Outro Speculations

 

    The following speculations are the author’s piecing together of the evidence found in the relevant material and is not meant to be taken as an official history but rather something for the reader to consider for themselves.

The meaning of the title One Summer Day

    The potential meaning for the title One Summer Day could signify one or a multitude of things. It could be referring to the day the book was created, when Glimmung acquired it, when he landed on Plowman’s Planet, when Nick would defeat him, when he pursued his undertaking in Galactic Pot-Healer, or something else entirely.

The reasons for the War Between Glimmung and the Printers

    As to why the eons long conflict between Glimmung and the printers broke out, one possible reason could have been a fundamental difference in philosophy on whether one should put oneself before others or to put others before oneself. Maybe on their home planet, while the printers could have viewed Glimmung as selfish, Glimmung saw their charitable trait of making prints for others as inevitably turning them into nothing more than slaves, being taken advantage of and eventually being worked to death, as can be seen in both Pay for the Printer and Nick and the Glimmung.^{1 2} This is assuming that Glimmung’s possession of One Summer Day was not the initial cause.

    It is also a possibility that Glimmung and the printers had been in conflict for some other, long forgotten reason, and Glimmung used his mental projection abilities to seek an exit strategy to another planet.³ Maybe one of the planets he came across was the one the kalends resided on. Maybe it was there that Glimmung discovered One Summer Day and somehow, one way or another, took the book for himself and was able to lose the kalends if they ever tried pursuing him.

    Regardless of whether or not the book had been the source of the war, or that it was owned by or created by someone or something else before Glimmung had it, the printers would most likely have seen this great source of knowledge as a direct threat to the balance of what had been before, whatever that was, accelerating tensions further to outright hostilities.

    Another reason could be similar to the previously mentioned Neanderthal-Homo Sapiens scenario mentioned in the notes for chapter fifteen; Glimmung was one of a small group of glimmungs gradually being outnumbered by the printers and that Glimmung’s possession of the book was an act of self-defense. If that was what happened, this would make Glimmung more sympathetic or at least understandable in his actions against the printers.

    If the one spiddle from chapter eight of Nick and the Glimmung is to be believed, that Glimmung was “‘seeking out the printers,’” then Glimmung must have been winning against the printers and with the eventual end of their planet, decided to flee from Glimmung by heading off to multiple star-systems to increase their chances of survival.⁴ That might be another explanation as to why Glimmung had, as he claimed in Galactic Pot-Healer, to split his consciousness across many worlds.⁵ Maybe the stronghold of printers on Plowman’s Planet were either the most significant or most vulnerable group to target and chose to head there.

History of Plowman’s Planet leading up to Nick and the Glimmung

    Consider the following concerning Plowman’s Planet’s history from that point up until Nick and the Glimmung. 

     When the printers arrive on Plowman’s Planet, they met the creatures who already lived there; the nunks, the spiddles, the werjes, the klakes, the father-things, the trobes, and most important of all, the fog-things. Due to the similarity in names, there is a chance that the father-things, assuming they were native to the planet, had a tendency to mimic and replace the father of fog-thing families.⁶

    Upon meeting with the fog-things, the printers warned them of Glimmung and the already ages long conflict between them. When they spoke of One Summer Day the fog-things either did not take Glimmung seriously or at least doubted the validity of the printers’s claims of a book that could foretell future events and give out details on anyone or anything. Either way, they must have believed they could handle Glimmung if not defeat him outright.

    That was until Glimmung began to exert his presence and will upon the planet, concentrating himself in the area he planned to land upon.⁷ This, along with his advantage of knowledge, the fog-things discovered too late that they were no match for this powerful being. Eventually, sometime either before or after Glimmung fully arrived, the fog-things “‘passed away’”/“‘vanished’”, with whatever remained of their essence and their civilization going to the depths of Mare Nostrum.⁸ In Mare Nostrum, beside the fog-things who lay dormant until one day reawakened, shadow versions of all who will reside on Plowman’s Planet, past or future, dead or living, lurk in the dark depths.⁹

    With the book’s word that Glimmung would never end, he is ultimately confident that the day and victory would be his.¹⁰

    As the centuries pass, Glimmung conquered territory, battling the nunks who joined with the printers in attacks against him.¹¹ Though the spiddles remain neutral and the klakes are hostile to all, it is the werjes, trobes, and father-things who side, for one reason or another, with Glimmung, counter-attacking wherever and whenever he commanded.¹² With no clear advantage or a decisive battle of consequence, the war on Plowman’s Planet turns in neither side's favor.

    One day, on what was at the same time on Earth’s calendar as August 1936, possibly due to impatience with no seeming end in sight, Glimmung attempted to enter Mare Nostrum only to be attacked by the Black Glimmung who resided beneath.¹³ Narrowly escaping this incident, he is convinced, for the time being, of the impossibility of using the ocean to any purpose.

Placing The Father-Thing

    The following scenario is how The Father-Thing could fit into the overall continuity.

    Someday in the years, possibly centuries, leading up to the 20th century on Earth, Glimmung read One Summer Day to discover a passage he had never read before. In it was written that a race of aliens called humans from a faraway planet called Earth would one day be able to reach Plowman’s Planet and ultimately join forces with the printers and the nunks, and cajole the spiddles, against him, and form The Grand Four.¹⁴

    If the failed attempt to enter Mare Nostrum was not his first response to this proclamation, then the possible attempt to slow-down, if not outright eliminate, the threat humans posed to his prospects of victory in the war, might have been. Somehow, Glimmung was able to send father-things across the stars toward Earth. Maybe he sent an army of them but, for one reason or another, the legions dwindled: on the trip through space, burning up in Earth’s atmosphere, landing in oceans, deserts, tundra, or any other type of uninhabitable environment.

