The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Stories

Notes

All notes in italics are by Philip K. Dick. The year when the note was written appears in parentheses following the note. Most of these notes were written as story notes for the collections THE BEST OF PHILIP K. DICK (published 1977) and THE GOLDEN MAN (published 1980). A few were written at the request of editors publishing or reprinting a PKD story in a book or magazine.

When there is a date following the name of a story, it is the date the manuscript of that story was first received by Dick’s agent, per the records of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Absence of a date means no record is available. The name of a magazine followed by a month and year indicates the first published appearance of a story. An alternate name following a story indicates Dick’s original name for the story, as shown in the agency records.

These five volumes include all of Philip K. Dick’s short fiction, with the exception of short novels later published as or included in novels, childhood writings, and unpublished writings for which manuscripts have not been found. The stories are arranged as closely as possible in chronological order of composition; research for this chronology was done by Gregg Rickman and Paul Williams.

THE LITTLE BLACK BOX (“From Ordinary Household Objects”) 5/6/63. Worlds of Tomorrow, Aug 1964.

I made use of this story when I wrote my novel DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Actually, the idea is better put forth in the story. Here, a religion is regarded as a menace to all political systems; therefore it, too, is a kind of political system, perhaps even an ultimate one. The concept of caritas (or agape) shows up in my writing as the key to the authentic human. The android, which is the unauthentic human, the mere reflex machine, is unable to experience empathy. In this story it is never clear whether Mercer is an invader from some other world. But he must be; in a sense all religious leaders are… but not from another planet as such. (1978)

THE WAR WITH THE FNOOLS Galactic Outpost, Spring 1964.

Well, once again we are invaded. And, humiliatingly, by a life form which is absurd. My colleague Tim Powers once said that Martians could invade us simply by putting on funny hats, and we’d never notice. It’s a sort of low-budget invasion. I guess we’re at the point where we can be amused by the idea of Earth being invaded. (And this is when they really zap you.) (1978)

A GAME OF UNCHANCE 11/9/63. Amazing, July 1964.

A carnival is feral; another carnival shows up and is pitted against the first one; and the antithetical interaction is preplanned in such a way that the first carnival wins. It’s as if the two opposing forces that underlie all change in the universe are rigged; in favor of thanatos, the dark force, yin or strife, which is to say, the force of destruction. (1978)

PRECIOUS ARTIFACT 12/9/63. Galaxy, Oct 1964.

This story utilized a peculiar logic which I generally employ, which Professor Patricia Warrick pointed out to me. First you have Y. Then you do a cybernetics flipflop and you have null-Y. Okay, now you reverse it again and have null-null-Y. Okay, the question is: Does null-null Y equal Y3? Or is it a deepening of null-Y? In this story, what appears to be the case is Y but we find out the opposite is true (null-Y). But then that turns out not to be true, so are we back to Y? Professor Warrick says that my logic winds up with Y equals null-Y. I don’t agree, but I’m not sure what I do wind up with. Whatever it is, in terms of logic, it is contained in this particular story. Either I’ve invented a whole new logic or, ahem, I’m not playing with a full deck. (1978)

RETREAT SYNDROME 12/23/63. Worlds of Tomorrow, Jan 1965.

A TERRAN ODYSSEY 3/17/64 [previously unpublished; put together by PKD from sections of DR. BLOODMONEY].

YOUR APPOINTMENT WILL BE YESTERDAY 8/27/65. Amazing, Aug 1966. [Included in adapted form in PKD’s novel COUNTER-CLOCK WORLD.]

HOLY QUARREL 9/13/65. Worlds of Tomorrow, May 1966.

NOT BY ITS COVER 9/21/65. Famous Science Fiction, Summer 1968.

Here I presented what used to be a wish on my part: that the Bible was true. Obviously, I was at a sort of halfway point between doubt and faith. Years later I’m still in that position; I’d like the Bible to be true, but—well, maybe if it isn’t we can make it so. But, alas, it’s going to take plenty of work to do it. (1978)

RETURN MATCH 10/14/65. Galaxy, Feb 1967.

