Faith of Our Fathers (short story)

"Faith of Our Fathers"
Author	Philip K. Dick
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Published in	Dangerous Visions
Publication type	Anthology
Publisher	Doubleday
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Publication date	1967

"Faith of Our Fathers" is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick, first published in the anthology Dangerous Visions (1967). It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 1968.

The story is a horrifying vision of a God that is all-devouring and amoral, and is a sharp depiction of religious despair that prefigured Dick's own later crisis of faith and mental breakdown.

Plot summary

The story's protagonist, Tung Chien, is a party bureaucrat in Vietnam in a future where Chinese-style communism has triumphed over the entire world. The atheist Communist Party rules absolutely over a population that is kept docile by hallucinogenic drugs.

Given an illegal drug by a street seller, he sees the Party leader's appearance on television as a horrific hallucination. He later learns that the drug is stelazine, an anti-hallucinogen, and that what he sees is the true reality of the Party leader: or at least one of them, because different people see any one of twelve different possible visions of the leader. Some (including Chien) see a machine ("the Clanker"), others see a biological monstrosity ("the Gulper"), yet others see a whirlwind, and so forth.

An underground movement, fearing that the leader is not human, contrives to place Tung at a party where the leader will be present. Tung meets the leader, who is apparently an undistinguished elderly man, and takes the anti-hallucinogenic drug.

He learns that all the visions are true, and far more besides; the Party leader is not only alien, he is an almighty, godlike being — perhaps a demiurge, perhaps God himself — and one that preys on all living things. As the story comes to a close, the Leader tells the now mortally wounded Chien:

“

The dead shall live, the living die. I kill what lives; I save what has died. And I will tell you this: there are things worse than I. But you won't meet them because by then I will have killed you.

”

Chien, armed with this knowledge, reflects that "A hallucination is merciful. I wish I had it; I want mine back." The story ends with Chien mortally wounded, his life ebbing away, trying to regain his hallucinatory state through intimacy.

Dick's own commentary on the story

In many ways, this story prefigures Dick's later interest in Gnosticism. Dick later said about this story:

"The title is that of an old hymn. I think, with this story, I managed to offend everybody, which seemed at the time to be a good idea, but which I've regretted since. Communism, drugs, sex, God — I put it all together, and it's been my impression since that when the roof fell in on me years later, this story was in some eerie way involved."^[1]

and

"I don't advocate any of the ideas in Faith Of Our Fathers; I don't, for example, claim that the Iron Curtain countries will win the cold war—or morally ought to. One theme in the story, however, seems compelling to me, in view of recent experiments with hallucinogenic drugs: the theological experience, which so many who have taken LSD have reported. This appears to me to be a true new frontier; to a certain extent the religious experience can now be scientifically studied... and, what is more, may be viewed as part hallucination but containing other, real components. God, as a topic in science fiction, when it appeared at all, used to be treated polemically, as in OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET. But I prefer to treat it as intellectually exciting. What if, through psychedelic drugs, the religious experience becomes commonplace in the life of intellectuals? The old atheism, which seemed to many of us—including me—valid in terms of our experiences, or rather lack of experiences, would have to step momentarily aside. Science fiction, always probing what is about to be thought, become, must eventually tackle without preconceptions a future neo-mystical society in which theology constitutes as major a force as in the medieval period. This is not necessarily a backward step, because now these beliefs can be tested—forced to put up or shut up. I, myself, have no real beliefs about God; only my experience that He is present... subjectively, of course; but the inner realm is real too. And in a science fiction story one projects what has been a personal inner experience into a milieu; it becomes socially shared, hence discussable. The last word, however, on the subject of God may have already been said: in A.D. 840 by John Scotus Erigena at the court of the Frankish king Charles the Bald. "We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being." Such a penetrating—and Zen—mystical view, arrived at so long ago, will be hard to top; in my own experiences with psychedelic drugs I have had precious tiny illumination compared with Erigena."^[2]

Notes

↑ Dick, Philip K. (1977). "Afterthoughts by the Author". In John Brunner (editor). The Best of Philip K. Dick. Del Rey. p. 449. ISBN 0-345-25359-0.
↑ Dick, Philip K. (1987). The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, Vol 5: We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. United Kingdom: Orion Publishing Group. p. 391. ISBN 1-85798-948-1.

External links

The Fictional Pharmaceuticals of Philip K. Dick
Themes of Reality, Divinity and Humanity in the Short Stories of Philip K. Dick: an essay which touches on the story
Faith of Our Fathers title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Works by Philip K. Dick

Novels

Gather Yourselves Together (1950)
Voices from the Street (1952)
Solar Lottery (1954)
Mary and the Giant (1954)
The World Jones Made (1954)
Eye in the Sky (1955)
The Man Who Japed (1955)
A Time for George Stavros (1956)
Pilgrim on the Hill (1956)
The Broken Bubble (1956)
The Cosmic Puppets (1957)
Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)
Nicholas and the Higs (1958)
Time Out of Joint (1958)
In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)
Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960)
Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)
Vulcan's Hammer (1960)
Dr. Futurity (1960)
The Man in the High Castle (1961)
We Can Build You (1962)
Martian Time-Slip (1962)
Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1963)
The Game-Players of Titan (1963)
The Simulacra (1963)
The Crack in Space (1963)
Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)
The Zap Gun (1964)
The Penultimate Truth (1964)
The Unteleported Man (1964)
The Ganymede Takeover (1965)
Counter-Clock World (1965)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966)
Nick and the Glimmung (1966)
Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
Ubik (1966)
Galactic Pot-Healer (1968)
A Maze of Death (1968)
Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969)
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
Deus Irae (1976)
Radio Free Albemuth (1976; published 1985)
A Scanner Darkly (1977)
VALIS (1981)
The Divine Invasion (1981)
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
The Owl in Daylight (unfinished)

