"The Impossible Planet" arrived together with "Adjustment Team" at the SMLA on Feb 11, 1953 and was published later that year in Imagination (Oct 1953). It was selected by Rich & Cowan publishers in the UK for inclusion in the first PKD collection, A HANDFUL OF DARKNESS (1955). Almost 20 years went by before it could be found again in Brian Aldiss’ SPACE ODYSSEYS (1974). Then into THE COLLECTED STORIES, Vol.2 in 1987. "The Impossible Planet" was originally titled by PKD as "Legend." "The Impossible Planet" tells the story of a little old rich lady who wishes to see Earth before she dies. An unscrupulous spaceship captain agrees to take her there even though the planet Earth is now only a legend. So he searches his computers for the most likely place and takes her there. But is it Earth? Or is he just taking her money and running? Well, that’s why Phil wrote the story. Once again Philip K. Dick comes up with a new angle on the old science fiction idea of the lost planet of origin of a future galactic empire. This is a great little story because it shows clearly how Dick creates his characters to perfectly fit the story. In "The Impossible Planet" There are four main characters: the opportunistic captain, his partner with moral qualms, the little old lady so wasted that she has to lean on her ‘robant’ servant, the fourth of the group. With these characters PKD, in a few thousand words, manages to create the image of a galactic empire in its totality.
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.
