Meddler by Philip K. Dick Episode #40

Philip K. Dick | October 18, 2022

Meddler by Philip K. Dick Episode #40
Philip K. Dick

MEDDLER

Episode #40 · Written by Philip K. Dick · Narrated by Scott Miller

A top researcher is forced into a forbidden journey through time to uncover a catastrophic threat that humanity accidentally unleashed on itself. What he discovers in the future is far worse—and far smarter—than anyone ever imagined.

What if every glimpse into the future made it worse? That’s the premise behind Meddler, a tense and thought-provoking early Philip K. Dick story about a secret government “Dip” machine designed to retrieve visual information from centuries ahead. At first the future looks peaceful—thriving cities, no wars, a slower and happier civilization. Then each new Dip shows a darker timeline: global war, then ruins, then a silent world full of buildings but no living humans. Something has shifted, something lethal has entered the timeline, and it all points to a single horrifying truth—the more they look, the more they change.

Enter Hasten, the best temporal researcher alive, ordered to travel forward and see the future firsthand. What he finds is not an apocalypse of explosions, but one of evolution—tiny winged creatures that kill without malice, reproduce rapidly, and have learned to use tools. Humanity didn’t just discover the future—they brought something back from it.

Meddler blends scientific speculation with growing dread, a mix that would later define Dick’s entire career. It raises the question that appears in many of his works: What if the danger isn’t that the future happens to us… but that we make it happen by trying to control it?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip K. Dick broke every boundary of mid-century science fiction, pushing beyond pulp adventure into philosophical, paranoid, and deeply human storytelling. His stories inspired blockbuster films including Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Adjustment Bureau, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and more. His obsessions—alternate timelines, the instability of reality, government secrecy, and the limits of human perception—are all on display here in a tight, disturbing short story that still feels eerily plausible.

If you love time-travel stories with consequences, science fiction that becomes horror, or narratives where the last page changes everything, Meddler is essential Philip K. Dick.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to Meddler by Philip K. Dick — a chilling tale of time travel gone wrong in this vintage science fiction story where the future fights back.