the world Dick made

Obelisk Books on Mars is receiving complaints about errors in its latest book, a translation of the first-century B.C. poem De Rerum Natura (aka On the Nature of Things) by Lucretius. Since it’s already gone through an expensive print run there is nothing Obelisk president Mr. Masters can do, but he agrees to meet with a scholar anyway who outlines all the problems with the translation. 

De Rerum Natura deals with the fleeting nature of life, but certain passages have been altered to indicate a philosophy of immortality. They eventually realize only the books bound in wub-fur have been changed. The wub is a native Mars creature, generally agreed upon to be pretty stupid, that is nearly impossible to kill, but when it does die the pelt continues to live. Through the books it is communicating this message of eternal life. Based on all this Mr. Masters calls his lawyer and updates his will. He wants his coffin after he dies to be lined in wub-fur. 

Dick returns here to the theme of one of his earliest stories: never underestimate a wub.

Cast of characters

• Barney Masters – president of Obelisk Books
• Mr. Brandice – member of Watchmen Over Distortion and Forged Artifacts Generally
• Jack Snead – Obelisk’s copy editor
• Luther Saperstein – business agent for the firm Flawless, Incorporated that procures the wub-fur

The Genux-B supercomputer wants to nuke Northern California based on a premise that doesn’t make any sense. An engineer jams the computer’s take up reel with a screwdriver and the FBI brings in the computer repairman Joseph Stafford to help them figure out what is wrong with the Genux-B before it ends up starting another war. 

The Genux-B thinks Herb Sousa, a man who operates a penny gum ball machine business in California, is a threat who needs to be eliminated. Stafford and the others feed data into the computer in an attempt to figure out why it has targeted Sousa, and the output they eventually receive from Genux-B is that Herb Sousa is the devil. 

At that point they conclude the Genux-B is severely malfunctioning and shut it down. Stafford returns to his apartment with a couple of Sousa’s gum balls in his pocket that they had picked up in order to rule out all possibilities of a threat. In the morning the gum balls have multiplied. In a few days 15,000 gum balls are spilling from his apartment and when Stafford tries to contact the FBI they are no longer able to answer the phone.

Should we trust computers completely? Do we even have a choice anymore? “Holy Quarrel” is a fun (and creepy) read.

Cast of characters

• Joseph Stafford – Genux-B computer repairman
• Unnamed computer engineer
• Three unnamed FBI agents

This is either Dick’s stupidest premise or his most brilliant. It’s hard to tell sometimes with him, but I’m going with the former. I’ll do my best to summarize.

A man named Ludwig Eng invented something called a swabble. It’s not clear what the swabble actually does but it introduces into the world something called the Hobart Phase which causes time to flow backwards in a strange way where people eat and smoke in reverse and get younger instead of aging. 

In this backwards world librarians destroy books instead of preserving them. One book coming up for eradication is Eng’s book HOW I MADE MY OWN SWABBLE OUT OF CONVENTIONAL HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS IN MY BASEMENT DURING MY SPARE TIME. Only a few people seem to realize if Eng’s book is eradicated then the swabble won’t be invented and the Hobart Phase won’t be created causing time to move forward once again. But then Eng will just write his book and the process will be repeated trapping everyone in a time loop. 

After dealing with another party who wants the Hobart Phase to continue for their own obscure reasons the librarian Niehls Lehrer meets with Lance Arbuthnot who wrote a book he hopes to get eradicated that will somehow counteract Eng’s book. The effects of the Hobart Phase are weakening though so they better move fast.

Dick expanded “Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday” a few years later into one of my least favorite novels Counter-Clock World.