    Whether the incident that occurred in The Father-Thing was one of several similar contacts on Earth or was the only time a father-thing reached a target, it appeared that the attempt(s) did little, if anything, to inhibit humanity’s technological progress.¹⁵ Glimmung, if he projected his consciousness to look upon their failure, he did nothing more to intervene.

    With the rise of the superpower nations of the USA and the USSR and their ensuing nuclear and space races, the end of the century and millennium saw humanity mastering faster-than-light travel and the search for intelligent life outside of their solar system. Whether the superpowers called a truce or not, the United Nations established a program for those interested in emigrating from the increasingly over-crowded cities of Earth for parts barely known.¹⁶ Either sometime just before or at the dawn of the 21st century, the first expeditions and subsequent settlements reached Plowman’s Planet and began their process of transplanting human civilization upon the natives.

    In the lead up before the humans landed, Glimmung and his allies began another line of defense to deter the humans from joining the printers and nunks by composing The Last and Final War.¹⁷ It is likely that the copies produced from the original manuscript were created by using One Summer Day as a basis while one or more printers, captured while young and forced to, mass-produced them, and altered accordingly when opportunistically appropriate.

    If this was his greatest appeal to get the humans to join his cause, it must have been the printers’s willingness to replicate much needed materials and objects that won the humans over to their side instead.¹⁸ Maintaining the hopes of changing minds, Glimmung made sure that attacks on human settlers did not turn lethal whenever it could be helped. He continued the distribution of new copies of his account of the war, all the while doing what he could to slow humanity as it continued to exert its influence on Plowman’s Planet, deterring any hopeful prospects from getting further into his territory and closer towards his headquarters.¹⁹

    Meanwhile, as Earth’s population continues to rise, more and more people start their lives anew by taking to distant stars. From here, the events of Nick and the Glimmung are set into motion.

The Peace Treaty

    Sometime after Nick and the Glimmung, The Grand Four are informed, one way or another, that Glimmung was willing to confer with them on terms for peace. How it is planned or where the meeting took place, more than likely it was not far from Glimmung’s layer due to his great injury.

    The printers would be adamant that Glimmung must be imprisoned and/or severely punished for the crimes he committed against them over the millennia long fight. The nunks and spiddles would want their territories back and maybe even confiscate some from the werjes and trobes as war prizes. But it would be the humans who would mediate and finalize the peace treaty.

    It is ultimately proposed to Glimmung that he is to, as a price for the removal of the spear from, and treatment of, his wound by doctors, fulfill three major conditions.

    The first: that he surrenders his forces to the emerging government on the planet and thus cease future hostilities with anyone on or off Plowman’s Planet and to peaceably co-exist with the inhabitants.

    The second: that he uses his abilities in any way he can to assist with the growth of the civilization and the planet’s well-being.

    And the third: that he hands over the book titled One Summer Day so that he can no longer use it for ill intent.

    In the end Glimmung conceded to all of these conditions. He is treated and cared for and, even if not as powerful as he was before, strong enough to continue his new life as an indentured servant of Plowman’s Planet. From then on if Glimmung needed assistance from those on or off the planet he would never order them to do so but always request.²⁰ Though Glimmung will maintain a short temper, he will do his best to control it.²¹

    Whether before or after the fall of the U.N., the government on Plowman’s Planet declared independence from any attached to Earth. As the years rolled on, life forms from distant galaxies traveled to the planet to visit and do business, with some becoming citizens themselves.²²

    The werjes and spiddles, and most likely the wubs and the trobes, are given jobs such as taxi drivers and tour guides to the newcomers.²³

    Despite these newly opened opportunities, two species fail to partake in the new fledgling society. The klakes, still being the enemy of all on the planet, are left to inhabit their own separate territories and, as they remained neutral during the war, left alone.²⁴

    The other, the father-things, receive a more tragic fate. Whether it was because a significant amount of them decided to rebel or if the mere prospect of beings who could mimic and stealthily replace any species, pressure built upon authorities from concerned and fearful citizens which left them no choice but to control, and ultimately exterminate, all father-things.

    It is possible that a few tried to survive undetected in remote parts of the planet, but they inevitably lived on borrowed time as the planet became more populated. At some point, probably in an attempt to assure those weary of emigrating to or doing business with the planet, all references to them are scrubbed from all future information about life on Plowman’s Planet.

    In an attempt to explain the absence of the presence or mentioning of the father-things in Galactic Pot-Healer, there is one unidentified entity that gives away a vital clue.

    Down in the depths of Mare Nostrum during Fernwright’s dive, where he discovered the Black Glimmung and the pot that predicted both he and Glimmung’s fate, he saw himself, albeit in an ancient, decayed, eyeless, corpse-like form.²⁵ When this corrupted duplicate of himself is asked how it died it merely replied “‘ Glimmung had us killed.’”²⁶ If this seemingly cyptic answer is interpreted with Nick and the Glimmung connected directly to Galactic Pot-Healer, it becomes quite clear who was directly responsible for the extinction of the father-things.