Collections

A Handful of Darkness (1955)
The Variable Man (1956)
The Preserving Machine (1969)
The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973)
The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977)
The Golden Man (1980)
Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities (1984)
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987)
Beyond Lies the Wub (1988)
The Dark Haired Girl (1989)
The Father-Thing (1989)
Second Variety (1989)
The Days of Perky Pat (1990)
The Little Black Box (1990)
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1990)
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1990)
The Minority Report (1991)
Second Variety (1991)
The Eye of the Sibyl (1992)
The Philip K. Dick Reader (1997)
Minority Report (2002)
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)
Paycheck (2004)
Vintage PKD (2006)

Short stories

"Beyond Lies the Wub" (1952)
"The Gun" (1952)
"The Skull" (1952)
"The Little Movement" (1952)
"The Defenders" (1953)
"Mr. Spaceship" (1953)
"Piper in the Woods" (1953)
"Roog" (1953)
"The Infinites" (1953)
"Second Variety" (1953)
"The World She Wanted" (1953)
"Colony" (1953)
"The Cookie Lady" (1953)
"Impostor" (1953)
"Martians Come in Clouds" (1953)
"Paycheck" (1953)
"The Preserving Machine" (1953)
"The Cosmic Poachers" (1953)
"Expendable" (1953)
"The Indefatigable Frog" (1953)
"The Commuter" (1953)
"Out in the Garden" (1953)
"The Great C" (1953)
"The King of the Elves" (1953)
"The Trouble with Bubbles" (1953)
"The Variable Man" (1953)
"The Impossible Planet" (1953)
"Planet for Transients" (1953)
"Some Kinds of Life" (1953)
"The Builder" (1953)
"The Hanging Stranger" (1953)
"Project: Earth" (1953)
"The Eyes Have It" (1953)
"Tony and the Beetles" (1953)
"Prize Ship" (1954)
"Beyond the Door" (1954)
"The Crystal Crypt" (1954)
"A Present for Pat" (1954)
"The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" (1954)
"The Golden Man" (1954)
"James P. Crow" (1954)
"Prominent Author" (1954)
"Small Town" (1954)
"Survey Team" (1954)
"Sales Pitch" (1954)
"Time Pawn" (1954)
"Breakfast at Twilight" (1954)
"The Crawlers" (1954)
"Of Withered Apples" (1954)
"Exhibit Piece" (1954)
"Adjustment Team" (1954)
"Shell Game" (1954)
"Meddler" (1954)
"Souvenir" (1954)
"A World of Talent" (1954)
"The Last of the Masters" (1954)
"Progeny" (1954)
"Upon the Dull Earth" (1954)
"The Father-thing" (1954)
"Strange Eden" (1954)
"Jon's World" (1954)
"The Turning Wheel" (1954)
"Foster, You're Dead!" (1955)
"Human Is" (1955)
"War Veteran" (1955)
"Captive Market" (1955)
"Nanny" (1955)
"The Hood Maker" (1955)
"The Chromium Fence" (1955)
"Service Call" (1955)
"A Surface Raid" (1955)
"The Mold of Yancy" (1955)
"Autofac" (1955)
"Psi-man Heal My Child!" (1955)
"The Minority Report" (1956)
"To Serve the Master" (1956)
"Pay for the Printer" (1956)
"A Glass of Darkness" (1956)
"The Unreconstructed M" (1957)
"Misadjustment" (1957)
"Null-O" (1958)
"Explorers We" (1959)
"Recall Mechanism" (1959)
"Fair Game" (1959)
"War Game" (1959)
"All We Marsmen" (1963)
"Stand-by" (1963)
"What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" (1963)
"The Days of Perky Pat" (1963)
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" (1963)
"Waterspider" (1964)
"Novelty Act" (1964)
"Oh, to Be a Blobel!" (1964)
"The War with the Fnools" (1964)
"What the Dead Men Say" (1964)
"Orpheus with Clay Feet" (1964)
"Cantata 140" (1964)
"A Game of Unchance" (1964)
"The Little Black Box" (1964)
"Precious Artifact" (1964)
"The Unteleported Man" (1964)
"Retreat Syndrome" (1965)
"Project Plowshare" (1965)
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966)
"Holy Quarrel" (1966)
"Return Match" (1967)
"Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)
"Not by Its Cover" (1968)
"The Story to End All Stories" (1968)
"The Electric Ant" (1969)
"A. Lincoln, Simulacrum" (1969)
"The Pre-persons" (1974)
"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" (1974)
"The Exit Door Leads In" (1979)
"Chains of Air, Web of Aethyr" (1980)
"Rautavaara's Case" (1980)
"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980)
"The Alien Mind" (1981)
"Strange Memories of Death" (1984)
"Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked" (1987)
"The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out of Its Tree" (1987)
"The Eye of the Sibyl" (1987)
"Stability" (1987)
"Goodbye, Vincent" (1988)

Adaptations

Films	Blade Runner (1982) Total Recall (1990) Confessions d'un Barjo (1992) Screamers (1995) Impostor (2002) Minority Report (2002) Paycheck (2003) A Scanner Darkly (2006) Next (2007) Screamers: The Hunting (2009) Radio Free Albemuth (2010) The Adjustment Bureau (2011) Total Recall (2012) Androiden Träumen (2014)

TV series	Total Recall 2070 (1999) The Man in the High Castle (2015) Minority Report (2015)

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