the world Dick made

A race of mutants that evolved from scientists and scholars just before the third World War survived in their underground labs and factories as the humans above destroyed the Earth’s surface. Two hundred years later these subsurface dwellers periodically venture up to capture saps (as they call their unevolved Homo Sapien ancestors) to use for manual labor. Young Harl has just learned what the saps actually are and when he finds out his father Ed is planning a surface raid for saps he demands to tag along. 

The crew is equipped with screens that render them invisible and once aboveground they are able to observe the saps in their primitive tribal existence. Harl is enamored with a young sap woman, and when she is alone he disables his screen in an attempt to make contact. She runs in fear, alerting the others in the tribe and prematurely ending the raid. 

In a narrative gimmick Dick often used in his stories around this time, he ends with a change in the point of view, in this case switching to the tribe’s perspective, and with names like Julie, Ken and Mr. Stebbins perhaps they aren’t the savages they seem to be. Julie describes to the others the pale, sickly apparition she saw, and Mr. Stebbins informs her she saw a goblin, the creatures like men, but not men, who live and dig tunnels underground.

Cast of characters

• Harl Boynton – a member of the Youth League
• Edward Boynton – Harl’s father planning the surface raid
• Robin Turner – Ed’s assistant
• Fashold – a Youth League leader
• Julie, Ken, Mr. Stebbins – aboveground Homo Sapiens

“The World She Wanted” illustrates the best of all possible worlds theory: infinite timelines allow for mostly positive outcomes for everyone as the reality one person experiences in their timeline doesn’t necessarily have to correspond to anyone else’s timeline. Allison Holmes believes this when she spots Larry Brewster at his favorite run-down jazz club and decides she is going to marry him. It appears the theory she subscribes to is correct as she is able to avoid restaurant bills and win at the casino with almost no effort.

Larry goes along with this for a while even as it becomes apparent the life Allison wants for herself with expensive cars and McMansion homes doesn’t line up with Larry’s desire to one day live a peaceful life on a farm. Luckily for him this story isn’t told from her point of view. When they return to the jazz club a few days later and Larry finds that it’s been converted into a fancy bistro because Allison prefers it that way, Larry makes Allison disappear since we’ve been in his reality, and not hers, all along. 

I always enjoy a good multiverse story. The best of all possible worlds isn’t a bad principle to organize your life around as far as I’m concerned.

Cast of characters

• Larry Brewster
• Allison Holmes

One day while Bob Paine is selling train tickets in an unnamed city a commuter disappears into thin air right in front of him while attempting to purchase a ticket to Macon Heights. As far as Paine knows Macon Heights isn’t on the map and never has been. When the commuter shows up to buy a ticket the next day and vanishes a second time Paine has his girlfriend Laura investigate. She discovers Macon Heights was nearly a subdivision years ago before the expansion was defeated by the county board of supervisors, losing by only one vote. 

Eventually Paine is able to visit this phantom town, as the reality where Macon Heights survived the board’s vote is slowly bleeding into his own. In the end he comes home to find he is married to Laura and has a son, and the world in which Macon Heights didn’t exist is just a fading memory. 

“The Commuter” was adapted for the first season of Electric Dreams where Macon Heights is transformed into something more mystical as a place of escape for down-on-their-luck souls. The more successful adaptations in this series expand on what they have rather than create completely new stories. I might say this is one of the better episodes, although the bar is awfully low. 

Cast of characters

• Bob Paine – a ticket seller
• Ed Jacobson– Paine’s coworker
• Ernest Critchet – the titular commuter who lives in Macon Heights
• Laura Nichols – Paine’s girlfriend

For the last several years blob-shaped aliens (nicknamed “buggies” for some reason) have been drifting down from the skies and landing in the trees and on the roofs of Earth. The humans react to these creatures by killing them even though they don’t seem to pose a threat, and after witnessing one of these encounters Ted Barnes warns his son Jimmy to steer clear of any buggies if he happens to see one. 

Of course the next day, while he is alone, Jimmy does spot a buggie in a tree. The buggie communicates telepathically to Jimmy that their planet has dried up, and all they want is to exist over Earth’s plentiful oceans. Jimmy heeds his father’s advice though and alerts some nearby men who burn the buggie to a crisp. Ted couldn’t be prouder, bragging about his son to anyone he sees after he hears the news.

A similar alien “threat” would show up again as the drifters a few years later in Dick’s novel The World Jones Made.

Cast of characters

• Ted Barnes
• Lena Barnes – Ted’s wife
• Jimmy Barnes – Ted’s son
• Mike Edwards, Ralf Drake – Jimmy’s friends

Bob Clarke is called up to fight in the war against the Martians in order to secure access to the rexeroid deposits on Mars. Without rexeroid the control boards of the cars on Earth wouldn’t function and everyone would have to go back to manual steering. This conflict with the Martians is the latest in a string of skirmishes over Earth’s necessary domestic materials after the clashes with Venus over the kyron ore that maintains their home’s temperature and Pluto for the lonolite that powers their computers.

Bob is one of the many casualties of the rexeroid war, and boys under eighteen are then drafted in order to meet the quota for soldiers. Bob’s son Tommy is sent into combat against the natives on Calisto for the gleco that controls the keyless entry to their homes. He survives but dies not long after during the trektone war on Europa. Soon the only way for Terra to fill its ranks is to draft women, and Joan is enlisted for battle in the nymphite war on Saturn.

The last thing we see are aliens arriving from Orion some time later to find elaborate homes from an advanced civilization but no sign of the Terrans who used to live there.

In order to avoid having two stories credited to Philip K. Dick, “Some Kinds of Life” was published under the pseudonym Richard Phillips when it appeared alongside his story “Planet for Transients” in Fantastic Universe in 1953.

Cast of characters

• Joan Clarke – our protagonist
• Bob Clarke – Joan’s husband
• Tommy Clarke – Joan and Bob’s son
• Erickson – the Sector Organizer

Ed Doyle hurries back to Earth from Proxima Centauri and arrives just after his first son is born. He had been gone long enough to forget though that he and his wife Janet aren’t allowed contact with the boy who will instead be raised entirely by robots.

Nine years later, after separating from Janet, he returns again to Earth and meets his son for the first time. Peter, who is on track at that young age to become an organic chemist, is amused as his dad tries to convince him to live a simpler life with him in the Proxima system. After dismissing his father Peter tells the robot Doctor Bish that the smell of his dad reminded him of the odor of the laboratory animals, an observation Doctor Bish certainly agrees with.

Cast of characters

• Ed and Janet Doyle
• Peter Doyle – Ed and Janet’s son 
• Doctor Bish – Ed and Janet’s robot doctor