    If one refers back to Questobar’s quote about nothing on Plowman’s Planet ever truly dying, it is within the Aquatic Sub-World where the last vestige of the unwanted species of the father-things ever after remained.²⁷

    Turning to the book One Summer Day, knowing the danger of anyone who might seek the book for themselves, a major effort was made by the government in conjunction with Glimmung to convince all that the book was indeed a myth and all documentation on the planet reflected that assertion. If the book was ever considered for destruction, it must have been declared too valuable to the future of Plowman’s Planet for that to be done.

    How the kalends came into the picture is a bit hazy. One possibility is that sometime after the above-mentioned events, they finally located their long-lost book and descended upon Plowman’s Planet to retrieve it. 

    The authorities of Plowman’s Planet who’ve maintained the secret of the near-omniscient book, reached an agreement with them. One Summer Day would be given back to its rightful owners, but the planet would be permitted, and helped provide with by the kalends, new daily editions to be created from it. This thus began the life of the untitled book that became known as The Book of the Kalends, all the while the false story of One Summer Day being a more than likely non-existent book was perpetuated.²⁸

The events leading up to Galactic-Pot Healer

    Years and decades passed, Glimmung kept true to his word and did all he could to ensure the safety and prosperity of all the Plabkians, both the natives and the new arrivals. More humans as well as aliens from other star systems arrived to do business with or live on the planet. The city of Diamond Head is founded, if it was not founded before the end of the war, and grows to become a major metropolitan hub.

    One day, around the 2030s, some kind of issue/crisis arises. What exactly the nature of the issue/crisis was it is not known. It may have had something to do with the rapid urbanization of the planet or a recent series of discoveries on the ocean floor of Mare Nostrum. Whatever the cause, an archaeological undertaking was put into motion, with Glimmung at the helm of organizing the party to partake in this herculean endeavor.

    The undertaking concerned a sunken cathedral at the bottom of Mare Nostrum, Heldscalla, the fabled place of worship that was lost along with the fog-things during the “Catastrophe” which may or may not have been in relation to Glimmung’s gradual arrival on Plowman’s Planet.²⁹

    Heldscalla was constructed as a way of paying homage to the god of the fog-things, Amalita, who was dragged down by his creation/sister/lover Borel into the depths of Mare Nostrum where she reigned supreme.³⁰

    It was concluded that if Glimmung could successfully raise Heldscalla back to the surface, he could call upon Amalita, setting him free from Borel’s clutches, and further purify Plowman’s Planet of any future maladies (as a brief aside, it is unclear if the klake(s) has/have already made war with the rest of Plowman’s Planet, with werjes joining them, or if it has yet to happen.)³¹

    From that conclusion, Glimmung, after he requested “‘for an orbiting weather-station satellite’” in 2036, used his powers of telepathic travel and projected himself once more across the stars, looking for those qualified to become members of the undertaking crew. Among the planets he surveyed is one he was already well familiar with; Earth.³² 

    How the then totalitarian governments of Earth seemed to fail to apprehend him may be because he went undetected by all their technology.³³ By 2039, under the human alias of Dwight L. Glimmung, he found and purchased a base of operations on Earth. Seven years later he set his sights on a humble war veteran whose family’s business had been that of healing broken pots: Joe Fernwright.³⁴ From here the main action of Galactic Pot-Healer takes it from there.

Placing Pay for the Printer

    If the events of Pay for the Printer were to fit into the theoretical history related thus far, it would have to take place sometime, at the minimum, over a century and a half after the end of Galactic Pot-Healer.³⁵ It would go something like this:

    Back on Earth, over the course of the ensuing decades after 2046, political unrest under the oppressive totalitarian systems eventually erupted into one or multiple civil wars across one or multiple nations. Governments are toppled and new ones are born in their wreckage. Eventually alliances are formed until at least two collections of nations diametrically, and radically, opposed emerge, resulting in the Second Cold War. However long, or brief this era was, it eventually turned hot. As this worldwide conflict came near to its end, the losing side deployed all of their nuclear warhead reserves. In retaliation, the opposing side(s) also pulled the trigger. All was bathed in nuclear fire.³⁶

    Those who survived, in underground shelters, remained there till the atmosphere outside was habitable again. When they came back up all was a landscape of ashes.³⁷ But something else had also appeared, aliens from a distant star who saw the flashing of the bombs and came to help the survivors aid their civilization. They called themselves the biltong.³⁸ For a while, human civilization on Earth was able to hobble on but the demand for reproductions of desired objects as they wore down generation after generation took its toll on the constantly giving biltong.³⁹

    It became apparent that a complete collapse of what remained of the old civilization was inevitable and humanity had to begin civilization anew, aspiring to replicate their own complex objects in some long distant future.⁴⁰

Closing thoughts

    If any other theorists have different proposals for explanations as to any of the above events, or if there is another work by Philip K. Dick left out that may fit somewhere in this proposed continuity, they are encouraged to leave a comment detailing their observations and thoughts.

