Today’s Short Story: “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon” – Philip K. Dick

Details can be vital to a story. Details allow worlds to feel lived in, characters to breathe. But details needn’t be intricacies.

In Philip K. Dick’s science fiction short story “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon” the details enrich the story’s future, planets and technologies with plausibility, but eschew needless complexity. This isn’t to say the story is “simple” (hardly) or basic, just that it’s direct. I’m also not saying that complexity and intricacy are inherently bad. They can be misplaced, however. Or abused to mask story flaws, like an overly complicated cologne might be an attempt to overwhelm your sense of smell, trying to hide that the fragrance simply isn’t appealing. READ MORE