Inspired By PKD

This collection is in the genre of near future science fiction. You can read the first 20% of this collection in several different formats through Smashwords. A short excerpt is found below.

Inspired By PKD

Title info: Philip K. Dick was one of the greatest and most influential science fiction writers of his time, of all time. Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Man In The High Castle, VALIS; all came from this man’s brilliant imagination. I have read PKD’s early novels. They have inspired me to write stories that are part PKD and part me. This is how I stand on the shoulders of giants. Rating: MEDIUM controversy.

Link to this title:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/937024

Excerpt from Inspired By PKD:

All Philip Decker wanted to do was score some weed. He’d been walking around the dead streets of downtown Los Angeles for about an hour by then, but since it was nearing nine o’clock that night, all he was coming to were closed dispensary shops. Thanks the bands of hoodlums that kept raiding those places once the sun came down, the normally busy venues were closing up way too early, instead of staying open until ten or eleven like they were supposed to.

Through their brightly lit storefronts, Phil saw secured shelves zealously guarding what he wanted, in packs or pouches with a million zany names for the synthetic blends. Or more accurately said; Phil was staring at what he could afford to buy with his meager twenty bucks. He sighed, rapping on the window lightly and uselessly as he stared past the black iron bars and thick pane of glass, before he moseyed on in search of another, hopefully open dispensary.

At twenty-five, Phil was a typical young man for that day and age. He’d done a couple of years of college before he’d dropped out due to the high tuitions, missing in getting a good degree but succeeding in acquiring a huge amount of debt. The reason he’d left his pursuit of higher education was because, in the liberal state of California, white boys like him were restricted from getting technical degrees. Instead, the best jobs, or at least the jobs with the highest pay, were being awarded to the children of illegal migrants or to qualified young people from other countries, because, as the recent Cali slogan went, ‘We Are Committed To Ending White Privilege.’

The result was that Phil currently worked as a nighttime clerk at a mini-mart and gas station, in a bad part of town where Newly Entitled Asians, Hispanics and Negroes could freely, and legally, come in to poke fun at Phil for his ‘obvious’ connections to the hated ideas of White Supremacy and the Nazis of World War II. It didn’t matter that Phil had never sworn any allegiance to any racist organization; the color of his skin was enough proof of guilt. Thanks to that, and to his Armenian storeowner and manager, Phil worked only three days per week and could barely afford to pay his rent. Never mind that Phil shared a two-bedroom apartment with four other white guys (and slept either in the living room or, if company came over, in the bathtub), and that his creditors kept siphoning the funds out of Phil’s bank account with zero remorse. All that pressure on his young mind was enough to give Phil the craving for weed, but alas, he didn’t have enough money for the natural version, only for the synthetic GMO shit, and even worse all the fucking shops were closed.

Phil meandered down the dark, dreary sidewalk in search of another dispensary. Because Los Angeles was a Sanctuary City, each and every street had a small community of illegal migrants living out of doors in tents or cardboard shelters, or sturdier structures if the squatters could afford them. Some of these makeshift domiciles had actual postal addresses on them now. It wasn’t as bad as San Francisco, which had become a real shit-hole thanks to the tens of thousands of squatters and homeless derelicts, where people were running around stabbing each other with infected needles that the local government was still handing out, but it was getting there. No, despite the strong stink of shit and urine in Phil’s immediate vicinity, it still wasn’t as bad as Frisco, not yet. Anaheim, for example, was getting pretty bad, as Phil had seen for himself recently when he’d visited his parents. Phil had a buddy in San Diego; maybe he could go there if he got kicked out of his place.

As Phil strode along, he kept a wary eye on the dozens of squatters, even as they kept an eye on him. Not that long ago, the Los Angeles City Council, made up of more illegals than legals, had decreed that minorities could not be at fault for attacking whites, even if the attacks were unprovoked. Apparently, the idea was to turn Los Angeles into drug-infested and violent Columbia or racism-infested and violent South Africa. The city council’s harsh decree was still tied up in federal courts, so the likelihood of an assault on Phil’s person was about fifty-fifty, especially if he accidentally came upon any rabid gang members. These people around him, however, looked to be settling down for the night, drinking their cheap alcohol and stoking their little campfires, and not ready to jump on Phil’s back to start tearing his hair out.

Phil’s anxieties increased dramatically when he saw an ancient Cadillac cruising by in the far lane. It was a relic with a white top and, thanks to the low street lighting, either a root beer brown or dark orange body. The Cadillac slowed and made a broad turn at the intersection, creeping toward the sidewalk Phil was on as if a drive-by shooting was about to happen. Phil glanced in all directions, knowing he’d gone far out of his usual haunts while in his desperate search for weed. He kept walking, more hurriedly than before, hoping the Cadillac and its menace were meant for someone else.

“Hey, sugar, come talk to me.” A sweet, thick voice crossed the divide between man and vehicle, from the front passenger’s side.