1) The Philip K. Dick Reader (Citadel Press, 1997) pg. 252

2) Nick and the Glimmung (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1988) pgs. 119, 121-122, and 128

3) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994) pg. 89

4) Nick and the Glimmung (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 198) pg. 77

5) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994) pgs. 44 and 49

6) Nick and the Glimmung (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1988) pg. 82

7) Ibid pgs. 76-77

8) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994) pgs. 26 and 76-77

9) Ibid pgs. 100-101, 112-113, 114, 138, and 171

10) Nick and the Glimmung (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1988) pg. 127

11) Ibid pg. 57

12) Ibid

13) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994) pg. 131

14) Nick and the Glimmung (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1988) pgs. 57 and 76-77

15) The Philip K. Dick Reader (Citadel Press, 1997) pgs. 101-110

16) Nick and the Glimmung (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1988) pg. 44

17) Ibid pgs. 56 and 74

18) Ibid pg. 119

19) Ibid pgs. 114-116 and 136-138

20) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994) pgs. 43-44 and 99-100

21) Ibid pgs. 44-45 and 127-129

22) Ibid pgs. 31, 73, 75, 79, 80, 87, 88, 89-90, 92, 148 and 175

23) Ibid pgs. 71-72, 88, and 149-151

24) Nick and the Glimmung (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1988) pgs. 31 and 63

25) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994) pgs. 113-116

26) Ibid pg. 115

27) Ibid pg. 171

28) Ibid pg. 26

29) Ibid pg. 103

30) Ibid pgs. 104-105

31) Nick and the Glimmung (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1988) pg. 63

32) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994) pg. 44

33) Ibid pg. 49

34) Ibid pgs. 3, 39-40, and 41

35) The Philip K. Dick Reader (Citadel Press, 1997) pg. 240

36) Ibid pg. 241

37) Ibid pg. 240

38) Ibid pg. 241

39) Ibid pg. 252

40) Ibid

 

Chapter Sixteen

“There would always be Glimmung; there would always be werjes and trobes and, most awful of all, the father-things.”

    Nick is under the understandable impression that Glimmung has lost the battle but not the war. With One Summer Day back in his possession, Glimmung may, despite his wound, rally his allies for a counterattack as the spiddle had supposed in the last chapter. Assuming Glimmung is forever disadvantaged he seems the sort not to easily give up the fight no matter how fruitless his future attacks might be.

    From here on, Glimmung, if he chooses to continue hostilities, is fighting a defensive war.

“‘Nunks are harmless.’”

    As they had been seen in chapter thirteen, the earlier assumption about nunks made back in chapter three, which seems to have been based upon Glimmung’s The Last and Final War, is incorrect. That book appears to be, as the spiddles had said in chapter eight, merely propaganda attempting to dissuade newly arriving human settlers from siding with The Grand Four.

Chapter Seventeen

“...it made him choke.”

    It seems the less habitable air of the mountains that Nick is climbing may be why no one can reach Glimmung in his lair.

“...holding Horace in its arms...”

    Horace has become convinced that the Nick-thing is Nick, explaining his earlier apprehension upon seeing the real Nick. 

    It seems the Nick-thing has treated Horace with some level of care if not tenderness. This leads into the next observation.

“Then it turned and walked away.”

    With the Nick-thing giving back Horace instead of attacking Nick, it did have the opportunity as they were out of the sight of the party at the foot of the mountain, it makes one consider this notion: if this Nick-thing could choose to do what it did then it must have a conscience of some sort. So, is it possible that father-things are capable of good and are not inherently evil and violent as the spiddles claimed they were in chapter eleven? If this is true, as the actions of the Nick-thing suggests, then The Grand Four must also have propaganda of their own just as Glimmung has his.

    If the father-things had been unwilling instruments of Glimmung’s for all his time on Plowman’s Planet, then maybe his now wounded and weakened state freed the Nick-thing to be kind to Nick?

“And so it was.”

    For where the history of Nick’s adventures on Plowman’s Planet concludes, it appears to be a happy ending.

 

Chapter Fifteen

“...inexpertly repaired...”

    In Galactic Pot-Healer, Glimmung takes on multiple shapes, from the human form to a bird-like creature among others, they are accessed to be that of creatures from planets that he either viewed or directly visited over the course of his life and travels.

    His true form, which the novel hints as such, is shown during the convening of the members he had recuited, including Fernwright and Mali Yojez, on Plowman’s Planet. There, he appears as a “huge mass of fluttering extremities, the whipping, writhing arms which flung themselves at every spot...”¹

    This description bears more than a passing resemblance to his ultimate adversary, the printers, as they are described in the previous chapter. The “pseudopodia,” the tentacle-like limbs, of the biltong in Pay for the Printer are also in alignment in appearance.² But the similarities go further.

    Earlier in Galactic Pot-Healer, Glimmung speaks of his abilities to which he says “‘I could of course manufacture life, light and activity around me, but they would be extensions of myself alone.’”³ This is very much like a printer’s ability to create things by extracting a piece of itself. But it goes just a little further.

    When Fernwright is first brought into contact with Glimmung, Fernwright accuses him of being “‘broke,’” meaning stingy with his abilities, to which Glimmung responds “‘That’s a calumny, I am merely parsimonious. It is an inherited characteristic of my order...I...am still on the free enterprise plan...’”⁴

    This puts forth the notion that Glimmung is either a printer himself or more likely something similar to one, just as the Neanderthals were similar to Homo sapiens on prehistoric Earth. The Book of the Kalends suggest this as it refers to Glimmung as not a printer but “‘a Glimmung.’”⁵

    The outro speculations may serve possible explanations for what this signifies in this bitter conflict between the two.

“...a record gone wrong.”

    In Galactic Pot-Healer, when Fernwright first encounters Glimmung, the only way the latter speaks to the former is by Fernwright cranking a victrola from which the record miraculously speaks Glimmung’s words and replies to Fernwright’s questions.⁶

“...he became hollow.”

    Glimmung has had One Summer Day for so long that life without it is akin to one losing one’s sight or hearing. Its knowledge has aided in his plans for millennia, telling him the threats his enemies pose, the usefulness of allies, and who will ultimately betray him.

“...the final page in the book.”

