| "A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Philip K. Dick |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Published in | Final Stage ( ISBN 0883270358) |
| Publication type | Anthology |
| Publisher | Charterhouse |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | 1974 |
"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published in the anthology Final Stage in 1974.
Time travelers from the United States, called tempunauts, are sent only a few days into the future rather than a century as was intended. In this near-future, they learn their return from the future was fatal to them.
Addison Doug, one of the tempunauts, believes that they are trapped with the rest of the Earth in a closed time loop, forever doomed to repeat the period between their starting their trip and their fatal return. Having found out the cause of their fatal return journey, they have to decide whether to change or not to change their return journey in order to get out of the loop. Doug decides to sabotage "reentry" unbeknownst to the others - by smuggling a mass of car engine parts into the time machine - to both at the same time (and completely contradictorily) find resolution in death and close the time-loop, freezing all of humanity, and possibly the whole universe, in endless repetition of a single week.
Strange Horizons noted the story's "slipstreamish effect of contemporary strangeness". [1] The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction mentioned its "grim" nature. [2]
Dick said in his afterword for The Best of Philip K. Dick:
In this story I felt a vast weariness over the space program, which had thrilled us so at the start — especially the first lunar landing — and then had been forgotten and virtually shutdown, a relic of history. I wondered, if time-travel became a "program" would it suffer the same fate? Or was there an even worse possibility latent in it, within the very nature of the paradoxes of time-travel?" [3]
Philip Kindred Dick was an American writer known for his work in science fiction. He wrote 44 published novels and approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. His fiction explored varied philosophical and social themes, and featured recurrent elements such as alternate realities, simulacra, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. His work was concerned with questions surrounding the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity.
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The Best of Philip K. Dick is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published by Del Rey Books in 1977. Many of the stories had originally appeared in the magazines Planet Stories, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Space Science Fiction, Imagination, Astounding Stories, Galaxy Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Science Fiction Stories and Startling Stories, as well as the anthologies Dangerous Visions and Star Science Fiction Stories No.3.
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Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick is a collection of science fiction stories by Philip K. Dick. It was first published by Random House in 2002. Many of the stories had originally appeared in the magazines Planet Stories, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Imagination, Space Science Fiction, Astounding, Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Orbit, Galaxy Science Fiction, Fantastic Universe, Amazing Stories, Rolling Stone College Papers, Omni and Playboy.
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"The Commuter" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in the August-September 1953 issue of Amazing Stories. It has been reprinted over 20 times, including Croatian, Dutch, French, German and Italian translations. As with much of Dick's fiction, it is an exploration of the boundary of existence.
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