the world Dick made

George Munster fought for Earth during its war with the amoeba-like Blobels from Proxima. As a Blobel spy he assumed the form of the Blobels, and after the war’s end he still reverts to Blobel form half of every day making dating and socializing almost impossible.

His psychoanalyst connects him with Vivian Arrasmith, a female Blobel and former Terran spy who reverts to human form six hours of every day. They marry, but years later when they have difficulty in their relationship Vivian stabilizes as a human full time in order to save her marriage not knowing that Munster has stabilized full time as a Blobel in order to operate a business on Titan.

Cast of characters

• George Munster – a human who turns into a Blobel
• Dr. Jones – Munster’s robot psychoanalyst
• Vivian Arrasmith – Munster’s wife. A Blobel who turns into a human
• Pete Ruggles, Sherman Downs, Reinholt Glaubman – Munster’s fellow vets
• Nina Glaubman – Munster’s mistress
• Henry Ramarau – Munster’s attorney

A radiation lab in a small Tennessee town causes humans to give birth to mutant slug-like creatures. Investigator Ernest Gretry wants to transport all these so-called crawlers to an island unoccupied because of an H-bomb test, but the crawlers have different plans as they have already started reproducing and building intricate tunnels underground. The crawlers were creepy and gross. I’m glad this wasn’t a long story.

Cast of characters

• Ernest Gretry – investigating the crawlers
• Mrs. Higgins – lives in a farmhouse near the radiation lab

John Cupertino gets stuck in a psychotic loop (with a great deal of hostility directed at his wife) as a way of coping with the fact he inadvertently thwarted Ganymede’s attempt to revolt against Terran colonization by informing his wife of the plans.

Cast of characters

• Caleb Myers – officer who first pulls over the speeding Cupertino
• John Cupertino – our psychotic protagonist
• Carol Cupertino – John Cupertino’s wife
• Dr. Gottlieb Hagopian – Cupertino’s psychiatrist
• Dr. Edgar Green – Six-planet Educational Enterprise’s psychologist

“If There Were No Benny Cemoli” is a twisting story about the legend and myth of revolutionaries. Using fake news reports from the past about an agitator named Benny Cemoli, those on Earth who orchestrated a disastrous nuclear war keep a newly arrived intergalactic reconstruction crew (the Centaurus Urban Renewal Bureau aka CURB) occupied chasing this phantom and off their trail.

Cast of characters

• John LeConte – a ‘politico’ on Earth
• Mr. Fall – LeConte’s secretary
• Peter Hood – CURBman from Centaurus
• Joan Hood – Peter Hood’s wife
• Rudolph Fletcher – Hood’s assistant
• Otto Dietrich – the supreme police investigator from Centaurus who vows to make an example of the war criminals responsible for Earth’s nuclear war
• Benny Cemoli – a supposed revolutionary who seized power of North America in a coup
• Stavros – a Greek grocery store owner and supposed follower of Benny Cemoli

Mrs. Berthelson, owner of a small country store in Northern California, has the unique ability to travel through time. Her ‘captive market’ is a group of desperate survivors of a nuclear war in the not too distant future where Mrs. Berthelson travels once a week to sell her goods at whatever price she chooses.

The survivors plan to leave Earth for Venus on a rocket they have constructed, but Mrs. Berthelson, not wanting to give up such a lucrative gig, selects a future where their rocket crashes on takeoff trapping them on Earth as her perpetual customers.

Cast of characters

• Edna Berthelson – owner of a small country store
• Jackie – Mrs. Berthelson’s grandson
• Tellman, Gladys, Barnes, Masterson, Flannery, Patricia, Crowley, Dobbs – survivors of a nuclear war in the future

The human stand-by for the President of the United States (a job held by the supercomputer Unicephalon 40-D) is a union post, and when the current stand-by dies, union officials choose layabout Max Fischer as his successor.

No one expects Unicephalon 40-D to fail, because it never has, but that’s before an army of aliens attacks, knocking out Unicephalon and promoting Fischer to Commander-and-Chief.

Fischer bungles the job, and news clown Jim Briskin claims Fischer isn’t legally President since he was never elected. Briskin then pushes for an election and announces his own candidacy. As Fischer moves to have the FBI silence Briskin, Unicephalon returns to power, declares war with the aliens and puts an end to these presidential shenanigans.

Cast of characters

• Jim Briskin – everyone’s favorite news clown. Briskin also makes a bid for the Presidency in The Crack in Space.
• Unicephalon 40-D – supercomputer / President of the United States
• Maximilian Fischer – union member chosen to be the next stand-by POTUS
• General Tompkins – chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Leon Lait – Fischer’s cousin and Attorney General while Fischer is in charge