Shell Game (short story)
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"Shell Game" is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1954, it forms an interesting early examination of extreme paranoia. A group of paranoid mental patients are stranded on an alien planet and believe themselves to be constantly under attack by Terrans. Even when they discover the truth, they construct sophisticated explanations to explain it as a plot by the enemy. At the end of the story there is some ambiguity over whether the men really are paranoid or not. How would a paranoid measure his paranoia?
The story was later expanded into the novel Clans of the Alphane Moon.
"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 (1997)
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