{"id":1644,"date":"2005-07-06T13:16:15","date_gmt":"2005-07-06T13:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2018\/11\/23\/1639-revision-v1\/"},"modified":"2019-07-07T05:53:27","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T05:53:27","slug":"the-father-thing-br-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2005\/07\/06\/the-father-thing-br-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Father-Thing (BR)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Father-Thing<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Philip K Dick<\/i><\/h3>\n

This is the third out of five volumes of PKD’s collected short stories. The 25 stories written in the period somewhat over a year before the author’s first published novel.<\/p>\n

My favourite in the collection would have to be ‘The Hanging Stranger<\/a><\/em>‘, in which a man on his way to work notices a corpse handing in plain view. His disturbance at the sight of the body is seconded only to his disturbance at the fact that the body doesn’t seem to bother anyone else.<\/p>\n

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There’s a body hanging from the lamppost,” Loyce said. “I’m going to call the cops.”<\/em>
\n“They must know about it,” Potter said. “Or otherwise it wouldn’t be there.\u00a0<\/em>(p14)<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

In another story, ‘The Golden Man<\/a><\/em>‘, a society that systematically kills mutants seems to have met its match. The surprise in this story comes in terms of the mutant?s ability. Mankind had always expected to be bettered eventually, but they’ve always had a rigid view of what they’d be bettered at exactly. Anyway…<\/p>\n

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…we’ll know homo superior when he comes – by definition he’ll be the one we wont be able to euth.\u00a0<\/em>(p44)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A fine example of Dick’s futuristic paranoid society can be seen in ‘Foster, You’re Dead<\/a><\/em>‘. In this story we’re presented with a society that is scared into buying bomb shelters for a war the government knows will never come.<\/div>\n
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You know, this game has one real advantage over selling people cars and TV sets. With something like <\/em>this we\u00a0have\u00a0to buy. It isn’t a luxury, something big and flashy to impress the neighbours, something we could do without. If we <\/em>don?t buy this we die. They always said the way to sell something was <\/em>create anxiety in people. Create a sense of insecurity – tell them they smell bad or look funny. But this makes a joke out of deodorant and hair oil. You can’t escape this. If you don’t buy,\u00a0they kill you. The perfect sales pitch. Buy or die – the new slogan. Have a shiny new General Electronics H-bomb shelter in your <\/em>back yard or be slaughtered\u00a0<\/em>(p233)<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Comments:<\/b>\u00a0With Philip K. Dick’s writing, there are two joys. First of all the creative ‘what-ifs’ that are the backbone of his stories, and secondly, the twist he manages to pull off at the story’s end.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Father-Thing\u00a0by Philip K Dick This is the third out of five volumes of PKD’s collected short stories. The 25 stories written in the period somewhat over a year before the author’s first published novel. My favourite in the collection would have to be ‘The Hanging Stranger‘, in which a man on his way to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,198,205],"tags":[],"metadata":[],"class_list":["post-1644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-book-review","category-gaia-online"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":807,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2016\/03\/26\/learning-meditation-from-thera\/","url_meta":{"origin":1644,"position":0},"title":"Learning meditation from Thera","author":"Pala","date":"March 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Bhikku\u00a0Nyanaponika Thera wrote a short book entitled\u00a0The Power of Mindfulness, in which he describes four principles\u00a0which\u00a0may assist understanding the benefits, aims, and strategies of meditations. These he lists as: The functions of tidying and naming The non-coercive procedure Stopping and slowing-down Directness of vision Thera describes unofficial four powers for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1708,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/10\/18\/speusippus-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1644,"position":1},"title":"Speusippus","author":"Pala","date":"October 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I recommend reading the first footnote before starting It started with\u00a0Plato, but it didn't end there[1]. This fact isn't often discussed. Plato lived in\u00a0Athens\u00a0in\u00a0Ancient Greece\u00a0about 2400 years ago. He himself studied informally under\u00a0Socrates, and Plato, in turn, had his own students and disciples at a school (of sorts) called\u00a0The Academy.[2]\u00a0The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":810,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2016\/04\/23\/five-ascetics-waiting-for-buddha\/","url_meta":{"origin":1644,"position":2},"title":"Five ascetics waiting for Buddha","author":"Pala","date":"April 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The Pali cannon (MN 36) tells the story of the Buddha's enlightenment. Before his liberation, the to-be Buddha tortured himself by emaciating himself and restricting his breathing, in his search for ultimate liberation. Past masters had failed him in his ultimate quest, and so he strived to find his own\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1210,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2012\/04\/24\/twilight-as-directed-by-wes-anderson\/","url_meta":{"origin":1644,"position":3},"title":"Twilight as Directed by Wes Anderson","author":"Pala","date":"April 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Editorial notes: One of Shai\u2019s unique talents was writing stories in the style of famous authors. In the story below, retrieved from his Google Drive, he convincingly imitates a vampire genre, Twilight-like movie script, as if it were directed by Wes Anderson. Scene 1: A fixed camera shows the following:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2932,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2014\/12\/02\/superman-5\/","url_meta":{"origin":1644,"position":4},"title":"Superman #5","author":"Pala","date":"December 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Pre-Interim: AC 676 - [Hellgrammite] MOS 11 - [Hamilton, Flashpoint (from Exile World)] S 67 AOS 49O - [Hamilton, Husque] AC 677 - (Sg will work with Lexcorp) MOS 12 - (Monster from beneath Metro.) S 68 - [Deathstroke the Terminator] AOS 491 - [Metallo] AC 678\u00a0[Lex, Metallo] MOS 13\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1181,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/08\/23\/sisters\/","url_meta":{"origin":1644,"position":5},"title":"Sisters!","author":"Pala","date":"August 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"[Fraudulent document? -- Editor] Marcus Garvey\u2019s diaries were amongst the improbable finds at Saddam Hussain's ill-financed palaces. Their contents have always been overshadowed, by the incredible story of their theft and doctoring by the Church of Scientology away from the Catholic Church (who were hiding it from common knowledge). 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