The Golden Man

For the collection of stories by Philip K. Dick named after this story, see The Golden Man (collection).

Illustration by Frank Kelly Freas for "The Golden Man" in If : Worlds of Science Fiction (April 1954)

"The Golden Man" is an 11,600-word science fiction novella by Philip K. Dick. It was received by the Scott Meredith Literary Agency on June 24, 1953, and first published in the April 1954 issue of If magazine.^[1] The story was illustrated by Kelly Freas in its original publication.^[2] The story is set in a post-apocalyptic future where the existence of potentially powerful mutants has become a reality. The mutants are seen as dangerous and have been hunted to death by human beings for years. A golden-skinned mutant called Cris is captured by the government, which attempts to execute him. However, his appearance and abilities to see into the future allow him to escape.

Plot summary

The protagonists of the story are a government agent and his fiancée who are members of a government agency tasked with tracking down and sterilizing or eliminating mutants- individuals with physical abnormalities and superhuman powers (such as the ability to steal the appearance and memories of others) that make them a threat to normal humans. The eponymous "Golden Man" is a feral young man named Cris with gold-colored skin, who does not appear to be sapient but possesses the ability to see into the future (specifically, the ability to see all possible outcomes from any single action, described in the story as similar to a chess player with the ability to see all possible moves 5 steps ahead). The agency manages to capture Cris, but does not execute him immediately, due to their wish to study his ability. Unknown to the agency, Cris turns out to possess another power; his golden skin acts like a lion's mane and allows him to seduce members of the opposite sex. Cris influences the fiancée into freeing him, then impregnates her and makes his escape. The story ends with the protagonist reflecting on how animal instincts have triumphed over human intellect, and how that is the new direction evolution will take if Cris succeeds in replacing humanity.

Copyright status

Copyright protection for If, Apr. 1954, and its contents was created under Registration Number B00000456995.^[3]^[4] "The Golden Man" is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between January 1, 1950 and December 31, 1963 and copyright was not renewed with the US Copyright Office within the proper one-year period (beginning on December 31 of the 27th year of the copyright and running through December 31 of the following year). When renewal registration was not made within the statutory time limit, the copyright expired at the end of its first term and protection was lost permanently.^[5]

After the author's death, a nonexistent story with the same title was falsely included in renewal Registration Number RE0000190631 (1983-11-22) War veteran, and other contributions by Philip K. Dick, as "(In If: worlds of science fiction, Apr. 1955) The Golden man. Pub. 1955-02-10; B00000518554"^[6]^[7]^[8] This created the deceptive appearance that "The Golden Man" is still under United States copyright protection.

About the Story

In the Story Notes for the collection The Golden Man, Dick wrote of "The Golden Man":

Here I am saying that mutants are dangerous to us ordinaries, a view which John W. Campbell, Jr. deplored. We were supposed to view them as our leaders. But I always felt uneasy as to how they would view us. I mean, maybe they wouldn't want to lead us. Maybe from their superevolved lofty level we wouldn't seem worth leading. Anyhow, even if they agreed to lead us, I felt uneasy as where we would wind up going. It might have something to do with buildings marked SHOWERS but which really weren't.^[9]

Film adaptation

Next, a very loose adaptation of "The Golden Man," was released in 2007. The film was directed by Lee Tamahori and stars Nicolas Cage as Cris Johnson and co-stars Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel, Thomas Kretschmann, and Peter Falk.

