A Little Something for Us Tempunauts
| "A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Philip K. Dick |
| Country |
 |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Published in | Final Stage ( ISBN 0-14-004039-0) |
| Publication type | Anthology |
| Publisher | Penguin |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | 1975 |
"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 1975.
Plot summary
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. Finally, Doug tries to terminate the time loop, but just his effort creates all premises for the loop.
Background
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?"[1]
References
- ↑ Dick, Philip K. (1987). The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Vol 5: We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. United Kingdom: Orion Publishing Group. p. 392. ISBN 1-85798-948-1.