Following an inexplicable urge, Ted Barton returns to his idyllic Virginia hometown for a vacation, but when he gets there, he is shocked to discover that the town has utterly changed. The stores and houses are all different and he doesn't recognize anybody. The mystery deepens when he checks the town's historical records...and reads that he died nearly twenty years earlier. As he attempts to uncover the secrets of the town, Barton is drawn deeper into the puzzle, and into a supernatural battle that could decide the fate of the universe.

Listening Length

4 hours and 6 minutes
Author

Philip K. Dick
Narrator

Nick Podehl
Audible release date

Dec 27 2015
Language

English
Publisher

Brilliance Audio
ASIN

B0722TPZSY
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	4 hours and 6 minutes
Author	Philip K. Dick
Narrator	Nick Podehl
Audible.ca Release Date	December 27 2015
Publisher	Brilliance Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B0722TPZSY
Best Sellers Rank	#159,763 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #6,868 in Literary Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) #10,653 in Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) #15,234 in Fantasy (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

4 out of 5

136 global ratings

5 star		40%
4 star		29%
3 star		27%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Top review from Canada

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Doug Mackey

Cosmic entertainment

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 2, 2004

This is the only full-lenth fantasy that Dick wrote; the rest are either science fiction or mainstream. But this present-day small-town setting in which magic works has much in common with his many future worlds in which the magic is supplied by altered states of consciousness, time paradoxes, and alien gods. Here a man named Ted Barton returns to his hometown of Millgate, Virginia, for the first time since he was a child, and finds that the streets, landmarks, stores, and people are all different. Although all small American towns are interchangeable to some extent, this goes too far, particularly when he finds an old newspaper record of his death at age nine. Somehow Barton has entered an alternate universe, one in which he is no longer supposed to exist. He becomes obsessed with the need to verify his own existence, and soon discovers himself in the middle of a sort of Armageddon, where the cosmic forces of darkness and light are fighting it out. This is an early Dick novel that prefigures many of the themes of his later fiction, and is consistently entertaining.

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Top reviews from other countries

Jordan, The Comeback

An early PKD gem

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 8, 2009

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The Cosmic Puppets begins unpromisingly as a rather cliched eerie tale from fifties small-town America, somewhat in the vein of Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. Stay with it though and PKD will bend your mind as he brings in the concept of parallel realities (surely years ahead of its time for 1957)and a unique twist on the age-old battle between good and evil. If you were ever a fan of the comics from years back such as 'Astounding Stories', then this will be a very satisfying and stimulating read. It is not too long, either,enough to hook you in and transport you into a world beyond this one but stopping short of eking it out unnecessarily. Give it a go, you have nothing to lose and you will surely be amazed.

Toby King

Big on Concept, But Not Dick's Best

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 29, 2008

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If you have ever moved away from an area you've grown up in, particularly as a child, then returned some years later you will know that mix of the familiar with the unfamiliar as you recognise some things but also see other things have changed. For Ted Barton it's a little different, on returning to the town he grew up in he doesn't recognise anything; all the buildings and people are completely different from what he remembers. The Cosmic Puppets follows Ted Barton as he tries to uncover the mysteries of his missing town, and the strange behaviour of some of the children.
The 1957 novel stands at just over 150 pages thick, and, coupled with the simplicity of Dick's writing, can be devoured in a single sitting. Leaning more towards fantasy than science fiction this novel could be a disappointment for readers coming from the likes of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, however if you come to it with no expectations then you can be swept away by the fantastic story. The one thing that lets The Cosmic Puppets down is the lack of character development, Dick doesn't take any time to build an emotional connection between the reader and the characters which means we are left with far less interest in what happens to them than in his others books

Matt Jenkins

A Fine Early PKD Novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 18, 2011

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" When Ted Barton follows an inner compulsion and returns to Millgate, Virginia, the isolated, sleepy town of his birth, he is troubled to find that the place bears no resemblance to the one he left all those years before. It's even more alarming to realise that it never did. And when Ted discovers that in this Millgate Ted Barton died of scarlet fever at the age of nine, he knows there's something seriously amiss. Imprisoned there by a mysterious and unseen barrier, Ted attempts to find the reason for the disquieting anomalies, only to become enmeshed in a desperate and epic struggle of cosmic importance."
- from the back cover

Written in 1953 and published in 1957, Cosmic Puppets (Dick's fourth published novel) is possibly his shortest novel. It explores a number of themes Dick had an abiding interest in (and would bring out more fully in later novels), most specifically the nature of reality and the impact on people when reality as they understand it starts to unravel around them.

