Small Town by Philip K. Dick Episode #39

Philip K. Dick | October 13, 2022

Small Town by Philip K. Dick Episode #39
Philip K. Dick

SMALL TOWN

Episode #39 · Written by Philip K. Dick · Narrated by Scott Miller

A worn-down man builds the perfect escape from an unforgiving world—an exact miniature replica of his town, right down to every streetlight and storefront. But when the real world pushes him too far, his model stops being a hobby… and starts becoming a way out.

Verne Haskel has spent his whole life being ignored, underestimated, and quietly pushed aside by the people of Woodland, the wealthy little California town where he has worked, lived, and slowly withered for more than twenty years. His boss doesn’t respect him, his neighbors barely acknowledge him, the clerks in town look down on him, and even his own wife speaks to him with exhaustion rather than affection. But there is one place where Verne is in control—one world that belongs entirely to him: the model town in his basement. Every street, every store, every building in perfect miniature. Built by hand. Maintained obsessively. Improved continually. A perfect copy of Woodland… until the day Verne decides to start changing things.

At first it feels harmless. A building removed here, a new one added there. A hateful boss erased from the map, replaced by something fitting. A store he never liked, gone. A bank that once denied him a loan? Replaced. Piece by piece, Verne begins reshaping the town the way it should have been—the way it would have been, if life had treated him fairly. But Verne isn’t just rearranging plywood and paint. His model world is becoming stronger in his mind than the real one, and the changes he makes in miniature begin to echo far beyond the basement. The question is no longer why he’s doing it. The question is: what happens when the model becomes the world he prefers—and the only one he’ll accept?

Small Town is one of Philip K. Dick’s most unsettling psychological stories, a blend of domestic realism, dark satire, speculative fantasy, and slow-burn horror. This isn’t a story about space travel, alien invasions, or future technology. It’s about what happens when a man quietly breaks under the weight of the ordinary world and finds a way to rewrite reality—one that finally listens to him, obeys him, and makes sense to him. Dick explores themes that became his trademarks: the fragility of identity, the instability of reality, and the frightening idea that the world is only as solid as the mind perceives it to be.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) is now regarded as one of the most influential science fiction authors of all time—a writer whose work has inspired films such as Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, The Adjustment Bureau, and The Man in the High Castle. But long before Hollywood discovered him, Dick was writing short stories like this one—stories about paranoia, altered worlds, shifting identities, and the terrifying power of belief. His work wasn’t about rockets and ray guns. It was about consciousness, perception, and the idea that what we call “reality” might be nothing more than a fragile agreement waiting to break.

Small Town perfectly showcases the early seeds of the themes that would later define his career. It’s funny, bitter, tragic, eerie, and unforgettable—a story that begins quietly and ends with a shock that forces the reader to question not just what happened, but what is possible. Like so much of Dick’s work, it lingers long after the final line, challenging us to ask: is the world we live in truly real? And if it isn’t… how would we know?

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to Small Town by Philip K. Dick — a chilling tale of escape, control, and collapsing realities in this gripping piece of vintage science fiction.

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:

★★★★★ “Si-Fi King. First class stories beautifully performed. Scott, you are the vintage Si-Fi king.”
— mopea

★★★★★ “Very microphonic professional voice. I wish other producers would cast similar voices than this one. Many of them have very thin and not engaging voices. This is not the case here. Very professional and very pleasant and calming tone of voice. Top talent. Easy to listen to and easy to fall asleep. Highly recommended.”
— Yeseter

Vintage science fiction. Professionally narrated. Carefully curated.