T he claim Philip Kindred Dick, California nutcase and sci-fi seer, holds on our imagination is a particular one. Dick's signature as a writer is a sort of pre-epileptic hum or aura, an intimation of fast-approaching crisis. Something dislocates, something accelerates, a wire touches another wire and we know -- quiveringly -- that we have to fit ourselves for a lasting ontological derangement. Quality control was never Dick's problem (capable, in his speed-gobbling prime, of writing up to 30 short stories a year, he barely had time to look over his shoulder at the exhaust cloud of output in his wake). But it is ours, and nearly 50 years after it was written, "The Minority Report," Dick's short story, makes for very shaky reading. Soft-boiled, snatching at clichés ("Witwer is making hay, hand over fist," bellows one character unbelievably. "He's got the whole country screaming for your blood!"), it gives off the special low-rent musk of poorly paid hackwork, of a writer selling out for...