    Rather impressive that a book with such vast knowledge is only forty-five pages long. If it has never been longer, then it must be like a revolving door of information, replacing less relevant articles with more relevant ones and vague passages with ones more detailed and specific the closer the events foretold come closer to occurring.

    Another thing to note as another possible miraculous attribute is that the book more than likely changes its language to whomever is reading it as the chances that Glimmung’s native tongue matches Nick’s is very unlikely.

“‘“...he will never end.”’”

    It was probably this passage that has given Glimmung the confidence that he will win the war.

“‘Glimmung is hurt!’”

    This wound that has been inflicted upon him may serve as an explanation as to why Glimmung in Galactic Pot-Healer is in need of assistance in his undertaking. More on that in the speculation outro.

“‘...he forgot his enemy.’”

    Glimmung’s blinding desire for One Summer Day was so strong that he was willing to risk what a printer could do to him if he got vulnerably near one.

“‘...he will not be the same as before.’”

    Unless the spear in Glimmung’s wound is somehow removed by an outside party. Its possible the werjes, father-things, and trobes might not have the medical skills or materials necessarily to do this.

    One key thing to keep in mind is that One Summer Day specifies that Glimmung can be wounded and can “be made powerless” and not will be.⁷ Meaning that the wound he has been given was not inevitable and thus becoming withered is also not inevitable. If the right circumstances are in place, there is an implication that he can be healed.

“‘You have saved us all.’”

    Due to his actions against Glimmung, the denizens of Plowman’s Planet will see and remember Nick as a great hero, a figure who changed the course of Plowman’s Planet’s history.

“‘...in his mountains, in his high places...’”

    Presuming the officer’s statement is correct, the mountains Nick and the spiddles passed in the last chapter must have been Glimmung’s base of operations all this time, unreachable to the Grand Four and possibly even Glimmung’s allies.

1) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pg. 82

2) The Philip K. Dick Reader (Citadel Press, 1997) pg. 247

3) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pgs. 85-86

4) Ibid, pgs. 42-43

5) Ibid, pgs. 76-77

6) Ibid, pg. 42

7) Nick and the Glimmung (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1988) pg. 127

 

Chapter Fourteen

“...ruins of a farmhouse could be made out.”

    Whether this structure resembles the homes built by the robot-teams mentioned in chapter nine or not is never specified.

“‘...he made the settlers go away.’”

    By mentioning settlers, one would assume the spiddle is speaking of earthlings being driven away by Glimmung.

“‘...years back.’”

    This statement brings up an important question; when did humans first begin settling on Plowman’s Planet? Assuming an alternate history of the space race between the USA and the USSR, beginning around 1966, where faster-than-light travel is invented, the first settlers may have reached Plowman’s Planet by the late 1980s at the earliest but more likely somewhere closer to the turn of the millennium. But this is merely speculation.

“‘...stiff and brittle, like parched bone.’”

    It appears that this spiddle had either witnessed this man and woman’s plight or was given a detailed account of it.

“‘...they always leave.’”

    We are not specifically told how many more people tried to farm here but they must have come and gone close together in quick succession given the current condition of the farmhouse.

“...perhaps for decades, perhaps as much as a thousand years...”

    This is quite a range of time. Keep this quote in mind for the next note.

“‘...Glimmung first appeared on this world.’”

    This explains Nick’s guess of a millennium.

    With this information and how shockingly close this landing spot is from the decimated farm, it is curious, and unlikely, that Glimmung would leave such land untouched until only recently.

    Looking towards Galactic Pot-Healer, there was another race that populated Plowman’s Planet, one humanoid in appearance. The Earth phone encyclopedia identifies them as “‘the once-ruling master species,’” the fog-things (not to be confused with the father-things).¹

    In the same encyclopedia, in fact in the same passage, the fog-things were driven, or “‘passed away’” as it describes it, sometime before Glimmung arrived on the planet, but, interesting to note, after the printers had come.² The Book of the Kalends uses the word “‘vanished’” in relation to the fate of the fog-things.³

    It is possible that Glimmung’s gradual materializing before he fully arrived may have been a contributor to the decline of the fog-things.

    According to Mali Yojez, the fog-things perished because they “‘challenged the Book of the Kalends.’”⁴ If we take what she means as the book One Summer Day then the fog-things knew of the book before Glimmung arrived. More than likely the printers, arriving from the same planet Glimmung had came from, informed the fog-things as a warning and the latter either did not believe the former’s claims or believed they could deal with Glimmung themselves.

    In fact Yojez even states that spiddles believe that the kalends, when they wrote of the fog-things passing away in their Book of the Kalends, caused the fog-things to pass away/vanish.⁵ Again if we assume we are talking about One Summer Day, then it is possible that it is the kalends who created the book in the first place.

    Another detail to take into account is that the one fog-thing that appears in Galactic Pot-Healer, named Questobar, in an ethereal form at the bottom of Mare Nostrum, Glimmung recognizes upon sight. Though Glimmung declares him dead Questobar replies that “‘[n]othing on the Planet completely dies.’”⁶

    Whether Glimmung knew of Questobar from One Summer Day and/or spied on him as his consciousness slowly materialized on Plowman’s Planet is never confirmed.

“‘...searching for living things to infest with its weight.’”

    This sensation of fatigue that Nick and the spiddles feel as they travel this area must be the same oppressive sensation that caused the fog-things to pass from the planet and, later on, drive the human settlers away.

“‘...a fair number of them, in fact.’”

    The place where the printers reside may be the most densely settled area that humans are populating in Nick and the Glimmung.