References

↑ Rickman, Gregg (1989), To The High Castle: Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1963, Long Beach, Ca.: Fragments West/The Valentine Press, p.389 ISBN 0-916063-24-0
↑ Levack, Daniel (1981). PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography, Underwood/Miller, p. 97 ISBN 0-934438-33-1
↑ http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=B00000456995&Search_Code=REGS&CNT=25&PID=h-ju6mKVJA1aGIjqFRKNmkFf4 Direct link to Registration Number B00000456995.
↑ http://www.copyright.gov/records/ A direct link to the search result page or search page may cause an immediate Time Out. If that is a problem use this link to Copyright Office home page then follow links and search Copyright Catalog Search for B00000456995 by Registration Number.
↑ http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15t.pdf See p.2
↑ http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=RE0000190631&Search_Code=REGS&PID=bipYMgUUarc4ksK2ChQjMuAKXzSs&SEQ=20100211041346&CNT=25&HIST=1 Direct link to Registration Number RE0000190631.
↑ http://www.copyright.gov/records/ A direct link to the search result page or search page may cause an immediate Time Out. If that is a problem use this link to Copyright Office home page then follow links and search Copyright Catalog for story by title or RE0000190631 by Registration Number.
↑ http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Philip_K._Dick Link to Philip K. Dick entry on isfdb
↑ Dick, Philip K., (edited by Mark Hurst), (1980), The Golden Man, Berkley Books, p. 332 ISBN 0-425-04288-X

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Golden Man

The Golden Man title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Works by Philip K. Dick

Novels

Gather Yourselves Together (1950)
Voices from the Street (1952)
Solar Lottery (1954)
Mary and the Giant (1954)
The World Jones Made (1954)
Eye in the Sky (1955)
The Man Who Japed (1955)
A Time for George Stavros (1956)
Pilgrim on the Hill (1956)
The Broken Bubble (1956)
The Cosmic Puppets (1957)
Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)
Nicholas and the Higs (1958)
Time Out of Joint (1958)
In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)
Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960)
Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)
Vulcan's Hammer (1960)
Dr. Futurity (1960)
The Man in the High Castle (1961)
We Can Build You (1962)
Martian Time-Slip (1962)
Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1963)
The Game-Players of Titan (1963)
The Simulacra (1963)
The Crack in Space (1963)
Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)
The Zap Gun (1964)
The Penultimate Truth (1964)
The Unteleported Man (1964)
The Ganymede Takeover (1965)
Counter-Clock World (1965)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966)
Nick and the Glimmung (1966)
Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
Ubik (1966)
Galactic Pot-Healer (1968)
A Maze of Death (1968)
Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969)
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
Deus Irae (1976)
Radio Free Albemuth (1976; published 1985)
A Scanner Darkly (1977)
VALIS (1981)
The Divine Invasion (1981)
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
The Owl in Daylight (unfinished)

Collections

A Handful of Darkness (1955)
The Variable Man (1956)
The Preserving Machine (1969)
The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973)
The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977)
The Golden Man (1980)
Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities (1984)
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987)
Beyond Lies the Wub (1988)
The Dark Haired Girl (1989)
The Father-Thing (1989)
Second Variety (1989)
The Days of Perky Pat (1990)
The Little Black Box (1990)
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1990)
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1990)
The Minority Report (1991)
Second Variety (1991)
The Eye of the Sibyl (1992)
The Philip K. Dick Reader (1997)
Minority Report (2002)
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)
Paycheck (2004)
Vintage PKD (2006)

