Meddler (short story)

Science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick

"Meddler" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published in Future Science Fiction, October 1954 with illustration by Virgil Finlay.[1] Dick had submitted many short stories to magazines and made approximately fifteen sales before becoming a client of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. This was his second SMLA submission, received by SMLA on July 24, 1952. His first SMLA submission was The Builder, received by SMLA on July 23, 1952.[2]

## Synopsis

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A government Council illegally makes Time Dips into the future with escalation of adverse consequences following each time-dip. The protagonist, Hasten, is sent in a Time Car as a last-ditch attempt to learn how this meddling worked its destructive force and how to correct the problem. Hasten eventually learns his return trip is apparently the ultimate cause.

## About the story

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In 1978, Dick said about "Meddler":

> Within the beautiful lurks the ugly; you can see in this rather crude story the germ of my whole theme that nothing is what it seems. This story should be read as a trial run on my part; I was just beginning to grasp that obvious form and latent form are not the same thing. As Heraclitus said in fragment 54: “Latent structure is master of obvious structure,” and out of this comes the later more sophisticated Platonic dualism between the phenomenal world and the real but invisible realm of forms lying behind it. I may be reading too much into this simple-minded early story, but at least I was beginning to see in a dim way what I later saw so clearly; in fragment 123, Heraclitus said, “The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself,” and therein lies it all.[3]

## References

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1. ^ Levack, Daniel (1981). PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography, Underwood/Miller, pp. 108-109. ISBN 0-934438-33-1
2. ^ Rickman, Gregg (1989), To The High Castle: Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1963, Long Beach, Ca.: Fragments West/The Valentine Press, p.388 ISBN 0-916063-24-0
3. ^ Beyond Lies the Wub (1988), Gollancz, p. 404 ISBN 0-575-04407-1

## External links

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* Meddler title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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Philip K. Dick

* Bibliography
* Lost works

Novels|

* Gather Yourselves Together (1950)
* Voices from the Street (1952)
* Solar Lottery (1954)
* Mary and the Giant (1954)
* The World Jones Made (1954)
* Eye in the Sky (1955)
* The Man Who Japed (1955)
* A Time for George Stavros (1956)
* Pilgrim on the Hill (1956)
* The Broken Bubble (1956)
* The Cosmic Puppets (1957)
* Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)
* Nicholas and the Higs (1958)
* Time Out of Joint (1958)
* In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)
* Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)
* The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960)
* Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)
* Vulcan's Hammer (1960)
* Dr. Futurity (1960)
* The Man in the High Castle (1961)
* We Can Build You (1962)
* Martian Time-Slip (1962)
* Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1963)
* The Game-Players of Titan (1963)
* The Simulacra (1963)
* The Crack in Space (1963)
* Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)
* The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)
* The Zap Gun (1964)
* The Penultimate Truth (1964)
* The Unteleported Man (1964)
* The Ganymede Takeover (1965)
* Counter-Clock World (1965)
* Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966)
* Nick and the Glimmung (1966)
* Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
* Ubik (1966)
* Galactic Pot-Healer (1968)
* A Maze of Death (1968)
* Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969)
* Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
* Deus Irae (1976)
* Radio Free Albemuth (1976; published 1985)
* A Scanner Darkly (1977)
* Valis (1981)
* The Divine Invasion (1981)
* The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
* The Owl in Daylight (unfinished)

Collections|

* A Handful of Darkness (1955)
* The Variable Man (1956)
* The Preserving Machine (1969)
* The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973)
* The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977)
* The Golden Man (1980)
* Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities (1984)
* I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)
* The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987)
* Beyond Lies the Wub (1988)
* The Dark Haired Girl (1989)
* The Father-Thing (1989)
* Second Variety (1989)
* The Days of Perky Pat (1990)
* The Little Black Box (1990)
* The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1990)
* We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1990)
* The Minority Report (1991)
* Second Variety (1991)
* The Eye of the Sibyl (1992)
* The Philip K. Dick Reader (1997)
* Minority Report (2002)
* Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)
* Paycheck (2004)
* Vintage PKD (2006)
* The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011)

