"Shell Game" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was submitted to the Scott Meredith Literary Agency and received by SMLA on December 12, 1953. It was published in ''

Galaxy Science Fiction ''Galaxy Science Fiction'' was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Edit ...

'' in September 1954Levack, Daniel (1981) ''PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography'', Underwood/Miller, p. 124,

Plot summary

A group of paranoid mental patients, long stranded on an alien planet by the shipwreck of the robot-controlled

hospital A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emergen ...

spaceship transporting them to a mental hospital, believe themselves to be constantly under attack by aliens or other humans. They discover the damaged ship in a bog, and from recorded tapes they learn of their condition and the circumstances of the shipwreck. Even when they discover this evidence of the truth and attempt to verify or disprove the information on the ship's tapes, they construct sophisticated explanations of why the attacks are real despite contrary evidence. After much internal dispute, and sometimes violent conflict, at the end of the story the survivors of the infighting are still unsure whether they are paranoid or victims of a plot. As one of them states, they are like a group of

ruler A ruler, sometimes called a rule, line gauge, or scale, is a device used in geometry and technical drawing, as well as the engineering and construction industries, to measure distances or draw straight lines. Variants Rulers have long ...

s which are all either 12 or 13 inches long, so they have no basis for comparison. The central question of this story is how would people determine whether their judgments are reasonable or unreasonably paranoid when they agree they have evidence that either all or none of them are, in fact, paranoid. This story was later expanded in the novel ''

Clans of the Alphane Moon ''Clans of the Alphane Moon'' is a 1964 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It is based on his 1954 short story "Shell Game", first published in '' Galaxy Science Fiction'' magazine. Plot summary War between Earth and ins ...

''.

Collection appearances

"Shell Game" appears in the following Philip K. Dick collections: * '' The Book of Philip K. Dick'' (1973) * '' The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Vol. 3: The Father-Thing'' (1987) * ''

The Philip K. Dick Reader ''The Philip K. Dick Reader'' is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published by Citadel Twilight in 1997. Many of the stories had originally appeared in the magazines ''if (magazine), If'', '' ...

'' (1997)

References

External links

*
Shell Game
at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

1954 short stories Short stories by Philip K. Dick Works originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction Short stories about mental health {{1950s-sf-story-stub