps it’s a small price to pay for a system that has saved the lives of countless innocent victims. As for confusion, one of the central insights that Dick has to offer his readers is his profound skepticism about our ability to know for certain what is real and what is not.

In other respects, however, Dick does not seem to have fully exploited the potential of his own material here. Certainly, he has not portrayed his characters with any degree of depth. Nor has he fully explored all the ramifications of their situation or the implications of the themes he has introduced. In basing the Precrime System on the precognitive ESP faculties of idiots savants rather than on the use of, say, psychological, sociological or genetic paradigms, Dick short-circuits some potentially fascinating questions about the limits of science and social science in predicting human behavior.

What first appears to be an allegory about freedom versus security, fairness versus welfare, the individual versus society and doubt versus trust soon narrows down to an unnecessarily complicated explanation of the workings of precognition. And in the final showdown between Anderton and the man who may be his nemesis, it’s not entirely clear what either of them stands for. Yet these flaws are finally not a fatal weakness.

Fans of Philip K. Dick tend to be imaginative people, and in this story he has left a great deal to the reader’s imagination.