The Days of Perky Pat

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The Days of Perky Pat is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick, first published in 1963 in Amazing magazine. Elements of the story would be incorporated into Dick's 1964 novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Author notes 3 Perky Pat in Popular Culture 4 External link

[edit] Plot

In this story, suvivors of a global thermonuclear war living in isolated enclaves in California spend their leisure time playing with the eponymous doll in an escapist role-playing game that recalls life before the apocalypse--a way of life that is being quickly forgotten. At the story's climax, a couple from one isolated outpost of humanity play a game against dwellers of another outpost (who play the game with a doll similar to Perky Pat dubbed "Connie Companion") in deadly earnest. The survivors' shared enthusiasm for the Perky Pat doll and her expensive accessories is a sort of mass delusion that prevents meaningful re-building of the shattered society.

[edit] Author notes

"The Days Of Perky Pat came to me in one lightning-swift flash when I saw my children playing with Barbie dolls. Obviously, these anatomically super-developed dolls were not intended for the use of children, or, more accurately, should not have been. Barbie and Ken consisted of two adults in miniature. The idea was that the purchase of countless new clothes for these dolls was necessary if Barbie and Ken were to live in the style to which they were accustomed. I had visions of Barbie coming into my bedroom at night and saying, 'I need a mink coat.' Or, even worse, 'Hey, big fellow... want to take a drive to Vegas in my Jaguar XKE?' I was afraid my wife would find Barbie and me together and my wife would shoot me.

"The sale of The Days Of Perky Pat to Amazing was a good one because in those days Cele Goldsmith edited Amazing and she was one of the best editors in the field. Avram Davidson of Fantasy & Science Fiction had turned it down, but later he told me that had he known about Barbie dolls he probably would have bought it. I could not imagine anyone not knowing about Barbie. I had to deal with her and her expensive purchases constantly. It was as bad as keeping my TV set working; the TV set always needed something and so did Barbie. I always felt that Ken should buy his own clothes.

"In those days -- the early Sixties -- I wrote a great deal, and some of my best stories and novels emanated from that period. My wife would not let me work in the house, so I rented a little shack for $15 a month and walked over to it each morning. This was out in the country... All I saw on my walk to my shack were a few cows in their pastures and my own flock of sheep who never did anything but trudge along after the bell-sheep. I was terribly lonely, shut up by myself in my shack all day. Maybe I missed Barbie, who was back at the big house with the children. So perhaps The Days Of Perky Pat is a wishful fantasy on my part; I would have loved to see Barbie -- or Perky Pat or Connie Companion -- show up at the door of my shack.

"What did show up was something awful: my vision of the face of Palmer Eldritch which became the basis of the novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which the Perky Pat story generated.

"There I went, one day, walking down the country road to my shack, looking forward to 8 hours of writing, in total isolation from all other humans, and I looked up at the sky and saw a face. I did not really see it, but the face was there, and it was not a human face; it was a vast visage of perfect evil. I realize now (and I think I dimly realized at the time) what caused me to see it: the months of isolation, of deprivation of human contact, in fact sensory deprivation as such... anyhow the visage could not be denied. It was immense; it filled a quarter of the sky. It had empty slots for eyes -- it was metal and cruel and, worst of all, it was God."

[edit] Perky Pat in Popular Culture

David Cronenberg's 1999 film EXistenZ, which involves a virtual reality game that blurs reality and fantasy, visually refers to the Dick short story when its two stars, Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh, consume fast food from containers marked "Perky Pat's."

In the movie Screamers Peter Weller's character refers to someone sarcastically as a real "Perky Pat".

[edit] External link

• PhilipKDickFans.com's Details