"They" is a

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

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It was first published in the April

1941 Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January– August – 10,072 men, women and children with mental and physical disabilities are asphyxiated with carbon monoxide in a gas chamber, at Hadamar E ...

issue of '' Unknown'', and can be found in Heinlein's short story collection '' The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag''. It also appears in a number of multi-author anthologies.

Plot summary

The story concerns an unnamed man who is confined to a

mental institution Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative ...

because he is suffering from the delusion that he is one of the few "real" entities in the universe, and that the other "real" entities have created the rest of the universe in a conspiracy to deceive him. He spends much of the story engaged in verbal sparring with the psychiatrist who is caring for him, and in pondering his predicament, trying to figure out a way to prove that his belief is true. On the final page of the story, the reader discovers that his belief ''is'' true; the god-like character "the Glaroon" is behind the conspiracy. However, this revelation is kept from the protagonist.

Reception

The story has been noted as "both a paranoid and a solipsistic fantasy", containing "the most complex discussion of those philosophical matters that have troubled einleinthroughout these early years f his career as a writer"The Heritage of Heinlein: A Critical Reading of the Fiction
by Thomas D. Clareson and Joe Sanders; p. 45; published January 23, 2014 by

McFarland & Company McFarland & Company, Inc., is an American independent book publisher based in Jefferson, North Carolina, that specializes in academic and reference works, as well as general-interest adult nonfiction. Its president is Rhonda Herman. Its forme ...

Gary K. Wolfe Gary K. Wolfe (born Gary Kent Wolfe in 1946) is an American science fiction editor, critic and biographer. He is an emeritus Professor of Humanities in Roosevelt University's Evelyn T. Stone College of Professional Studies. Life Wolfe was ...

describes it as a "classically paranoid vision of the world", and states that the story only qualifies as fantasy because Heinlein does not offer any explanation of "who or what the Glaroon is and what its motives are".Evaporating Genre: Strategies of Dissolution in the Postmodern Fantastic"
by

, in ''Edging Into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation'', edited by Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon; published 2002 by

University of Pennsylvania Press The University of Pennsylvania Press (or Penn Press) is a university press affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The press was originally incorporated with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on 26 M ...

References

1941 short stories Short stories by Robert A. Heinlein Virtual reality in fiction Works originally published in Unknown (magazine) {{1940s-sf-story-stub

Plot summary

Reception

See also

References