Short stories|

* "Beyond Lies the Wub" (1952)
* "The Gun" (1952)
* "The Skull" (1952)
* "The Little Movement" (1952)
* "The Defenders" (1953)
* "Mr. Spaceship" (1953)
* "Piper in the Woods" (1953)
* "Roog" (1953)
* "The Infinites" (1953)
* "Second Variety" (1953)
* "Colony" (1953)
* "The Cookie Lady" (1953)
* "Impostor" (1953)
* "Paycheck" (1953)
* "The Preserving Machine" (1953)
* "Expendable" (1953)
* "The Indefatigable Frog" (1953)
* "The Commuter" (1953)
* "Out in the Garden" (1953)
* "The Great C" (1953)
* "The King of the Elves" (1953)
* "The Trouble with Bubbles" (1953)
* "The Variable Man" (1953)
* "The Impossible Planet" (1953)
* "Planet for Transients" (1953)
* "The Builder" (1953)
* "Tony and the Beetles" (1953)
* "The Hanging Stranger" (1953)
* "Prize Ship" (1954)
* "Beyond the Door" (1954)
* "The Crystal Crypt" (1954)
* "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" (1954)
* "The Golden Man" (1954)
* "Sales Pitch" (1954)
* "Breakfast at Twilight" (1954)
* "The Crawlers" (1954)
* "Exhibit Piece" (1954)
* "Adjustment Team" (1954)
* "Shell Game" (1954)
* "Meddler" (1954)
* "A World of Talent" (1954)
* "The Last of the Masters" (1954)
* "Upon the Dull Earth" (1954)
* "The Father-thing" (1954)
* "Strange Eden" (1954)
* "The Turning Wheel" (1954)
* "Foster, You're Dead!" (1955)
* "Human Is" (1955)
* "War Veteran" (1955)
* "Captive Market" (1955)
* "Nanny" (1955)
* "The Chromium Fence" (1955)
* "Service Call" (1955)
* "The Mold of Yancy" (1955)
* "Autofac" (1955)
* "Psi-man Heal My Child!" (1955)
* "The Hood Maker" (1955)
* "The Minority Report" (1956)
* "Pay for the Printer" (1956)
* "A Glass of Darkness (The Cosmic Puppets)" (1956)
* "The Unreconstructed M" (1957)
* "Null-O" (1958)
* "Explorers We" (1959)
* "Recall Mechanism" (1959)
* "Fair Game" (1959)
* "War Game" (1959)
* "All We Marsmen" (1963)
* "What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" (1963)
* "The Days of Perky Pat" (1963)
* "If There Were No Benny Cemoli" (1963)
* "Waterspider" (1964)
* "Novelty Act" (1964)
* "Oh, to Be a Blobel!" (1964)
* "The War with the Fnools" (1964)
* "What the Dead Men Say" (1964)
* "Orpheus with Clay Feet" (1964)
* "Cantata 140" (1964)
* "The Unteleported Man" (1964)
* "The Little Black Box" (1964)
* "Retreat Syndrome" (1965)
* "Project Plowshare (later "The Zap Gun")" (1965)
* "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966)
* "Holy Quarrel" (1966)
* "Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)
* "Not by Its Cover" (1968)
* "The Electric Ant" (1969)
* "A. Lincoln, Simulacrum" (1969)
* "The Pre-persons" (1974)
* "A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" (1974)
* "The Exit Door Leads In" (1979)
* "Rautavaara's Case" (1980)
* "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980)
* "The Eye of the Sibyl" (1987)
* "Stability" (1987)

Speeches|

* "The Android and the Human" (1972)
* "If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others" (1977)

Adaptations|

| Films|

* Blade Runner (1982)
* Total Recall (1990)
* Barjo (1992)
* Screamers (1995)
* Impostor (2001)
* Minority Report (2002)
* Paycheck (2003)
* A Scanner Darkly (2006)
* Next (2007)
* Screamers: The Hunting (2009)
* Radio Free Albemuth (2010)
* The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
* Total Recall (2012)
* Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

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Short films|

* 2036: Nexus Dawn (2017)
* 2048: Nowhere to Run (2017)
* Blade Runner Black Out 2022 (2017)

TV series|

* Total Recall 2070 (1999)
* The Man in the High Castle (2015–2019)
* Minority Report (2015)
* Electric Dreams (2017–2018)
* Blade Runner: Black Lotus (2021–2022)
* Blade Runner 2099 (upcoming)

Franchise|

* Blade Runner franchise

Works about|

* Only Apparently Real (1986 biography)
* I Am Alive and You Are Dead (1993 biography)
* Your Name Here (2008 drama film)

Related|

* Isa Dick Hackett (daughter)
* Philip K. Dick Award

* Category

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