3.5 stars based on average of my individual ratings (see below).

I "swapped Dicks" (HAH) with my friend Samantha (I'd bought her this collection). I liked a lot of the first half and some of the last half started to lose me. PKD is great with concepts and tantalizing world-building but I never like his characters. For me they're just there as filler and as a way to demonstrate the world and concepts. Rarely do I feel any sympathy for them or identify with them. The men are often chauvinist and having affairs, the women either dumb but beautiful or shrewd but psychotic. Their breasts are given jarringly unnecessary attention.

I don't think PKD had many good experiences with women. In the notes in the back he talks about how his wife wouldn't let him work in the house (why, lady?) and he had to rent a shack that was so cold in winter that his ink froze. He talked about being really lonely and feeling isolated from the house and honestly I feel sorry for the guy.

But the ideas! PKD should have been a better writer's muse. There's a reason the adaptations are usually much better than the source material in his case.

PKD is big into "we solved this problem for the people's own good but the solution robs them of some fundamental human quality or freedom." It's crazy how many of the concepts that terrified him are things we might benefit from nowadays. On Twitter I joked:

"PKD: Automated factories that take over all production and resist human intervention! Brainwashing that ensures interpersonal harmony! Mood modifying machines!