The Variable Man
"The Variable Man" is a science fiction novella by American writer Philip K. Dick, which he wrote and sold before he had an agent.[1] It was first published in the British magazine Space Science Fiction (British version) Vol. 2 No. 2, July 1953, and in the American version on September 1953, with the US publication illustrated by Alex Ebel.[2][3] Despite the magazine cover dates it is unclear whether the first publication was in the UK or in the United States where magazines tended to be published farther ahead of their cover dates than in the UK.[4][5] The Variable Man can be found in several collections of Dick's short stories, including The Variable Man and The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford.
Copyright status
"The Variable Man" is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between January 1, 1950 and December 31, 1963 but copyright was not renewed with the United States Copyright Office within a year period beginning on December 31 of the 27th year of the copyright and running through December 31 of the following year.[6] When renewal registration was not made within the statutory time limit copyright expired at the end of its first term and protection was lost permanently.[7]
Plot summary
The human race has achieved space travel and begun to spread out from Earth, but is limited by an old and corrupt Centauran Empire, ruled from Proxima Centauri. The Empire fully encircles the Terran solar system and will not let the humans grow beyond it. Terra and the Centauran Empire effectively become locked in a cold war, with each side watching the other but neither side attacking. Terra uses the almost prophetic SRB machines to calculate their chances to win a war versus Centauri and updates these calculations with each new development.
Eventually Terra comes up with a concept for a bomb, called Icarus, that Proxima cannot defend against because it travels at faster-than-light (FTL) speeds. Icarus started as an experimental transport device, but the build-up of mass near light speed caused a huge explosion when the first prototype returned to sub-light speed, destroying the inventor and most of his equipment. Development of Icarus as a weapon alters the calculated odds in Terra's favour. There are two problems; the first is that a second FTL device has not yet been made to work, and the second is the existence of a man from the past brought to the present. He is an "unknown variable" that confuses the SRB machines, making it impossible to accurately calculate the odds. That man is Thomas Cole, who became known as the Variable Man.
Cole is a man from 1913, the time just before the First World War. He is accidentally brought into the story's present by a Time Bubble that was used for research about the past. The authorities attempt to capture him but he evades them and goes on the run. It is discovered that Cole has a genius for intuitively understanding and repairing machines, which he used to earn money as a repair man in his own time, and again while on the run. Other characters speculate that such abilities were more common in the pre-WWI era that produced Edison and other inventors. The engineer working on the FTL bomb realizes that the Variable Man might be able to make Icarus work, and manages to track him down. Cole agrees to help on the understanding that he will then be sent back to his own time with a quantity of precious metals to buy equipment for his repair business.
Cole eventually succeeds and an Icarus device is launched towards Proxima Centauri, with the intention of destroying the star along with its planets while Earth's fleet attacks the empire's forces in space. The device fails to affect its target, leading to a crushing defeat for Terra.
Investigation reveals that the star did not explode because Cole had made the Icarus device function fully according to its inventor's intentions, solving the problem that had destroyed the prototype. Instead of a powerful bomb, humanity now has a working FTL drive that cannot be intercepted by the Centaurans. The Terran authorities realise they are now free to travel beyond the limits of the Centauran Empire and there is no further need for war.
References
- ^ 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
- ^ Levack, Daniel (1981). PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography, Underwood/Miller, p. 131 ISBN 0-934438-33-1
- ^ Stephensen-Payne, Phil; Benson, Jr., Gordon (1992), Philip Kindred Dick, Metaphysical Conjurer: A Working Bibliography, Galactic Central, Volume 18 (4th Revised Edition), UK and US: Galactic Central, p. 27 ISBN 1-871133-42-4
- ^ Levack, Daniel (1981). PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography, Underwood/Miller, p. 131 ISBN 0-934438-33-1
- ^ Stephensen-Payne, Phil; Benson, Jr., Gordon (1992), Philip Kindred Dick, Metaphysical Conjurer: A Working Bibliography, Galactic Central, Volume 18 (4th Revised Edition), UK and US: Galactic Central, p. 27 ISBN 1-871133-42-4
- ^ Copyright Catalog search page, The catalog was searched by story title, magazine name and author name to ensure accuracy.
- ^ http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15t.pdf See p.2
External links
- The Variable Man title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- An omnibus collection of Dick's short fiction in the public domain, including this story at Standard Ebooks
- The Variable Man at Project Gutenberg
- The Variable Man public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- v
- t
- e
- 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)
- 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)
- "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)
Films |
|
---|---|
TV series |
|
- Only Apparently Real (1986 biography)
- I Am Alive and You Are Dead (1993 biography)
- Your Name Here (2008 drama film)
- Isa Dick Hackett (daughter)
- Philip K. Dick Award