Chapter Four

“...took ten days”

    Here it is confirmed that faster-than-light travel is not only made possible in Nick’s time but is also used commercially.

“‘...is trying to get in.’”

    Horace the cat’s apparent irrational behavior of staring at a seemingly random wall of the ship seems a frivolous detail. On closer inspection, after what is revealed in chapter six, it may possibly be a hint to the presence of the very being whose fate is tied to both Graham and Fernwright together, Glimmung.

Chapter Five

“‘Orange forests; how odd.’”

    Here the reader discovers that the greenery of Plowman’s Planet is in fact not green.

    In Galactic Pot-Healer, the color orange is never used to describe the environment of Plowman’s Planet. The only colors used are “a mixture of brown and gray.”¹

“...the flat landing-field...”

    In Galactic Pot-Healer, when Joe Fernwright lands on Plowman’s Planet, instead of landing in an open field, his ship docks in a space terminal complex.²

    And instead of a forest, Fernwright finds himself in a "reasonably modern-looking" city by the name of Diamond Head.³ In Diamond Head there is at least one hotel as well as shops and a taxi service.⁴

    With the deforested and urbanized condition of Plowman’s Planet as it is seen in that novel it leads one to believe that Galactic Pot-Healer takes place after Nick and the Glimmung. If one were to estimate the gap in time passed between both books with the clues laid out from chapters one through five, it appears to be somewhere between twenty to forty years.

“I’D LIKE THE NICKEL NOW.”

    From this card given by the wub the native creatures, or wubs at least, have adopted currency from Earth.

    A nickel seems a rather pitifully small amount to ask for carrying luggage but there is one possible explanation.

    In Galactic Pot-Healer, currency is given to citizens of Earth on the daily by the government in the form of trading stamps. But if these stamps are not spent quickly their value plummets due to rapid inflation.⁵ Fernwright, in the two years leading up to the main events of the story, had cultivated sixty-five quarters, which were made before the war. By his estimation his quarters amount to around “‘[t]en million dollars in trading stamps.’”⁶

    If runaway inflation was occurring in Nick’s time, then a nickel may very well have similarly appreciated in value.

    In Galactic Pot-Healer, Plowman’s Planet has a currency of its own called the crumble, more than likely adopted sometime after Nick and the Glimmung.⁷

“‘...the U.N. has given us.’”

    Assuming Peter means the United Nations, it is the only time it is mentioned in Nick in the Glimmung.

    The U.N. is never referred to in Galactic Pot-Healer. In its place is something called the Peaceful International World Senate.⁸

    The specific country Fernwright lives in at the start of the novel is not called the United States of America but the Communal North American Citizen’s Republic.⁹ The citizens of this nation, as well as the others, are governed by what is described as a “planetwide Party apparatus.”¹⁰

    With the words used to describe these, along with the survival of the USSR by the 2040s, it appears that the USA ultimately lost the Cold War sometime before Galactic Pot-Healer, either voting its old republic out of existence or collapsing into a civil war of some sort, possibly the war mentioned in Galactic Pot-Healer.¹¹

    The implied socialistic bent to this new government is made less subtle with an organization dubbed the Political Control Bureau which deals with people who are “‘an enemy of the working class’” and “‘engaged in a conspiracy to advocate agitation against the people and the servants of the people.’”¹²

    Because Fernwright is a war veteran with a government pension, it appears he must have fought for their side.¹³

“‘...can’t seem to communicate with this creature.’”

    Unlike this wub, the titular wub in Dick’s first published story Beyond Lies the Wub, which does not fit into the Glimmung universe due to a myriad of reasons, can speak. The prime examples to this conclusion being that that story appears to take place on Mars and the wub itself can speak English without ever having come into contact with humanity by reading the crew’s minds along with relating them such things as mythology in the same fashion.¹⁴

    Other than that discrepancy, the wub’s physical appearance is much the same as it is in Nick and the Glimmung along with its friendly, easy going, and non-confrontational demeanor.

1) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pg.70

2) Ibid, pg. 73

3) Ibid, pgs. 70

4) Ibid, pgs. 79, 73, and 102

5) Ibid, pgs. 5-6

6) Ibid, pgs. 11-12

7) Ibid, pg. 19

8) Ibid, pg. 4

9) Ibid, pg. 5

10) Ibid, pg. 4

11) Ibid, pg. 3

12) Ibid, pg. 36

13) Ibid, pgs. 3-4

14) The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Volume 1 (Citadel Twilight, 1990), pg. 30

Chapter Two

“‘Any colony planet in particular, Mrs. Graham?’”

This question asked by the news reporter implies that there is more than one planet that humans have colonized in the years leading up to Nick and the Glimmung. Beyond this implication, no other planets are mentioned as having been settled by people of Earth, not even a number of how many.

In Galactic Pot-Healer it is mentioned that the USSR still exists in 2046.¹ Assuming the timeline of Earth in both books diverges from ours around the mid 1960s, the USA’s and USSR’s arms race exponentially grows beyond nuclear weapons and space travels, both manned and unmanned, to the moon, Venus, and Mars, to even further out, discovering habitable planets with intelligent life.

