Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick Episode #107

Philip K. Dick | September 30, 2023

Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick Episode #107
Philip K. Dick

EXHIBIT PIECE

Episode #107 · Written by Philip K. Dick · Narrated by Scott Miller

A historian obsessed with the past suddenly finds himself living inside the very world he was only meant to study. But when the line between exhibit and reality begins to blur, he faces a terrifying question—has he stepped into history, or has history swallowed him whole?

Exhibit Piece is one of Philip K. Dick’s most fascinating explorations of identity, memory, and the fragile nature of reality. In a future where history is preserved through full-scale reconstructions, George Miller is a historian so dedicated to the mid-20th century that he dresses like a man from the 1950s, carries a vintage briefcase, and speaks in outdated slang. But when something impossible happens—when voices and movement are heard inside the sealed exhibit—Miller steps across the boundary between observation and immersion. Suddenly he is no longer a historian studying the past. He is living in it… with a wife, children, coworkers, and a life that feels more real than the futuristic society he came from. Is he trapped in an exhibit? Hallucinating? Or has time folded in on itself?

The more Miller tries to understand what has happened, the more the world around him insists it is real. His family knows him, his job awaits him, and the breakfast on the table tastes undeniably like bacon and coffee. Yet the memories of his “real” life—his research department, his critic Fleming, the History Agency—haven’t vanished. He remembers both lives at once, and the confusion pushes him to the brink. Dick builds the tension slowly, tightening the boundaries between eras until they collide, leaving Miller—and the reader—questioning whether the future was ever real at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) is one of the most influential voices in speculative fiction, the mind behind stories that became Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle. Known for his reality-bending plots, questions of identity, and paranoid psychological twists, Dick wasn’t just writing science fiction—he was dissecting the nature of existence. His work asks what is real, who decides, and whether free will survives in a world shaped by systems, technology, or illusion. Though often dismissed during his lifetime, Dick is now regarded as a visionary whose ideas predicted virtual reality, surveillance culture, and the fragmentation of truth in the modern world.

If you enjoy reality glitches, retro-futurism, and the unsettling moment when a character realizes the world around them may not be the world at all, Exhibit Piece is a perfect entry into the Philip K. Dick experience—strange, layered, and deeply human.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick — a vintage sci-fi tale where reality blurs and history comes alive in unsettling ways.

PHILIP K. DICK SHORT STORIES

No writer has shaped The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast more profoundly than Philip K. Dick.

From the very beginning, Dick’s uneasy visions have pulsed at the heart of this show. Episode 1 featured The Hanging Stranger, a chilling tale of a corpse swaying in a public square while ordinary citizens hurry past as if nothing is wrong. That opening story set the tone for everything that followed — paranoia in broad daylight, reality bending at the edges, and the quiet suspicion that the world you trust has already been replaced.

Dick’s genius was not in rockets or distant galaxies alone. He brought the strange into living rooms, offices, schoolyards, and suburban streets. In The Father Thing, a young boy becomes convinced his father has been replaced by something wearing his face. Human Is asks whether a man who returns from space truly is the same person — or whether “better” might mean something far more unsettling. Adjustment Team reveals unseen bureaucrats pausing and resetting reality itself while one man accidentally slips between the cracks.

Some stories strike with dark humor. The Eyes Have It turns casual figures of speech into proof of alien invasion. Sales Pitch unleashes a relentless robotic salesman that refuses to take no for an answer. Others cut deeper. Foster, You’re Dead! exposes the fear-driven consumerism of the Cold War era. Breakfast at Twilight drops an unsuspecting family into the aftermath of atomic catastrophe.

Across more than thirty narrated stories, we’ve traveled through Dick’s shifting realities: the eerie colonization of Mars in Tony and the Beetles, the strange evolutionary leap in The Golden Man, the quiet dread of Beyond the Door, the aching nostalgia of Exhibit Piece, and the philosophical unease of The Turning Wheel. Whether he’s writing about android prejudice in James P. Crow, divine intrusion in Upon the Dull Earth, or time paradoxes in The Skull, Dick always returns to one question: what does it mean to be real?

No other author appears more often in our catalog. No other writer has unsettled us so consistently. Explore the stories below and step into the shifting, unstable, unforgettable worlds of Philip K. Dick — the writer who launched this podcast and continues to haunt it.

ABOUT THE LOST SCI-FI PODCAST

The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast is the most listened-to vintage science fiction podcast in the world. Ranked the #1 Science Fiction Podcast in 34 countries and heard in more than 190 countries, the show has surpassed 3.8 million listens.

Each episode features carefully selected stories from the Golden Age of science fiction, professionally narrated. Timeless storytelling the way it was meant to be heard.

What listeners are saying:

★★★★★ “A bright light amid the dark miasma of today’s narrated fiction. It is wonderful to come upon the beacon that is Scott Miller’s voice and story contributions.”
— Zippoflask

★★★★★ “My favorite podcast. I love this selection of vintage science fiction stories. They are always interesting and entertaining and often edifying. Narrator and curator Scott Miller does a good job of balancing his own taste for obscure works with popular demand for stories from bigger name authors. High quality narration from a former television professional.”
— WillEKY

Vintage science fiction. Professionally narrated. Carefully curated.