"The Builder" is a short story by Philip K. Dick. It was first published in Amazing Stories, December, 1953-January 1954 with illustration by Ed Emshwiller. Dick had submitted many short stories to magazines and made approximately fifteen sales before becoming a client of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. This was his first SMLA submission, received by SMLA on July 23, 1952. His second SMLA submission was Meddler, received by SMLA on July 24, 1952. The SMLA file card for "The Builder" shows it was submitted to mainstream magazines The Atlantic Monthly and Harper's before it was submitted to Amazing Stories and has an SMLA sub-agent's notation, "IT ISN'T SCIENCE FICTION". The story centers around a man named Elwood living with his family in 1950s suburbia. He builds a boat in his back yard, to great annoyance to his wife and neighbors. When they ask him why he builds it, he tells them he doesn't know. Elwood exhibits post traumatic stress disorder, and shuns most people around him, including his family and co-workers. One day, he decides to go home in the middle of his job to work on the boat. He gazes at the boat, wondering why he's building it. As it starts raining, he finally realizes why.
Author
Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. In 1952, he began writing professionally and proceeded to write numerous novels and short-story collections. He won the Hugo Award for the best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Philip K. Dick died on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California, of heart failure following a stroke. In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten of his stories have been adapted into popular films since his death, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
