Philip K. Dick 6 min read

Idly turning the pages of a paperback left on the bus, the narrator stumbles on the reference that reveals it: Earth has been invaded by a nonhuman species, hidden in plain sight.

Philip K. Dick's 1953 story is a delightful comic first-contact tale built on a literal-minded misreading. Funny, clever golden-age SF. Read it for prime playful PKD, a paranoid 'discovery' of alien infiltration that springs entirely from taking figures of speech at their word, in one of his most charming jokes.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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