Breakfast at Twilight by Philip K. Dick Episode #178

Philip K. Dick | February 23, 2024

Breakfast at Twilight by Philip K. Dick Episode #178
Philip K. Dick

BREAKFAST AT TWILIGHT

Episode #178 · Written by Philip K. Dick · Narrated by Scott Miller

A quiet family breakfast is shattered when the McLeans discover their home has been torn out of time and dropped into a war-ravaged future. Now they must decide whether to escape to safety—or risk everything to return to the world they once knew.

A quiet morning at the McLean household feels entirely ordinary—coffee brewing, kids preparing for school, and light conversation around the breakfast table—until the radio goes dead, the sky turns to ash, and armed soldiers break down the front door. In a single impossible moment, the family learns they’ve been ripped out of their own time and hurled seven years into the future: a future consumed by nuclear war, food scarcity, relocation camps, and a world where even owning books is suspicious. Their home, intact and stocked with food, is a miracle in a world of ruins—and that makes them both valuable and dangerous.

As the soldiers strip the house, as bombs fall closer, and as the last light fades beneath the ash-clouded sky, the McLeans are given a choice: flee underground with the government forces and accept the future, or gamble on the chance that another devastating attack will throw them back into the past. It’s a race against time—and against time itself. What would you risk for the chance to go home?

“Breakfast at Twilight” is a perfect example of Philip K. Dick’s gift for turning ordinary life into uncanny, urgent sci-fi suspense. It’s not a distant galaxy or alien planet—it’s your neighborhood, your kitchen table, your family—and the terror comes not from invasion, but from seeing the present already swallowed by the future. First published in Amazing Stories in 1954, the story now feels hauntingly modern: collapsing infrastructure, disinformation, militarized society, and the fragile illusion that “normal life” will always continue.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip K. Dick—called “the most brilliant sci-fi mind of the 20th century”—wrote about shifting realities long before they were cultural obsession. His works inspired Blade Runner, The Man in the High Castle, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, and dozens more screen adaptations. He was nominated for five Nebula Awards, won the Hugo Award for The Man in the High Castle, and is one of the most studied and imitated authors in the genre. No writer explored the fear beneath the everyday—and the truth behind illusion—more deeply than Dick.