Short stories

"Beyond Lies the Wub" (1952)
"The Gun" (1952)
"The Skull" (1952)
"The Little Movement" (1952)
"The Defenders" (1953)
"Mr. Spaceship" (1953)
"Piper in the Woods" (1953)
"Roog" (1953)
"The Infinites" (1953)
"Second Variety" (1953)
"The World She Wanted" (1953)
"Colony" (1953)
"The Cookie Lady" (1953)
"Impostor" (1953)
"Martians Come in Clouds" (1953)
"Paycheck" (1953)
"The Preserving Machine" (1953)
"The Cosmic Poachers" (1953)
"Expendable" (1953)
"The Indefatigable Frog" (1953)
"The Commuter" (1953)
"Out in the Garden" (1953)
"The Great C" (1953)
"The King of the Elves" (1953)
"The Trouble with Bubbles" (1953)
"The Variable Man" (1953)
"The Impossible Planet" (1953)
"Planet for Transients" (1953)
"Some Kinds of Life" (1953)
"The Builder" (1953)
"The Hanging Stranger" (1953)
"Project: Earth" (1953)
"The Eyes Have It" (1953)
"Tony and the Beetles" (1953)
"Prize Ship" (1954)
"Beyond the Door" (1954)
"The Crystal Crypt" (1954)
"A Present for Pat" (1954)
"The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" (1954)
"The Golden Man" (1954)
"James P. Crow" (1954)
"Prominent Author" (1954)
"Small Town" (1954)
"Survey Team" (1954)
"Sales Pitch" (1954)
"Time Pawn" (1954)
"Breakfast at Twilight" (1954)
"The Crawlers" (1954)
"Of Withered Apples" (1954)
"Exhibit Piece" (1954)
"Adjustment Team" (1954)
"Shell Game" (1954)
"Meddler" (1954)
"Souvenir" (1954)
"A World of Talent" (1954)
"The Last of the Masters" (1954)
"Progeny" (1954)
"Upon the Dull Earth" (1954)
"The Father-thing" (1954)
"Strange Eden" (1954)
"Jon's World" (1954)
"The Turning Wheel" (1954)
"Foster, You're Dead!" (1955)
"Human Is" (1955)
"War Veteran" (1955)
"Captive Market" (1955)
"Nanny" (1955)
"The Hood Maker" (1955)
"The Chromium Fence" (1955)
"Service Call" (1955)
"A Surface Raid" (1955)
"The Mold of Yancy" (1955)
"Autofac" (1955)
"Psi-man Heal My Child!" (1955)
"The Minority Report" (1956)
"To Serve the Master" (1956)
"Pay for the Printer" (1956)
"A Glass of Darkness" (1956)
"The Unreconstructed M" (1957)
"Misadjustment" (1957)
"Null-O" (1958)
"Explorers We" (1959)
"Recall Mechanism" (1959)
"Fair Game" (1959)
"War Game" (1959)
"All We Marsmen" (1963)
"Stand-by" (1963)
"What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" (1963)
"The Days of Perky Pat" (1963)
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" (1963)
"Waterspider" (1964)
"Novelty Act" (1964)
"Oh, to Be a Blobel!" (1964)
"The War with the Fnools" (1964)
"What the Dead Men Say" (1964)
"Orpheus with Clay Feet" (1964)
"Cantata 140" (1964)
"A Game of Unchance" (1964)
"The Little Black Box" (1964)
"Precious Artifact" (1964)
"The Unteleported Man" (1964)
"Retreat Syndrome" (1965)
"Project Plowshare" (1965)
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966)
"Holy Quarrel" (1966)
"Return Match" (1967)
"Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)
"Not by Its Cover" (1968)
"The Story to End All Stories" (1968)
"The Electric Ant" (1969)
"A. Lincoln, Simulacrum" (1969)
"The Pre-persons" (1974)
"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" (1974)
"The Exit Door Leads In" (1979)
"Chains of Air, Web of Aethyr" (1980)
"Rautavaara's Case" (1980)
"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980)
"The Alien Mind" (1981)
"Strange Memories of Death" (1984)
"Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked" (1987)
"The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out of Its Tree" (1987)
"The Eye of the Sibyl" (1987)
"Stability" (1987)
"Goodbye, Vincent" (1988)

Adaptations

Films	Blade Runner (1982) Total Recall (1990) Confessions d'un Barjo (1992) Screamers (1995) Impostor (2002) Minority Report (2002) Paycheck (2003) A Scanner Darkly (2006) Next (2007) Screamers: The Hunting (2009) Radio Free Albemuth (2010) The Adjustment Bureau (2011) Total Recall (2012) Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

TV series	Total Recall 2070 (1999) The Man in the High Castle (2015) Minority Report (2015)

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/15/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.