A World of Talent

"A World of Talent"

Author	Philip K. Dick
Genre(s)	Science Fiction
Published in	Galaxy Science Fiction
Publication date	October 1954

"A World of Talent" is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick, first published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, October 1954.

Plot summary

The story is set on a separatist Earth colony where the society is becoming dominated by mutants with psionic abilities. The colony is protected from Earth by an enormously powerful but infantile mutant called Big Noodle. The central character is a precog, Curtis or Curt, who uncovers the existence of 'anti-psi's' - humans with the ability to cancel out or nullify the powers of the psionic mutants.

He attempts to get the non-psychic or 'Norm'-led government to officially recognize the anti-psi's, knowing that this could balance out the corrupting power that the psi's would soon possess over the rest of humanity. He is thwarted, however, by the powerful psi Corps of mutants, who murder his anti-psi lover, Patricia Ann Connley or Pat.

Curt has a young son, Tim, who, though seemingly a somewhat autistic, untalented 'norm', is actually the ultimate precog. This is due to both his ability to travel in time and his power to change the course of events as well. In the end, an older Tim appears to his father from the future, telling him that he was right about the need to balance the power of the psi's. His compassion for his father in the wake of Curt's recent loss compels him to alter the timeline in a very specific way.

Notes

Dick very much disliked the insistence of people like John W. Campbell, that stories should positively portray psionics (beings with extrasensory powers as telepathy, telekinesis and precognition). This story was one of his replies, showing the price of these talents, and the distorted personalities that could result - chiefly through the perspective of a withdrawn little boy.
The character of Tim is a precursor to Manfred Steiner, a character in Dicks's 1964 novel, Martian Time-Slip. It is one of four of his short stories to be expanded into a novel.
Philip K. Dick's 1969 novel Ubik contained characters who were anti-psis, one of whom shares the name Patricia Conley.

External links

A World of Talent title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
"A World of Talent" at the Internet Archive

Works by Philip K. Dick

Novels

Gather Yourselves Together (1950)
Voices from the Street (1952)
Solar Lottery (1954)
Mary and the Giant (1954)
The World Jones Made (1954)
Eye in the Sky (1955)
The Man Who Japed (1955)
A Time for George Stavros (1956)
Pilgrim on the Hill (1956)
The Broken Bubble (1956)
The Cosmic Puppets (1957)
Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)
Nicholas and the Higs (1958)
Time Out of Joint (1958)
In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)
Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960)
Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)
Vulcan's Hammer (1960)
Dr. Futurity (1960)
The Man in the High Castle (1961)
We Can Build You (1962)
Martian Time-Slip (1962)
Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1963)
The Game-Players of Titan (1963)
The Simulacra (1963)
The Crack in Space (1963)
Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)
The Zap Gun (1964)
The Penultimate Truth (1964)
The Unteleported Man (1964)
The Ganymede Takeover (1965)
Counter-Clock World (1965)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966)
Nick and the Glimmung (1966)
Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
Ubik (1966)
Galactic Pot-Healer (1968)
A Maze of Death (1968)
Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969)
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
Deus Irae (1976)
Radio Free Albemuth (1976; published 1985)
A Scanner Darkly (1977)
VALIS (1981)
The Divine Invasion (1981)
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
The Owl in Daylight (unfinished)

Collections

A Handful of Darkness (1955)
The Variable Man (1956)
The Preserving Machine (1969)
The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973)
The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977)
The Golden Man (1980)
Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities (1984)
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987)
Beyond Lies the Wub (1988)
The Dark Haired Girl (1989)
The Father-Thing (1989)
Second Variety (1989)
The Days of Perky Pat (1990)
The Little Black Box (1990)
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1990)
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1990)
The Minority Report (1991)
Second Variety (1991)
The Eye of the Sibyl (1992)
The Philip K. Dick Reader (1997)
Minority Report (2002)
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)
Paycheck (2004)
Vintage PKD (2006)

