Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick Episode #149

Philip K. Dick | November 27, 2023

Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick Episode #149
Philip K. Dick

BEYOND LIES THE WUB

Episode #149 · Written by Philip K. Dick · Narrated by Scott Miller

A seemingly harmless Martian creature is brought aboard a starship, destined to become the crew’s next meal—until it speaks, revealing a mind far beyond human expectations. What follows is a battle of philosophy, instinct, survival… and something far stranger.

When a spaceship crew loads its cargo for the return trip from Mars, no one thinks twice about the enormous, docile creature one crewman bought from a native for half a dollar. The Captain sees only a future meal—four hundred pounds of slow, greasy meat—but the creature, called a wub, has other plans. It speaks. It debates. It knows mythology, history, psychology, and ethics. And worst of all for the hungry crew, it has very strong feelings about not being eaten. Suddenly the men find themselves outmatched in a way they never imagined—not by strength or speed, but by thought.

“Beyond Lies the Wub” was Philip K. Dick’s first published short story, appearing in Planet Stories in July 1952. Even here, at the very beginning of his career, Dick demonstrated the ideas that would later make him legendary: the blurred line between human and alien, the fragility of identity, the arrogance of power, and the unsettling possibility that the universe is far stranger than we’re prepared to admit. The story begins like a joke about a talking pig and ends as something much darker, funnier, and more unforgettable—a classic example of early 1950s speculative fiction that still feels modern today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) became one of the most adapted and discussed sci-fi writers of the 20th century. His work inspired Blade Runner, Minority Report, The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, and many more films and series. Winner of the Hugo Award and known for bending the borders between reality and hallucination, Dick explored everything from simulated worlds to artificial intelligence, pre-crime police, drug-altered identity, parallel timelines, and the ethics of technology. With more than 120 short stories and 40 novels, he changed the genre forever—and it all started here, with a talking alien who refuses to be dinner.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick — a vintage sci-fi tale of a strange alien creature, human arrogance, and unexpected intelligence on a starship.

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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 43 countries and heard in more than 190 countries, the show has surpassed 4.2 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.

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Vintage science fiction. Professionally narrated. Carefully curated.