The theme of dangerous toys runs like a tattered thread throughout my writing. The dangerous disguised as the innocent… and what could be more innocent than a toy? This story makes me think of a set of huge speakers I looked at last week; they cost six thousanddollars and were larger than refrigerators. Our joke about them was that if you didn’t go to the audio store to see them, they’d come to see you. (1978)

FAITH OF OUR FATHERS 1/17/66. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison, Garden City, 1967. [Hugo Award nominee]

The title is that of an old hymn. I think, with this story, I managed to offend everybody, which seemed at the time to be a good idea, but which I’ve regretted since. Communism, drugs, sex, God—I put it all together, and it’s been my impression since that when the roof fell in on me years later, this story was in some eerie way involved. (1976)

I don’t advocate any of the ideas in Faith Of Our Fathers; I don’t, for example, claim that the Iron Curtain countries will win the cold war—or morally ought to. One theme in the story, however, seems compelling to me, in view of recent experiments with hallucinogenic drugs: the theological experience, which so many who have taken LSD have reported. This appears to me to be a true new frontier; to a certain extent the religious experience can now be scientifically studied… and, what is more, may be viewed as part hallucination but containing other, real components. God, as a topic in science fiction, when it appeared at all, used to be treated polemically, as in OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET. But I prefer to treat it as intellectually exciting. What if, through psychedelic drugs, the religious experience becomes commonplace in the life of intellectuals? The old atheism, which seemed to many of us—including me—valid in terms of our experiences, or rather lack of experiences, would have to step momentarily aside. Science fiction, always probing what is about to be thought, become, must eventually tackle without preconceptions a future neo-mystical society in which theology constitutes as major a force as in the medieval period. This is not necessarily a backward step, because now these beliefs can be tested—forced to put up or shut up. I, myself, have no real beliefs about God; only my experience that He is present… subjectively, of course; but the inner realm is real too. And in a science fiction story one projects what has been a personal inner experience into a milieu; it becomes socially shared, hence discussable. The last word, however, on the subject of God may have already been said: in A.D. 840 by John Scotus Erigena at the court of the Frankish king Charles the Bald. “We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.” Such a penetrating—and Zen—mystical view, arrived at so long ago, will be hard to top; in my own experiences with psychedelic drugs I have had precious tiny illumination compared with Erigena. (1966)

THE STORY TO END ALL STORIES FOR HARLAN ELLISON’S ANTHOLOGY DANGEROUS VISIONS Niekas, Fall 1968.

THE ELECTRIC ANT 12/4/68. Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct 1969.

Again the theme: How much of what we call “reality” is actually out there or rather within our own head? The ending of this story has always frightened me… image of the rushing wind, the sound of emptiness. As if the character hears the final fate of the world itself. (1976)

CADBURY, THE BEAVER WHO LACKED written 12/71 [previously unpublished].

A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR US TEMPUNAUTS 2/13/73. Final Stage, edited by Edward L. Ferman and Barry N. Malzberg, New York, 1974.

In this story I felt a vast weariness over the space program, which had thrilled us so at the start—especially the first lunar landing—and then had been forgotten and virtually shutdown, a relic of history. I wondered, if time-travel became a “program” would it suffer the same fate? Or was there an even worse possibility latent in it, within the very nature of the paradoxes of time-travel? (1976)

The essence of the time-travel story is a confrontation of some sort, best of all by the person with himself. Really, this is the drama of much good fiction anyhow, except that in such a story as A Little Something For Us Tempunauts the moment in which the man meets himself face-to-face permits an alienation that could not occur in any other variety of writing… alienation and not understanding, as one might expect. Addison Doug-One rides alive on the casket containing the corpse of Addison Doug-Two and knows it, knows he is now two persons—he is split as in a physical schizophrenia. And his mind also is divided rather than united; he gains no insight from this event, neither of himself nor of that other Addison Doug who can no longer reason or problem-solve, but can only lie there inert and in darkness. This irony is just one of the enormous number of ironies possible in time-travel stories; naively, one would think that to travel into the future and return would lead to an increase in knowledge rather than to a loss of it. The three tempunauts go ahead in time, return, and are trapped, perhaps forever, by ironies and within ironies, the greatest one of which, I think, is their own bewilderment at their own actions. It is as if the increase in information brought about by such a technological achievement—information as to exactly what is going to happen—decreases true understanding. Perhaps Addison Doug knows too much.

