Short Fiction · Chapters
Chapters explained
Chapter companions for Short Fiction by Philip K. Dick.
Chapter 1
Beyond Lies the Wub
Captain Franco and his crew load a Martian wub aboard their spaceship. The wub, a large pig-like creature, speaks telepathically and pleads for its life, but Franco insists on eating it. After a philosophical discussion, Franco shoots and butchers the wub. The crew eats the meat, but most are disturbed; Franco alone enjoys the meal and continues a discussion about Odysseus, suggesting the wub's consciousness may have transferred to him.
Chapter 2
The Gun
Dorle, Nasha, and Tance discover a massive automated gun on a dead planet that fires at anything airborne. After realizing the gun cannot target objects on the ground, they destroy it with hand tools and uncover a vault containing the planet's cultural treasures—books, pictures, and records. They repair their damaged ship and depart, reflecting on the tragedy of a race that destroyed itself.
Chapter 3
The Skull
Conger, a former hunter and trader, is recruited by a mysterious Speaker to travel back in time to assassinate the Founder of the First Church, a man who has been dead for two centuries. The Speaker retrieves the Founder's skull from the First Church as a means of identification. Conger travels to the past, where he encounters locals, including Sheriff Duff, and prepares to kill the Founder before he can deliver his pacifist message.
Chapter 4
The Defenders
Franks, Moss, and Taylor suspect the leadys are lying about surface conditions. They stage a confrontation, revealing the leadys are not radioactive and thus the surface may be habitable. A human party ascends, discovers a functioning rural landscape, and a firefight ensues when the leadys try to force them back underground. The humans ultimately witness a sunrise, confirming the deception.
Chapter 5
The Eyes Have It
The narrator accidentally discovers an alien invasion of Earth while reading a paperback book. He interprets common idiomatic phrases—such as 'his eyes roved about the room' and 'he put his arm around Julia'—as literal descriptions of extraterrestrial beings who can detach body parts and reproduce by binary fission. Horrified, he tries to alert the government but receives an irrelevant pamphlet. He ultimately decides to ignore the invasion, preferring to remain uninvolved.
Chapter 6
The Hanging Stranger
Ed Loyce discovers a dead body hanging from a lamppost in the town park, but is horrified to find that no one else seems to notice or care. As he investigates, he realizes that the town has been taken over by alien insects that mimic humans, and he may be one of the few unaffected. He flees, attacks a man he suspects is one of them, and struggles to survive.
Chapter 7
Mr. Spaceship
In the midst of an interstellar war against the Yucconae, Commander Kramer proposes using a human brain to pilot a spaceship through the living minefields that defend Proxima Centauri. He approaches his former professor, Professor Thomas, who agrees to the procedure. As the project nears completion, Professor Thomas reveals his true plan: to use the ship to establish a colony free from the cultural habit of war, hoping to prove that conflict is not innate to humanity.
Chapter 8
Piper in the Woods
Doctor Henry Harris investigates a strange condition affecting the garrison on Asteroid Y-3, where crew members are becoming catatonic and claiming to have been taught by 'the Pipers' to become plants. After interviewing the afflicted men, Harris travels to Y-3, meets Chief Watts, and ventures into the woods to find the mysterious Pipers. He encounters a native girl who agrees to take him to them, but later reveals to Commander Cox that the Pipers are a mass hypnosis created by the crew themselves.
Chapter 9
Second Variety
Major Hendricks, Klaus, and Tasso discuss the nature of the killer machines and the possibility that they have already infiltrated the American command bunker. After Klaus kills Rudi, revealing him to be a Second Variety machine, the group decides to attempt a return to Hendricks' bunker. They travel across the ash plain and Hendricks approaches the bunker alone, trying to raise the command on his transmitter.
Chapter 10
Tony and the Beetles
Tony Rossi wakes on a colony planet to news of a major space battle between Earth and the Pas-udeti (the 'beetles'). His father is furious about the war, while Tony feels conflicted. He goes into the city of Karnet to meet his Pas-udeti friends, but finds them distant and upset because their fleet is winning for the first time in a century, making Tony an outsider.
Chapter 11
The Variable Man
In a future where Earth is locked in a war against the Centaurian Empire, the greatest minds of the Terran Federation are baffled by a statistical anomaly: a man from the past, Thomas Cole, who defies all prediction and calculation. As the war effort relies on probabilistic forecasting, Cole's unpredictable nature makes him a threat to the rigid, deterministic system. The Security Commissioner Reinhart and the chief statistician, Joseph Dixon, debate whether to eliminate or exploit this 'variable man.' Meanwhile, Cole, a simple repairman from 1913, struggles to understand the world he has been thrust into, and his presence begins to disrupt the carefully ordered plans of the Federation.
Chapter 12
I
Security Commissioner Reinhart reviews the statistical odds of war against Centaurus, pushes for mobilization, and learns that a man from the past has been brought forward in time, causing the S.R.B. prediction machines to fail.
Chapter 13
II
Thomas Cole, a fixer from the past, is transported to a future New York via a time bubble. He encounters children in a park, offers to fix a broken vidsender in exchange for food, and later evades authorities after his arrival causes a stir. Security Commissioner Reinhart investigates the incident and orders the arrest of the research staff.
Chapter 14
III
Commissioner Reinhart and Peter Sherikov discuss the crisis caused by the variable man from the past, whose presence has disrupted the S.R.B. machines' predictions. Sherikov captures Thomas Cole in the Albertine Mountains and brings him to his labs under the Urals, where he explains the war against Centaurus and the importance of the Icarus project. Cole is shown the control turret, which remains incomplete due to technical difficulties.
Chapter 15
IV
Security Commissioner Reinhart learns from Joseph Dixon that the variable man, Thomas Cole, is still alive and has been helping physicist Peter Sherikov complete the Icarus bomb. Reinhart mobilizes Security forces to raid Sherikov's lab, but Sherikov escapes through a hidden passage, triggering a deadly trap that kills many of Reinhart's men. After a fierce battle, Reinhart captures Sherikov and recovers Cole's body. He then reports to Margaret Duffe that the bomb is ready, feeds updated data to the S.R.B. machines, and prepares for the attack on Centaurus.
Chapter 16
Beyond the Door
Larry gives Doris a cuckoo clock, which she adores, but he resents it. The clock seems to have a will of its own, favoring Doris and her lover Bob while defying Larry. After Doris leaves with Bob, Larry grows increasingly hostile toward the clock, which refuses to perform for him. In a rage, Larry threatens the clock with a hammer, but the cuckoo attacks him, knocking him down and leaving him motionless on the floor.
Chapter 17
The Crystal Crypt
The last Terran ship leaving Mars is forced to land on Deimos for inspection by Martian authorities, who are searching for three saboteurs who destroyed an entire Martian city. Among the passengers, Bob Thacher deduces that three individuals—Erick, Jan, and Mara—are the saboteurs. They reveal their story of infiltrating the Martian city disguised as peasants and a priest, carrying a mysterious case containing what appears to be office supplies but is actually the weapon used to destroy the city.
