Philip K. Dick 12 min read

A man buys his wife an old cuckoo clock without knowing the price he'll pay, and the little bird inside has opinions of its own.

Philip K. Dick's 1954 story turns a domestic gift into quiet menace, as the cuckoo clock takes sides in an unhappy marriage. A sharp, eerie early Dick fable about resentment, cruelty, and small household gods. Read it for a compact, unsettling story that finds the uncanny in an ordinary living room.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

12 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).