THE COSMIC PUPPETS

"An American town run by galactic invaders"

1st. EDITION:

OTHER ENGLISH EDITIONS:

FOREIGN EDITIONS:

{For the best bibliographic info in French goto: www.multimania.com/ggoullet/pkdick/frames.html Thanks for the cover pix, Gilles}

He stopped a passer-by. "Where's Central?" he demanded. "I'm looking for Central Street. I must have got lost."

Vote for your Fave PKD Story!   Forty years ahead of its time, THE COSMIC PUPPETS deconstructs reality in a fashion seemingly fantastic but which examines our shared beliefs to unexpected depths. Not until VALIS where he takes up the theme again does Philip K. Dick so effectively lay bare our spiritual existence. -- Lord RC

Vote for your Worst PKD Story!    {...} For PKD's worst novel, "I'd have to nominate THE COSMIC PUPPETS (although DR.FUTURITY is a close second). Yuck! I hated this book. And the scene at the end where the hero drives off between what are obviously two giant breasts was the worst -- talk about catering to the lowest common denominator." -- John via Paul Rydeen in FDO 6

Ken Lopez, Bookseller catalog

. DICK, Philip K. The Cosmic Puppets. NY: Ace, (1957). First. Signed. Paperback original, bound back-to-back with Sargasso of Space, by Andrew North [i.e., Andre Norton]. Small corner crease on rear cover, otherwise this is a very nice copy, very near fine in wrappers and exceptionally scarce thus. Inscribed by the author to Tim Powers, fellow science fiction writer and Dick's best friend: "To Tim -/ with affection/ Philip K. Dick." An excellent association: Tim Powers is an award-winning science fiction writer, was Dick's roommate and best friend for the last decade of Dick's life, and is a multiple winner of the "Philip K. Dick Award," among others honors he has earned for his writing. $550  
{This may still be for sale, Apr 1999}

PKDS-8 3:

J.B. Reynolds has done screenplay adaptations of two PKD novels, THE COSMIC PUPPETS and A MAZE OF DEATH.

PKDS-8 8:

The Afterword (Of ONLY APPARANTLY REAL) is the product of new research... for example: the first science fiction or fantasy novel he wrote in the 1950s was not SOLAR LOTTERY but THE COSMIC PUPPETS

PKDS-11 5:

Mondadori in Italy has bought the rights to ... THE COSMIC PUPPETS...

PKDS-12 7:

1979: Acquired THE UNTELEPORTED MAN (complete version), THE COSMIC PUPPETS AND DR.FUTURITY for reprint for Berkley. Planned an illustrated THE COSMIC PUPPETS... {from the Mark Hurst Chronology}

PKDS-12 12:

From heyne (Germany) comes the newly released KOSMISCHE PUPPEN UND ANDERE LEBENSFORMEN (...) edited by Uwe Anton, containing THE COSMIC PUPPETS.

PKDS-13 15:

... Will the French believe Phil was serious when he called THE COSMIC PUPPETS "the greatest fantasy novel ever written"?

PKDS-17 6:

Scott hasn't yet shown us anything of yours in that non-stf category; probably he's trying them out on hardcover markets first. But please remind him that ACE Books might be especially suggestive to your work -- if you think any of it would fit the paperback market (...). We've done quite a range of original and reprint modern novels... You mention having written but 4 sf novels. What then was that one you had in the second issue of Satelite? I haven't seen it, but why not have Scott submit that one too? Then we could have 5 Dick fantasies... All best wishes, Cordialy yours Donald A. Wollheim {3-29-57}

PKDS-17 3:

[Wollheim's Mar 29, 1957 letter did cause the Agency to submit to ACE the novel from Satelite, which was quickly accepted and published by ACE as THE COSMIC PUPPETS...] {from a letter from Julian Messner, Inc. Publishers, New York}

PKDS-17 6:

...& why, I wonder, haven't I seen any of the long Dicks in MS? If I'd liked A GLASS OF DARKNESS We'd've paid exactly twice Satellite's $400. I'd certainly have bought EYE & probably SOLAR LOTTERY -- either (depending on our publisher's variable policy of the moment) as a serial or to be condensed into a one-shot -- wh wd've meant anywhere fr $600 to $1600 according to the length used. {Letter from Tony Boucher to PKD, June 5, 1957}

Peter laughed, a pure, high-pitched sound. He reached out lithely and snatched back the running clay figure. It struggled and fought frantically as he drew it close to him.

TTHC    299: THE COSMIC PUPPETS, enacting as it does an early version of Dick's evolving thology, deserves to be much better known; this was prevented by the fact that it was not reissued by Ace after initial publication and in fact remained out of print until Berkley reissued it in 1983. (I asked Wollheim why Ace never reprinted it and he replied, "I don't even recall the story. It was not reprinted because I forgot it."){... ...}
    The novel grew out of Dick's love for Unknown; Dick told me in 1981 that one day he decided to try and write an Unknown-style fantasy, "a fantasy novel for a publication which I loved, which no longer existed."21  Such was the market for fantasy in the 1950s that it took some time, as we've seen, for the novella to sell. The book's long-term significance is that while researching it Dick encountered, and became intrigued by, the religious concept of dualism.

    Although I researched Zoroastrianism simply to write a novel, I found that once I had studied a dualistic, bitheistic religion, it was very hard for me to go back to monotheism after that.... Once I got the hang of bitheism it was hard to drop it.22

{fn21:    IHOW 124-5/115-6
fn22:    IHOW 125/116}

SL:38 33

{...}I have a ms of a fantasy novel which I wrote two years ago. It runs about 80,000 words. My agent won't handle it because there is no market... I've thought about printing it privately. The only catch is this -- its not exactly the kind of fantasy one reads in fantasy magazines. It's a psychological fantasy of the dream type, more like Kafka I suppose, or like "The Man Who Was Thursday." There is no fantasy premise: that is, a fantastic postulate from which things proceed logically; the beginning is natural, factual, normal, as in Hubbard's "Fear;" the ordinary world, in fact. From there, the book "degenerates into sheer fantasy," as my agent puts it. It progresses, I would say, into greater and deeper levels of fantasy; a trip into the dream regions of symbolism, the unconscious, etc. as one finds in "Alice in Wonderland," where the work ends with a final cataclysm of dream-fantasy. {...}

{PKD > Mr.Haas, Sep 16 1954}

SL-38 SL:38 35

... ... ACE has one more book of mine, but this one has already appeared in a magazine (Satellite) ; the title for that printing was A GLASS OF DARKNESS; and it runs about 40,000 words. You can see that it is slight compared with the others, but again I personally like it; its pure fantasy, which as you know has always been my favorite. {PKD>Anthony Boucher, June 3, 1957}

{For the best essay ever written on THE COSMIC PUPPETS please go to "The Cosmic Puppets" by Barb Mourning Child, which appeared first in FDO#3}

To the Novels page

Return to philipdick.com