The Hanging Stranger
"The Hanging Stranger" is a science fiction-horror short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, originally published in December 1953 in the magazine Science Fiction Adventures. It has been reprinted in several anthologies, and published in French, Italian and German.[1] It was adapted by Dee Rees into the episode "Kill All Others" or "K.A.O." for the 2017 television series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams.[2] A book was also released to republish "The Hanging Stranger" along with the nine other stories on which the Electric Dreams episodes were based.[3]
Plot
The protagonist, a store owner Ed Loyce,[4] is disturbed when he sees a stranger hanging from a lamppost, but finds that other people consider the apparent lynching unremarkable.[5]
He finds evidence that alien insects have taken over, manages to get out of town, talks to the police commissioner, who believes him, and after getting all the information about what Ed knows, explains that the body was hung to see whether anyone reacted to it, anyone they didn't have control over. He then takes Ed outside and hangs him from a lamppost.
TV adaptation
Plot
The television adaptation differs from the short story in having a more political focus.[6][7] The protagonist, Philbert Noyce played by Mel Rodriguez, is a low-motivation quality-control worker in an automated factory.[8] Noyce hears and sees the phrase "kill all others" used during a television appearance by the sole candidate for the presidency in the one-party state of MexUsCan. Few others acknowledge seeing or hearing the message, but many are affected by it. Only one of Noyce's co-workers seems to believe what he says about the message and the political system. He becomes increasingly agitated by this policy statement and his totalitarian society over the course of the episode. His wife, workmates, and fellow citizens remain unconcerned by the "kill all others" message and by their society's heavy-handed responses to his concerns. A new, large, illuminated "kill all others" billboard appears with what looks like a body hanging in front of it, which doesn't appear to bother anyone. Noyce, now evading the authorities, who have identified him as an "other" and having his flight being broadcast on live television, climbs up on the billboard. He yells "we're all others!" and verifies that it's a real person in the noose by jumping onto him before falling off the billboard. His body is eventually hung in the place of the previous one.[9]
Cast
- Mel Rodriguez as Philbert Noyce
- Sarah Baker as Maggie Noyce
- Jason Mitchell as Lenny
- Glenn Morshower as Ed
- Louis Herthum as Supervisor
- DuShon Monique Brown as Peace Sergeant
- Vera Farmiga as the Candidate
See also
- The Father-thing
- Folie à Deux (The X-Files)
References
- ^ "Publication: Science Fiction Adventures, December 1953". ISFDB. Retrieved February 3, 2018.
- ^ O'Falt, Chris (2018-06-07). "'Kill All Others': Dee Rees' 'Electric Dreams' Episode Is a Masterclass in Science-Fiction World-Building". IndieWire. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
- ^ Athitakis, Mark (January 9, 2018). "'Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams' is a companion anthology to the new TV show". Washington Post. Retrieved February 3, 2018.
- ^ Dick, Philip K. The Hanging Stranger.
- ^ Vineyard, Jennifer (January 22, 2018). "Every episode of Electric Dreams explained by the series showrunner". SYFY. Retrieved February 3, 2018.[dead link]
- ^ Robertson, Adi (January 16, 2018). "How Electric Dreams updates Philip K. Dick's Cold War stories". The Verge. Retrieved February 3, 2018.
- ^ Dick, Philip K. The Hanging Stranger.
- ^ Goodman, Tim (January 12, 2018). "'Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams': TV Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 3, 2018.
- ^ Metz, Nina (January 11, 2018). "Philip K. Dick's daughter brings his short stories to life in Amazon's 'Electric Dreams'". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 3, 2018.
External links
- "The Hanging Stranger" title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- "The Hanging Stranger" at the Internet Archive
- An omnibus collection of Dick's short fiction in the public domain, including this story at Standard Ebooks
- The Hanging Stranger at Project Gutenberg
- "The Hanging Stranger" at AmericanLiterature.com
- Kill All Others at IMDb
- v
- t
- e
- 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)
- 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)
- The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011)
- "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)
- "Colony" (1953)
- "The Cookie Lady" (1953)
- "Impostor" (1953)
- "Paycheck" (1953)
- "The Preserving Machine" (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)
- "The Builder" (1953)
- "Tony and the Beetles" (1953)
- "The Hanging Stranger" (1953)
- "Prize Ship" (1954)
- "Beyond the Door" (1954)
- "The Crystal Crypt" (1954)
- "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" (1954)
- "The Golden Man" (1954)
- "Sales Pitch" (1954)
- "Breakfast at Twilight" (1954)
- "The Crawlers" (1954)
- "Exhibit Piece" (1954)
- "Adjustment Team" (1954)
- "Shell Game" (1954)
- "Meddler" (1954)
- "A World of Talent" (1954)
- "The Last of the Masters" (1954)
- "Upon the Dull Earth" (1954)
- "The Father-thing" (1954)
- "Strange Eden" (1954)
- "The Turning Wheel" (1954)
- "Foster, You're Dead!" (1955)
- "Human Is" (1955)
- "War Veteran" (1955)
- "Captive Market" (1955)
- "Nanny" (1955)
- "The Chromium Fence" (1955)
- "Service Call" (1955)
- "The Mold of Yancy" (1955)
- "Autofac" (1955)
- "Psi-man Heal My Child!" (1955)
- "The Hood Maker" (1955)
- "The Minority Report" (1956)
- "Pay for the Printer" (1956)
- "A Glass of Darkness (The Cosmic Puppets)" (1956)
- "The Unreconstructed M" (1957)
- "Null-O" (1958)
- "Explorers We" (1959)
- "Recall Mechanism" (1959)
- "Fair Game" (1959)
- "War Game" (1959)
- "All We Marsmen" (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)
- "The Unteleported Man" (1964)
- "The Little Black Box" (1964)
- "Retreat Syndrome" (1965)
- "Project Plowshare (later "The Zap Gun")" (1965)
- "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966)
- "Holy Quarrel" (1966)
- "Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)
- "Not by Its Cover" (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)
- "Rautavaara's Case" (1980)
- "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980)
- "The Eye of the Sibyl" (1987)
- "Stability" (1987)
Films |
|
---|---|
TV series |
|
- Only Apparently Real (1986 biography)
- I Am Alive and You Are Dead (1993 biography)
- Your Name Here (2008 drama film)
- Isa Dick Hackett (daughter)
- Philip K. Dick Award