In writing this story I felt a weary sadness of my own, and fell into the space (I should say time) that the characters are in, more so than usual. I felt a futility about futility—there is nothing more defeating than a strong awareness of defeat, and as I wrote I realized that what for us remains merely a psychological problem—over-awareness of the likelihood of failing and the lethal feedback from this—would for a time-traveler be instantly converted into an existential, physical horror-chamber. We, when we’re depressed, are fortunately imprisoned within our heads; once time-travel becomes a reality, however, this self-defeating psychological attitude could spell doom on a scale beyond calculation. Here again, science fiction allows a writer to transfer what usually is an internal problem into an external environment; he projects it in the form of a society, a planet, with everyone stuck, so to speak, in what formerly was one unique brain. I don’t blame some readers for resenting this, because the brains of some of us are unpleasant places to be in… but on the other hand, what a valuable tool this is for us: to grasp that we do not all reatty see the universe in the same way, or, in a sense, the same universe at all. Addison Doug’s dismal world suddenly spreads out and becomes the world of many people. But unlike a person reading a story, who can and will finish it and abolish his inclusion in the author’s world, the people in this story are stuck fast forever. This is a tyranny not yet possible so readily… but, when you consider the power of the coercive propaganda apparatus of the modern-day state (when it’s the enemy state we call it “brainwashing”) you might wonder if it isn’t a question of degree. Our glorious leaders of right now cannot trap us in extensions of their heads merely by lugging some old VW motor parts around, but the alarm of the characters in this story as to what is befalling them might rightly be our own alarm in a lesser way.

Addison Doug expresses the desire “to see no more summers.” We should all object; noone should drag us, however subtly or for whatever evidently benign reasons, into that view or that desire: we should individually and collectively yearn to see as many summers as we can, even in the imperfect world we are living in now. (1973)

THE PRE-PERSONS 12/20/73. Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct 1974.

In this I incurred the absolute hate of Joanna Russ who wrote me the nastiest letter I’ve ever received; at one point she said she usually offered to beat up people (she didn’t use the word “people”) who expressed opinions such as this. I admit that this story amounts to special pleading, and I am sorry to offend those who disagree with me about abortion on demand. I also got some unsigned hate mail, some of it not from individuals but from organizations promoting abortion on demand. Well, I have always managed to get myself into hot water. Sorry, people. But for the pre-person’s sake I am not sorry. I stand where I stand: “Hier steh’ Ich; Ich kann nicht anders,” as Martin Luther is supposed to have said. (1978)

THE EYE OF THE SYBIL 5/15/75 [previously unpublished].

THE DAY MR. COMPUTER FELL OUT OF ITS TREE written summer 1977 [previously unpublished].

THE EXIT DOOR LEADS IN 6/21/79. Rolling Stone College Papers, Fall 1979.

CHAINS OF AIR, WEB OF AETHER (“The Man Who Knew How to Lose”) 7/9/79. Stellar #5, edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey, New York, 1980. [Included in PKD’s novel THE DIVINE INVASION.]

STRANGE MEMORIES OF DEATH 3/27/80. Interzone, Summer 1984.

I HOPE I SHALL ARRIVE SOON (titled “Frozen Journey” in its magazine appearance; “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon” is PKD’s title) 4/24/80. Playboy, Dec 1980. [Playboy Award winner]

RAUTAVAARA’S CASE 5/13/80. Omni, Oct 1980.

THE ALIEN MIND The Yuba City High Times, 20 Feb 1981.

The basic premise dominating my stories is that if I ever met an extraterrestrial intelligence (more commonly called a “creature from outer space”) I would find I had more to say to it than to my next-door neighbor. What the people on my block do is bring in their newspaper and mail and drive off in their cars. They have no other outdoor habits except mowing their lawns. I went next door one time to check into the indoor habits. They were watching TV. Could you, in writing a sf novel, postulate a culture on these premises? Surely such a society doesn’t exist, except maybe in my imagination. And there isn’t much imagination involved.