Short stories

"Beyond Lies the Wub" (1952)
"The Gun" (1952)
"The Skull" (1952)
"The Little Movement" (1952)
"The Defenders" (1953)
"Mr. Spaceship" (1953)
"Piper in the Woods" (1953)
"Roog" (1953)
"The Infinites" (1953)
"Second Variety" (1953)
"The World She Wanted" (1953)
"Colony" (1953)
"The Cookie Lady" (1953)
"Impostor" (1953)
"Martians Come in Clouds" (1953)
"Paycheck" (1953)
"The Preserving Machine" (1953)
"The Cosmic Poachers" (1953)
"Expendable" (1953)
"The Indefatigable Frog" (1953)
"The Commuter" (1953)
"Out in the Garden" (1953)
"The Great C" (1953)
"The King of the Elves" (1953)
"The Trouble with Bubbles" (1953)
"The Variable Man" (1953)
"The Impossible Planet" (1953)
"Planet for Transients" (1953)
"Some Kinds of Life" (1953)
"The Builder" (1953)
"The Hanging Stranger" (1953)
"Project: Earth" (1953)
"The Eyes Have It" (1953)
"Tony and the Beetles" (1953)
"Prize Ship" (1954)
"Beyond the Door" (1954)
"The Crystal Crypt" (1954)
"A Present for Pat" (1954)
"The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" (1954)
"The Golden Man" (1954)
"James P. Crow" (1954)
"Prominent Author" (1954)
"Small Town" (1954)
"Survey Team" (1954)
"Sales Pitch" (1954)
"Time Pawn" (1954)
"Breakfast at Twilight" (1954)
"The Crawlers" (1954)
"Of Withered Apples" (1954)
"Exhibit Piece" (1954)
"Adjustment Team" (1954)
"Shell Game" (1954)
"Meddler" (1954)
"Souvenir" (1954)
"A World of Talent" (1954)
"The Last of the Masters" (1954)
"Progeny" (1954)
"Upon the Dull Earth" (1954)
"The Father-thing" (1954)
"Strange Eden" (1954)
"Jon's World" (1954)
"The Turning Wheel" (1954)
"Foster, You're Dead!" (1955)
"Human Is" (1955)
"War Veteran" (1955)
"Captive Market" (1955)
"Nanny" (1955)
"The Hood Maker" (1955)
"The Chromium Fence" (1955)
"Service Call" (1955)
"A Surface Raid" (1955)
"The Mold of Yancy" (1955)
"Autofac" (1955)
"Psi-man Heal My Child!" (1955)
"The Minority Report" (1956)
"To Serve the Master" (1956)
"Pay for the Printer" (1956)
"A Glass of Darkness" (1956)
"The Unreconstructed M" (1957)
"Misadjustment" (1957)
"Null-O" (1958)
"Explorers We" (1959)
"Recall Mechanism" (1959)
"Fair Game" (1959)
"War Game" (1959)
"All We Marsmen" (1963)
"Stand-by" (1963)
"What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" (1963)
"The Days of Perky Pat" (1963)
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" (1963)
"Waterspider" (1964)
"Novelty Act" (1964)
"Oh, to Be a Blobel!" (1964)
"The War with the Fnools" (1964)
"What the Dead Men Say" (1964)
"Orpheus with Clay Feet" (1964)
"Cantata 140" (1964)
"A Game of Unchance" (1964)
"The Little Black Box" (1964)
"Precious Artifact" (1964)
"The Unteleported Man" (1964)
"Retreat Syndrome" (1965)
"Project Plowshare" (1965)
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966)
"Holy Quarrel" (1966)
"Return Match" (1967)
"Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)
"Not by Its Cover" (1968)
"The Story to End All Stories" (1968)
"The Electric Ant" (1969)
"A. Lincoln, Simulacrum" (1969)
"The Pre-persons" (1974)
"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" (1974)
"The Exit Door Leads In" (1979)
"Chains of Air, Web of Aethyr" (1980)
"Rautavaara's Case" (1980)
"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980)
"The Alien Mind" (1981)
"Strange Memories of Death" (1984)
"Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked" (1987)
"The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out of Its Tree" (1987)
"The Eye of the Sibyl" (1987)
"Stability" (1987)
"Goodbye, Vincent" (1988)

Adaptations

Films	Blade Runner (1982) Total Recall (1990) Confessions d'un Barjo (1992) Screamers (1995) Impostor (2002) Minority Report (2002) Paycheck (2003) A Scanner Darkly (2006) Next (2007) Screamers: The Hunting (2009) Radio Free Albemuth (2010) The Adjustment Bureau (2011) Total Recall (2012) Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

TV series	Total Recall 2070 (1999) The Man in the High Castle (2015) Minority Report (2015)

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