“...shapeless cone which radiated wet, dull colours, a mound of immense size which pulsed, ebbed and flowed and then reformed itself.”

    Consider this description of the printers when reading the notes for the next chapter.

“‘...intelligent and kind, full of wise goodwill and the determination to help all who come to it.’”

    This description of the collective character of the printers seems to bolster the earlier theory that they must have attempted to assist the fog-things in combating Glimmung.

    In addition, the characteristic of the printers is shared by what are called the biltong in Dick’s short story Pay for the Printer. There, the people of Earth struggle to survive in a post-nuclear war world that has left civilization on the edge of total collapse. The biltong have been assisting in making copies, or “prints” as they are called, of technology and objects necessary for humanity’s daily life for, at the very least, a century and a half before the beginning of the story. The evidence to support this time frame being that one of the biltong is specified to be around that age.⁷

    As to whether this short story is a part of the Glimmung continuity is a bit up to interpretation. The narrator specifically states that “[p]robably [the biltong] were indigenous to the Centaurus system.”⁸ Now on the face of it, that contradicts where Plowman’s Planet is, the Sirius star-system, but there are two points in response to the narrator’s statement.

    First, the word “probably” casts a bit of doubt. The narrator is not revealed to be any of the characters in the story. The use of “probably” leads the reader to conclude that the narrator is not omniscient.

    Second, supposing the narrator’s guess is correct, the printers in Nick and the Glimmung, as has been hinted at in earlier chapters, are not indigenous to Plowman’s Planet. The Centaurus system might be where the planet the printers, and by extension Glimmung, came from.

    If one were to assume the biltong never lived on Plowman’s Planet it is also possible that, just as Glimmung was able to split his consciousness across multiple star-systems, the biltong may well have been a group who parted ways with the printers heading to Plowman’s Planet. There may have been multiple groups of biltong/printers who went off in different directions than just those two.

“...produced from itself a reproduction of the object.”

    For the notes for the next chapter, also consider this ability of the printers.

“...their weariness, their age, their inability to keep their reproductions...”

    This observation may be a clue to the origin of the conflict between Glimmung and the printers.

“...a portion of him came loose, forming a separate, small mound.”

    Another detail to keep in mind for the next chapter.

“...solidified into black and white chessmen.”

    In Pay for the Printer the biltong’s biological process of recreating objects is specified as producing a fluid from a “front orifice” before forming its “print” with its pseudopodia.⁹

    Also in the short story, additional information is given about biltong biology. They are hatched from what it says are “basketball-sized” eggs, that these eggs taste good to Earth animals.¹⁰ In addition, when it is threatened it will make “a defensive shield” around itself.¹¹

“‘...do so much better; even last month, in fact.’”

    The biltong are also struggling to keep the quality of their object replicas up in Pay for the Printer.¹²

“‘Won’t you try again?’”

    This insistence from the settler to keep trying to produce another better copy of her object is another possible clue for the eons long conflict.

“‘...Glimmung’s book.’ the woman behind Nick cried.”

    So, there are people who have seen One Summer Day. One wonders how this lady found herself in such circumstances.

1) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pg. 26

2) Ibid

3) Ibid, pgs. 76-77

4) Ibid, pg. 78

5) Ibid, pg. 72-73

6) Ibid, pg. 171

7) The Philip K. Dick Reader (Citadel Press, 1997) pg. 240

8) Ibid, pg. 241

9) Ibid, pg. 248

10) Ibid, pgs. 245-246

11) Ibid, pg. 251

12) Ibid, pgs. 242-243, 246, 252

 

Chapter Twelve

“‘“...then regain it.”’”

    Nick’s reacquiring the book, after trading it to the late Mr. Frankis for a ride to his family’s new home, from Frankis’s wrecked truck is now recorded in One Summer Day. This passage confirms the book’s updating ability as Nick notices that it was not there before when Helen, his mother, read about the Graham family back in chapter seven.

“‘“...grey and very old...”’”

    What is contained in this particular passage about an elderly Horace and the details that follow is the most vivid, and only, account of an event which will not be realized in Nick and the Glimmung, neither will it be seen in Galactic Pot-Healer.

    For context let’s consider the history of the cat’s life. In chapter one it is specified that Horace has been with the Graham family for “two months” and in chapter two it is indicated that he has been alive for a least a year.¹ The fact that the cat can still run as was demonstrated in chapter six would suggest that he is still fairly young.²

    To speculate how many years in the future the passage described takes place, one should consider the lifespan of a cat. According to Catster.com the average is “14 years, with a range of 10 to 15 years.”³ Of course there have been cats that have lived longer than that. The current record holder for the longest living cat at the time of writing this is Creme Puff, who lived to her 38th birthday.⁴ With these facts in mind, this projected event may be as far as three decades ahead in time from the end of Nick in the Glimmung.

“‘“...into the great fish the creature will go.”’”

    This great fish, or any fish for that matter, does not appear in Nick and the Glimmung. Looking to Galactic Pot-Healer, it is confirmed there that Plowman’s Planet does have an ocean, named Mare Nostrum.⁵ Mare Nostrum is quite central to the novel’s plot and is explored, giving details of what it contains. It is shown that many types of fish dwell within. Along with these fish is the previously mentioned doppelganger of Glimmung’s, identified as a Black Glimmung.