Cast of characters

• Niehls Lehrer – a librarian
• Ludwig Eng – wrote the book that created the Hobart Phase
• Lance Arbuthnot – wrote a book called HOW I DISASSEMBLED MY SWABBLE INTO ORDINARY HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS IN MY BASEMENT DURING MY SPARE TIME to counteract Eng’s book
• Carl Gantrix – attorney for Bard Chai
• Carl Junior – Gantrix’s robot
• Bard Chai – head of the Clearness Council
• Anarch Peak – leader of the Free Negro Municipality 

“A Terran Odyssey” is a curiosity since it’s just an abridged version of Dick’s novel Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb. I don’t believe it was published anywhere until it was included in a short story collection in 1987, and it’s not clear to me if he assembled this story after Dr. Bloodmoney or if he wrote it before. Either way it appears to be identical to what’s in the novel except Bruno Bluthgeld is nowhere to be found (although they do mention Jack Tree at the beginning), and some subplots like the one involving Walter Dangerfield have been expanded in the book. Dr. Bloodmoney is a favorite of mine so I would suggest just reading that instead.

Cast of characters

See notes on Dr. Bloodmoney

Once again the Fnools have invaded Earth intent on dominating the Solar System even though the humans defeated them before. This time, in the U.S., the Fnools are masquerading as real estate salesman in Utah. In Berlin they are appearing as VW inspectors, and in Poland they are disguised as chess players. Luckily they are only two feet tall and so they are easily spotted. 

CIA Captain Edgar Lightfoot travels to Provo to capture some Fnools and bring them back to Major Hauk. Since they are small they are easily apprehended, but while transporting two of them back in his ‘copter he lets them smoke a cigarette. Suddenly both Fnools are now four feet tall. Back at CIA headquarters Major Hauk is in despair over a possible Fnool victory. He drinks from a bottle of scotch and hides in a bunker with his secretary. 

When Lightfoot and the Fnools arrive the Fnools overtake Lightfoot while he is preoccupied with Hauk’s scotch. The Fnools then drink the scotch and instantly become six feet tall. Both Hauk and Lightfoot realize it is hopeless, since the aliens are indistinguishable from humans at that size. That is until the Fnools encounter Miss Smith in the bunker. After this third vice, a woman, the Fnools become eight feet tall. Confident no one will mistake them for humans now Hauk is assured the Fnools will be defeated.

Cast of characters

• Edgar Lightfoot – Captain of the CIA
• Julius Hauk – CIA Major
• Miss Smith – Hauk’s secretary
• Hochflieger – a General in the West German Security Service
• Serge Nicov – local chief in Poland’s People’s Protective Agency for Preserving the Democratic Process
• The Fnools

Both the U.S. and Communist governments are threatened by the rise of Mercerism, a proto-religion formed around a man of unknown origin named Wilbur Mercer. Followers of Mercer watch him on a television screen and by grasping the handles on a black empathy box are able to feel the suffering Mercer feels as he walks through a desert on the way to his death. 

Everything else about Mercer is a mystery, but the State Department suspects he is an extraterrestrial connected somehow to jazz harpist Ray Meritan. In cahoots with the Chinese Communists they send Meritan’s mistress Joan Hiashi to Cuba under a ruse hoping she will connect Meritan to Mercer. 

While performing on a live TV broadcast Meritan exposes himself as a follower of Mercer, Joan is arrested in Cuba as a political agitator and all empathy boxes are rounded up and destroyed. Meritan avoids getting captured and finds one last remaining empathy box. When he grabs the handles he is connected telepathically to Bogart Crofts of the State Department who had been holding onto the empathy box at the same time. The state department knows then that Meritan is not Mercer but intend to arrest him anyway. Mercerism is illegal and with all the empathy boxes destroyed they are confident the religion will be eradicated. 

The state department releases Joan as bait to find out where Meritan is. When Meritan meets up with Joan they expect a hard time staying one step in front of the government, but help comes from a strange peddler who surreptitiously passes them instructions on how to assemble an empathy box out of ordinary household objects. 

The Mercerism religion makes an appearance later in Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Cast of characters

• Bogart Crofts – works for the State Department
• Joan Hiashi – Asian scholar in Zen Buddhism. Joan Hiashi is also in The Ganymede Takeover
• Ray Meritan – a telepath and jazz harpist suspected by the State Department to be Wilbur Mercer
• Douglas Herrick – Secretary of State
• Mr. Lee – a Chinese telepath