The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Volume Two: Adjustment Team

Adjustment Team is the second installment of a uniform, five-volume edition of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. This wide-ranging collection contains 26 stories and novellas from the extraordinarily productive years of 1952 and 1953, along with extensive story notes. Included here are "The Cookie Lady," an account of a young boy whose relationship with a lonely widow results in a bizarre act of transformation, "Second Variety" (filmed in 1995 as Screamers), a novella that powerfully evokes a post-apocalyptic society overrun by all-too-human looking robots known as "Claws," and the title story, in which a small accident of timing leads real estate salesman Ed Fletcher to an unexpected confrontation with the malleable nature of a once familiar world. Like its predecessor, The King of the Elves, this new volume offers both an astonishing variety of narrative pleasures and a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of a major American artist.