    Glimmung’s ability to change his form, mentioned in the notes for chapter seven, is also shared with his double. When Fernwright first encounters this Glimmung while diving in Mare Nostrum it appears as a skeleton.⁶ But in two different points in time in the history of Glimmung’s residing on Plowman’s Planet, the first occurring before Galactic Pot-Healer (and even before Nick and the Glimmung), the second during Galactic Pot-Healer, the Black Glimmung took on the form of a large fish.⁷

    On top of that, during Fernwright’s underwater expedition, he discovers a pot on the ocean’s floor. Upon the pot are a series of panels, which he believes to be a depiction, as well as a foretelling/prediction, of his adventures on Plowman’s Planet. The final panel shows a fatal encounter with an enormous black fish. In the passage describing these panels the word “great” is applied to the black fish three times.⁸

    Is the great fish that will one day take Horace away and the fish form of the Black Glimmung one in the same?

“‘“...the chant of sorrowful people.”’”

    With this concluding sentence it is implied that this encounter with the great fish results in Horace’s death.

    It is odd that none of the Graham family is directly mentioned among the “‘“sorrowful people”’” mourning the loss of the cat. If one also refers to the quote from One Summer Day back in chapter seven about Horace misleading the Graham family until too late and that they “‘“are undone by their love”’” it takes on quite a different, unnerving in fact, tone if it is interpreted as a long run prediction and not just as a literal summation of the Graham family’s initial difficulty in getting to their new home.

    One thing to add is that the Graham family never appears, nor is referred to, in Galactic Pot-Healer.

    If Horace’s death is significant enough for people to mourn him it may possibly be because he will be the last surviving member of the Graham family by then. As to why the Grahams will be of significance by then will be shown in chapter fifteen.

    Another detail to take notice of is the parallel between the dread the werjes and spiddles have of Horace, being described as smelling of the ocean, and the deathlike state of what Glimmung calls the “‘“Aquatic Sub-World”’” of Mare Nostrum in Galactic Pot-Healer, which not only features Glimmung’s shadow duplicate and the predicting pot but also the decayed, living-dead visage of a double of Fernwright himself.⁹ This last detail will be giving a closer look in the outro.

“...would not change, as did the book itself.”

    The problem of Nick’s plan to copy One Summer Day is very much the problem that a single edition of The Book of the Kalends has in Galactic Pot-Healer; a copy would remain fixed at whatever information it had at the time and remain unchanged.

    The outro speculations of this blog will attempt to theorize a connection between these two books.

“...remain his forever.”

    With Horace kidnapped by the trobes back in chapter ten, One Summer Day gives Nick the knowledge that the cat will break free and be re-united with him. It is possibly this reassuring information that changes Nick’s mind from his initial reluctance towards the book in chapter seven. This realization to the book's capabilities may now be too tempting to for him to give up.

    Could this have been the very same way Glimmung felt when the book was first in his possession? If the saying “absolute power corrupts absolutely” is true then absolute knowledge, or near-absolute knowledge in this case, may be just as destructive to anyone.

Chapter Thirteen

“...a wild, unnatural serpent.”

    This description of the materiel of the book’s cover is a subtle hint to the idea of the limitless knowledge of One Summer Day as an ultimately corrupting temptation, paralleling the Book of Genesis where a serpent encourages humanity to take a bite from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, resulting in their being cast out of paradise and condemned to pain, illness, and mortality.

1) Nick and the Glimmung (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1988) pgs. 7 and 18

2) Ibid, pg. 52

3) https://www.catster.com/cat-health-care/how-long-do-cats-live/ (Retrieved on December 26, 2025)

4)https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/oldest-cat-ever (Retrieved on February 20, 2026)

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

6) Ibid. pgs. 112-113

7) Ibid, pgs. 129-131

8) Ibid, pgs. 120-123

9) Ibid, pgs. 100-101, 112-113, and 120

 

Chapter Nine

“...larvae, recently laid.”

    In The Father-Thing these larvae are described as being laid by an insect-like creature that is thin and jointed with a multitude of crooked legs and a tail, its color is specified as both reddish-brown and metallic.¹

    The story also adds that once this creature has laid its larvae it burrows itself into the ground for protection.²

“...a Nick-thing.”

    Like the closing paragraph of the previous chapter, these opening paragraphs are a slight variation of a passage from The Father-Thing.³

“‘...by imitating...’”

    The theme of doppelgangers is also present in Galactic Pot-Healer.

“‘...foretold our coming here; remember?’”

    With the future knowledge of the Graham’s arrival, Glimmung made preparations.

    The father-thing’s choice in imitating Nick first instead of his father suggests that One Summer Day specified Nick would be Glimmung’s greatest threat.

“‘...too short-handed.’”

    The lacking amount of law enforcement on Plowman’s Planet is yet another suggestion that these events are taking place before Galactic Pot-Healer.

“‘...will burn it up.’”

    In The Father-Thing the alien and its kin are destroyed when kerosene is poured down the insect creature’s burrow.⁴

Chapter Ten

“‘...venture out after dark.’”

    It is possible that the attack the werjes made upon the Grahams might have been unusual for creatures that, as suggested here, strike at night. Perhaps Glimmung was further studying them as a threat so as to assess what to do next, maybe even hoping to convert the family to his side or at the very least keep them neutral in the conflict.

“‘...possibly a few human colonists.’”

    Glimmung must also be aware of the ticking clock of the increasing number of earthlings emigrating to Plowman’s Planet. As more arrive they will be more likely to side with the Grand Four once they realize that the printers, nunks, and spiddles are not as they had been led to believe they would be from Glimmung’s The Last and Final War.