“‘...so far off.’”

In Galactic Pot-Healer it is revealed that Plowman’s Planet is also known as, according to the Earth phone encyclopedia, Sirius 5, meaning it is the fifth planet from the star Sirius.² It is a real star found on the constellation of Canis Major, the brightest of that set of stars.³

According to astronomer Todd J. Henry it is 2.6 parsus, or 8.6 light-years from our sun. It is only preceded by the Centuri, Barnard, Wolf, and Lalande systems as the closest.⁴ By the news reporter’s comment about Plowman’s Planet’s distance, it is likely that most of, if not all, the planets located in those closer star systems have been at the very least visited by space explorers of the USA or USSR.

By the time of Galactic Pot-Healer there are around two hundred planets that are inhabited by either terrestrial or extraterrestrial life.⁵

Because of the great distance of even the closest star system, it is assumed that sometime before the events of Nick and the Glimmung faster-than-light travel was perfected by both superpowers.

“‘...there will be no newspaper.’”

In both books, statements made by characters and other sources about the nature of Plowman’s Planet and what it does and does not have will not always be reliable. In the case of the news reporter’s claims in the story about the lack of television, newspapers, and to a certain extent “‘lights of other houses’” will be accurate.

“‘...the werj.’”

All of the creatures mentioned here; wubs, printers, trobes, father-things, nunks, spiddles, and werjes will make an appearance in Nick and the Glimmung. All but one of these, the father-things, will be mentioned in Galactic Pot-Healer. A theory to potentially explain this will be brought up as a topic in the speculation outro.

In Galactic Pot-Healer they are all identified as being Plabkians.⁶ Two of these species will also make appearances in Galactic Pot-Healer whereas the others are merely mentioned. However there is some discrepancy between the two books as to a couple more beings that Nick and the Glimmung will never show nor mention.

Chapter Three

“‘...can’t take him till then.’”

Nick’s father, Peter Graham, seems aware of his rights as a citizen. If this were taking place in Galactic Pot-Healer, Peter would have been put under arrest for in that book it is a felony to contradict law-enforcement, as Fernwright is told.⁷

“‘...shadowy green for Horace to play...’”

If the “‘green’” Peter speaks of is not figurative, then he either misspoke or, as will be discussed later on, is misinformed of the nature, in this case color, of Plowman’s Planet.

“‘...horned klakes on Plowman’s Planet.’”

Though they appear in neither Nick and the Glimmung nor Galactic Pot-Healer, you can see what horned klakes look like in the illustration accompanying Paul Demeyer’s intro for this blog.

1) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pg. 7

2) Ibid, pg. 31

3) https://www.britannica.com/place/Sirius-star (retrieved December 23, 2025)

4) http://recons.org/TOP100.posted.htm (retrieved December 23, 2025)

5) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pg. 31

6) Ibid, pg. 19

7) Ibid, pg. 36

“The book has said, that all the plans

Would be well within my reach

And here things were

Even larger than I dreamed”

Jim Crichton

Chapter One

“...since the year 1992...”

    This is the only year, or date of any kind specifically stated in Nick and the Glimmung. The year itself is only attributed to when the owning of pets was made illegal and not necessarily when the actual plot begins.

    In Galactic Pot-Healer a specific year is given, 2046.¹ Considering both years and the details revealed of Nick’s life on Earth and beyond from here on up to chapter five makes it is clear that it is impossible for Nick and the Glimmung to take place at, or even near, the same time as Galactic Pot-Healer.

    On the subject of illegality, though the reader does not get much of an idea as to the laws the Graham family must follow on Earth, in Galactic Pot-Healer, Joe Fernwright, the protagonist of that novel, lives under many prohibitions from what is called the Quietude Civil Authority.² They included things such as penalties against smoking cigarettes, drinking caffeine, and even walking too slow in public.³ Other laws will be pointed out in another note shortly and in another for chapter three.

“...food is scarce, these days.”

The population issue that is apparent in Nick and the Glimmung seems to have only gotten worse in Galactic Pot-Healer with massive unemployment occurring at least where Fernwright lives.⁴

“...its tinny, loud voice, ‘No talking.’”

A robot resides in Nick’s classroom. Its use seems to be monitoring student behavior for any interruptions to the lessons.

In Galactic Pot-Healer there is a law on Earth making robots illegal. Fernwright explains that a scientist had “‘proved that a synthetic life-form can’t come into existence.’” But another character, Mali Yojez, explains that because of overpopulation on Earth, the scientific studies that disproved synthetic life being able to exist were falsified in an attempt to alleviate the unemployment crisis.⁵

By the way Fernwright speaks of the subject he has either never seen a robot before or was convinced that the robots he had seen were not truly sentient. On the subject of Fernwright’s age, he is old enough to have served time in the army in “The Old Days” during the war, becoming a veteran, and receiving a pension from the government for his service.⁶

Nowhere in Nick and the Glimmung is a war mentioned as having occurred in the recent past on Earth in Nick’s time.

1) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pg. 5

2) Ibid, pg. 23

3) Ibid, pgs. 4-5,6, and 49

4) Ibid, pg. 33

5) Ibid, pgs. 92-93

6) Ibid, pgs. 3-4

The Illustrator's Introduction

    In the 1980s, I was making animated commercials at a small, well-known studio in London, England. After living there for a few years, I was approached by a writer to collaborate with her and illustrate a few children’s books. I ended up illustrating those, as well as several more books, for the publisher Gollancz.

    After completing a number of projects for them, the publisher asked whether I would illustrate Philip K. Dick’s only children’s book, Nick and the Glimmung, which had never been published before. I had read one of his novels previously—I don’t remember which one—but even at that time, reading this short book felt like encountering a world that was strangely familiar to me. I loved the richness of its creatures and how they spanned the full range of human types and traits, from evil to good—archetypal characters for a novel.

    Twenty years later, after I had lived in Los Angeles for some time, a screenwriter friend suggested we adapt Nick and the Glimmung for the screen. I got in touch with Electric Shepherd Productions, run by Philip K. Dick’s daughter, Isa Dick Hackett. Her company is involved in producing films and TV series based on her father’s work.

    We agreed that my friend Chris Carlson and I would develop a treatment and create designs for a movie. Although I loved the book, Chris and I were aware of its flaws. It didn’t feel fully fleshed out, but it clearly carried the central themes of Philip K. Dick’s work. We expanded the story, made the transitions more dynamic, added new elements to strengthen the structure, developed the characters further, and did what screenwriters do to engage an audience—building suspense and visual excitement.

    However, Electric Shepherd had too many projects underway and put ours on hold. They also felt there was too much competition in the feature film market at the time. Some years later, they returned to us suggesting we approach it as a TV series, so Chris and I invested more time and energy into developing it in that form. Still, the production company remained largely unresponsive.

    This is a familiar Hollywood scenario: artists and writers become deeply invested in a project, work hard on it, and yet never receive meaningful engagement from producers—only to be dropped without much explanation.

    The book itself, however, did relatively well and was translated into French and Japanese, and likely other languages I’m not aware of.

Paul Demeyer

December 24, 2025

The Glimmung Connection

  For most of Philip K. Dick’s creative output, the worlds he depicted, from the mid twentieth century to the many diverting paths of better and worse futures, stand isolated from one another.

    However, there were exceptions to this rule. The Preserving Machine (1953) and The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1954) focused on the character of Doctor Rupert Labyrinth and his experiments in saving the culture and items of his civilization. Second Variety (1953) and Jon’s World (1954) featured the destructive smart weapons of war called the claws and the ultimate threat they pose to a war-torn humanity. The trio of short stories Top Stand-By Job (1963), What’ll We Do with Ragland Park? (1963), and Cantata 140 (1964), the last of which would be expanded into the novel The Crack in Space (1966), followed the political campaign of media funnyman turned presidential-candidate Jim Briskin in a world dealing with severe overpopulation. And arguably the most well-known of these, the novels Dick wrote involving the god-like entity known as Vast Active Living Intelligence System, which makes direct appearances in VALIS (1981) and The Divine Invasion (1981) and Radio Free Albemuth (1985).

    Here, the focus will be on another shared universe, one that may have the most to uncover compared to the others: the only children’s novel he ever wrote, Nick and the Glimmung (1988) in association with his novel Galactic Pot-Healer (1969).

    Both were written relatively close together, the former sometime in 1966, originally submitted under the title “Glimmung of Plowman’s Planet,” and the latter around a year or so later.^{1 2}

    The main body of The Annotated Glimmung will feature entries for the seventeen chapters of Nick and the Glimmung with notes annotating relevant quotes. Due to some chapters having few notes they will be combined with other chapters.

    Concluding this blog will be a speculation outro covering different topics of the overall history that can be ascertained and inferred using the context clues gathered over the course of the notes as well as additional information that could not be related in the main blog. A timeline will be theorized in an attempt to place the above-mentioned novels, along with Dick’s short stories The Father-thing (1954) and Pay for the Printer (1956) into a plausible continuity.

    Due to copyright, only fragments of quotes will be used to indicate what is being made note of. The edition this blog will be referring to is its original Gollancz 1988 publication from the United Kingdom, which uses European English. It is recommended that readers of this blog have already read the books and the stories as well as the short story Beyond Lies the Wub (1952) for a better understanding of the notes. It is also recommended that readers have copies of their own on hand to follow along more closely. Consider this as a spoiler warning to those interested in reading what is contained who have not read the relevant material as of yet. At the end of each entry there will be sources cited.

    Any conversation on the observation and interpretation of these texts in each entries comment section is encouraged.

    So, with that, may you enjoy this little blog and may it cast a new light on this curious and over-looked world.

Robert E. Bradley

January 15, 2026

1) https://philipdick.com/mirror/websites/pkdweb/NICK AND THE GLIMMUNG.htm (retrieved January 13, 2026)

2) https://philipdick.com/mirror/websites/pkdweb/GALACTIC POTHEALER.htm (retrieved January 13, 2026)

3) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pg. 97