The way out of living in the middle of an under-imaginative figment is to make contact, in your own mind, with other civilizations as yet unborn. You’re doing the same thing when you read sf that I’m doing when I write it; your neighbor probably is as alien a life form to you as mine is to me. The stories in this collection are attempts at reception—at listening to voices from another place, very far off, sounds quite faint but important. They only come late at night, when the background din and gabble of our world have faded out. When the newspapers have been read, the TV sets shut off, the cars parked in their various garages. Then, faintly, I hear voices from another star. (I clocked it once, and reception is best between 3:00 A.M. and 4:45 A.M.). Of course, I don’t usually tell people this when they ask, “Say, where do you get your ideas?” I just say I don’t know. It’s safer.

Let’s take these stories, then, and assume them to be (one) garbled receptions mixed with pure inventiveness, and (two) an alternative to dog food commercials in living color on TV. Both bypass what is immediately available. Both assumptions reach out as far as possible. Both sweep the void and return with something to report: that the universe is full of scheming, living, busy entities intent on their own pursuits, oblivious to the interests of others, alienated from their next-door neighbors, and, most of all, wondering who they can contact when all else fails. Wondering who lives as they do; wondering, maybe, about us.

The majority of these stories were written when my life was simpler and made sense. I could tell the difference between the real world and the world I wrote about. I used to dig in the garden, and there is nothing fantastic or ultradimensional about crab grass… unless you are an sf writer, in which case pretty soon you are viewing crab grass with suspicion. What are its real motives? And who sent it in the first place?

The question I always found myself asking was, What is it really? It only looks like crab grass. That’s what they want us to think it is. One day the crab grass suits will fall off and their true identity will be revealed. By then the Pentagon will be full of crab grass and it’ll be too late. The crab grass, or what we took to be crab grass, will dictate terms. My earlier stories had such premises. Later, when my personal life became complicated and full of unfortunate convolutions, worries about crab grass got lost somewhere. I became educated to the fact that the greatest pain does not come zooming down from a distant planet, but up from the depths of the heart. Of course, both could happen; your wife and child could leave you, and you could be sitting alone in your empty house with nothing to live for, and in addition the Martians could bore through the roof and get you.

As to what the stories in this collection mean, I will not cite the usual copout that the story must speak for itself, but rather the copout that I don’t really know. I mean, know above and beyond what it says, which is what any reader can extract from them. One time a whole class of kids wrote me about my story The Father-Thing, and every kid wanted to know where I got my idea. That was easy, because it was based on childhood memories of my father; but later on, in rereading my answers, I noticed that I never said the same thing twice. With all intent at honesty, I gave each kid a different answer. I guess this is what makes a fiction writer. Give him six facts and he’ll link them together first one way and then another, on and on until you forcibly stop him.

Literary criticism, probably, should be left to the critics, since that’s their job. One time I read in a distinguished book of criticism on sf that in my novel THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE the pin which the character Juliana used to hold her blouse together symbolized all that which held together the themes, ideas, and subplots of the novel itself—which I hadn’t known when I wrote that section. But what if Juliana, also not knowing it, had removed the pin? Would the novel have fallen apart? Or at least come open in the middle and exposed a whole lot of cleavage (which was why her boyfriend insisted she put on the pin in the first place)? I will do my best, though, to unpin these stories.

The advantage of the story over the novel is that in the story you catch the protagonist at the climax of his life, but in the novel you’ve got to follow him from the day he was born to the day he dies (or nearly so). Open any novel at random and usually what is happening is either dull or unimportant. The only way to redeem this is through style. It is not what happened but how it is told. Pretty soon the professional novelist acquires the skill of describing everything with style, and content vanishes. In a story, though, you can’t get away with this. Something important has to happen. I think this is why gifted professional fiction writers wind up writing novels. Once their style is perfected, they have it made. Virginia Woolf, for instance, woundup writing about nothing at all.

In these stories, though, I remember that in every case before I sat down to write, I had to have an idea. There had to be some real concept: an actual thing from which the story was built. It must always be possible to say, “Did you read the story about—” and then capsulize what it was about. If the essence ofsfis the idea (as Dr. Willis McNelly maintains), if indeed the idea is the true “hero,” then the sf story probably remains the sf form par excellence, with the sf novel a fanning out, an expansion into all ramifications. Most of my own novels are expansions of earlier stories, or fusions of several stories—superimpositions. The germ lay in the story; in a very real sense, that was its true distillate. And some of my best ideas, which meant the most to me, I could never manage to expand into novel form. They exist only as stories, despite all my efforts.

1976