Chapter Eleven

“‘...going to be eaten,’”

    Here a spiddle tells Nick of what will become of him if the Nick-thing catches him. Charles’s father suffers the same fate in The Father-Thing with only his skin left behind to tell the tale.⁵

“‘...changes every time it’s read.’”

    Here yet another miraculous attribute of One Summer Day is brought up, its ability to update itself over the course of time, providing the reader with more accurate information. Again, much like the mythical book described in the Earth phone encyclopedia and The Book of the Kalends in Galactic Pot-Healer.⁶

“‘...especially against humans.’”

    With this idea that Glimmung directly attacking people, fatally in the case of Mr. Frankis in this chapter, being a rare occurrence in conjunction with the arrival of the Graham family and the loss of One Summer Day, Glimmung is beginning to take increasingly more drastic measures in an attempt to turn events in his favor.

“...like a many-tailed squirrel...”

    This simile seems to be a hint as to where Dick must have got the name of this life-form from. Spiddle appears to be a corruption of the word squirrel.

    This is not the last time Dick attributes rodent-like traits to the spiddles. In Galactic Pot-Healer, he describes one as looking like a rat.⁷

1) The Philip K. Dick Reader (Citadel Press, 1997), pg. 107

2) Ibid

3) Ibid, pg. 109

4) Ibid, pg. 110

5) Ibid, pgs. 103-104

6) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pgs. 26, 76-77

7) Ibid, pg. 71

 

Chapter Eight

“‘...robot work-teams’”

    In Galactic Pot-Healer, unlike on Earth, robots are much a part of daily life on Plowman’s Planet even to the point of being considered a form of life.¹

“‘...no one living nearby...’”

    This is further evidence as to the lack of a city-level population, predating the establishment of Diamond Head city in Galactic Pot-Healer. It would make little sense for such a place to be left unmentioned if it was present even as a town or a village.

“‘Spiddles,’ the invisible creatures said.”

    As is shortly unveiled, spiddles can speak English. This would lead one to believe that the majority, of not all, of the human colonists hail from English speaking nations.

    The spiddle that introduces itself to Fernwright in Galactic Pot-Healer, by contrast, communicates by way of a device which contains a prerecorded message spoken in multiple intergalactic languages.²

    It is never demonstrated anywhere else in that novel if spiddles themselves can speak these languages. It is more likely that with the increased numbers of visiting aliens, it would be impractical for spiddles to learn, and be fluent in, countless tongues.

    Though the specific color of the spiddles is not mentioned in Nick, one is described as being brown in Pot-Healer.³

“‘...copies of it floating around Plowman’s Planet.’”

    It appears it is The Last and Final War with its less than favorable descriptions of the creatures that consist of The Grand Four barring humans, which in the sixth chapter of Nick and the Glimmung specifies this exact order of joining; printers, nunks, the human colonists, and the spiddles, is what information on the life of Plowman’s Planet is getting relayed back to Earth.

    In Galactic Pot-Healer, The Book of the Kalends is widely distributed to the denizens of Plowman’s Planet in much the same way.⁴ On top of that it is given updated editions on the daily, like a newspaper.⁵

    The Book of the Kalends will be discussed further and speculated on in the outro.

“‘...Grand Four, in fact, need it.'”

    The Grand Four know that if they were in possession of One Summer Day, they would surely emerge victorious in the war. A guess as to why there has not been a seeming effort in acquiring it, besides the danger that it would pose, is the probable belief among a significant percentage of the Grand Four, mostly humans matching Mr. Frankis’s view in the previous chapter, that this book is not real and not worth the risk of approaching Glimmung in any way just to confirm whether it exists or not.

“‘Even Klakes...’”

    No piece of information is obscure enough that One Summer Day won’t take into account within its pages.

This is the last mention of Klakes in the story.

“‘...past and the future...’”

    A characteristic One Summer Day possesses that matches the description from both the book described in the Earth phone encyclopedia and The Book of the Kalends: its ability to foretell of events before they occur.⁶ This will be demonstrated in chapter twelve.

“‘...once a happy place,’”

    The planet being at peace before Glimmung’s arrival seems to be the one nugget of information that both sides of the war agree upon.

“‘...their struggle began before this planet existed.’”

    If this spiddle is telling the truth, this means that both the printers and Glimmung are not native to Plowman’s Planet and that they are an older race of aliens that have been fighting each other on at least one previous planet.

    As to giving this conflict a time frame of any kind, one character in Galactic Pot-Healer, a robot named Willis, claims that land life on Plowman’s Planet first appeared “‘a billion years ago.’”⁷ The fact that he is referring to life and not the planet itself coming into existence means this puts the number even higher for whenever the planet formed and consequently a number higher than that one for when the war between Glimmung and the printers began.

    Though there is no outright stated explanation as to why the conflict started, there is one possible theory that could explain Glimmung’s connection with the printers. This will be touched upon in the notes for chapter fourteen and fleshed out further in the outro.

“...he could tell what it was.”

    This paragraph is almost verbatim recycled from Dick’s short story The Father-Thing.⁸ Unlike Beyond Lies the Wub, this story could be connected to the Glimmung universe. More relating its context in said continuity will be related in the closing speculations of this blog.

1) Galactic Pot-Healer (Vintage Books, 1994), pgs. 92-94

2) Ibid, pgs. 71-72

3) Ibid, pg. 71

4) Ibid, pg. 72

5) Ibid

6) Ibid, pgs. 26,76-77

7) Ibid, pg. 109

8) The Philip K. Dick Reader (Citadel Press, 1997) pg. 109