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FIRST PUBLICATION

•   Future Science Fiction, Oct 1954

HISTORY:

    The second story to reach SMLA on July 24, 1952 (one day after "The Builder"), "Meddler" was to Philip K. Dick many years later a seminal story:

     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. {PKD in story notes to THE GOLDEN MAN}

        "Meddler" was collected in THE GOLDEN MAN (1980) and in 1987 in THE COLLECTED STORIES OF PHILIP K. DICK, Vol. 1.

    "Meddler" is a sorry tale of time-travel wherein each time a man goes into the future he finds things there progressively worse. Is it his fault? Well, probably. It reminds me of another old sf story the name and author of which I forget but which concerns a man travelling into the past where he steps on a butterfly, thus changing things. In Dick’s story, too, the butterflies are best to be avoided.

    "Meddler" rates ô ô ô ô

Other Magazine and Anthology Appearances.    Click here for Cover Pix:

1980		THE GOLDEN MAN, Berkley, pb, 04288, 1980, ?, $2.25 (?) {Ed. Hurst}
1987		THE COLLECTED STORIES OF PHILIP K. DICK

NOTES:

 

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Collector’s Notes

Ken Lopez: "Meddler" in Future SF, Oct 1954 (1^st). Signed by Author. FAIR. Waterlogged; front cover creased; fair in wrappers. $85

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