As with all PKD's works this novel makes you marvel at his imagination but also (if you are of a philosophical turn of mind) brings you to question and consider the themes he raises for yourself.

"[Dick] sees all the sparkling and terrifying possibilities. . . that other authors shy away from."
-- Paul Williams, Rolling Stone

"The most consistently brilliant SF writer in the world"
-- John Brunner

"I see Dick as a major twenty-first century writer, an influential 'fictional philosopher' of the quantum age."
-- Timothy Leary

If you are new to Philip K Dick's work I would also recommend the following novels (which generally seem to be regarded as among his best):

The Man In The High Castle (S.F. Masterworks)
Ubik (S.F. Masterworks)
A Scanner Darkly (S.F. Masterworks)
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (S.F. Masterworks)

That said, though some of PKD's works are better than others, to my mind they are all well worth reading. I would also recommend his short story collections:

Beyond Lies The Wub: Volume One Of The Collected Short Stories
Second Variety: Volume Two Of The Collected Short Stories
The Father-Thing: Volume Three Of The Collected Short Stories
Minority Report: Volume Four Of The Collected Short Stories
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale: Volume Five of The Collected Short Stories

Also of interest may be the fine biography of Philip K Dick by Lawrence Sutin Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (Gollancz S.F.)

One person found this helpful

Josh Mauthe

A marriage of pulp-era PKD and his later philosophical musings

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 21, 2020

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When you pick up a Philip K. Dick novel, you know you're going to be in for a wild ride. Here's an author whose work has become nearly synonymous with stories that question reality, undermine a sense of self, peel back the curtain to see cosmic powers, and oh so much more. So when The Cosmic Puppets opens with a man returning to his beloved childhood town only to find that he recognizes nothing about it...well, you know you're in for some insanity.

And yet, even Philip K. Dick standards, it's hard to prepare for just how wild The Cosmic Puppets really gets. Malevolent children, clay golems, cosmic warfare, faked realities - all of that comes at you fast, and even that doesn't prepare you as the novel takes a fast dive into Zoroastrianism, turning a moral conflict into something quite literal and terrifying - into something far more complex, theologically and morally profound, and deeply confusing on a truly existential level.

In other words, what you get here is an odd blending of the early and late eras of Dick. The Cosmic Puppets has the myriad pleasures of his early, pulpier work, with its Twilight Zone-esque premise, broad characters, lean page count (less than 150), and sheer propulsive energy. But it's late-era in the way that it grapples with a deep cosmology, evoking a theological complexity that comes up in works like VALIS and the rest. In many ways, in fact, it feels like a trial run for those later books, exploring those ideas in unwieldy ways that nonetheless keep you gripped with uncertainty and unease.

Make no mistake, The Cosmic Puppets is definitely unwieldy, though. That same marriage of pulp and philosophical depth ends up making the book feel a bit overstuffed, even before it gets to its mind-bending climax that rushes by and left me more than a bit baffled. (My lack of familiarity with Zoroastrianism might not have helped, but it's hard to tell how much Dick needed you to know the "true" beliefs anyways.) And, in pure pulp fashion, the characters are all a little flat - most notably the female characters, almost every one of which is discussed in terms of looks and body shape (a touch which feels more influenced by the demands of pulp than Dick himself, but who knows).

Still, reading The Cosmic Puppets gives you that weird exhilaration that Dick always gives you, tossing you into a world where everything is uncertain, reality keeps shifting, identity is malleable, and the rules of the universe aren't even remotely clear. That he got better than this is understandable - this is one of his first few books, after all - but that doesn't mean that it doesn't give you that same sense of mind-blowing imagination that Dick often does. Embrace the pulp and enjoy the insanity.

10 people found this helpful

Gene Stewart

Mind-Expanding Conceptual Science Fantasy With Serious Themes

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 15, 2022

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The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K. Dick

A man visits the small town he left 18 years ago, finding it utterly different from how he remembers it. Realizing a wrongness to what has changed, he stays despite his wife’s objections, seeking to discover the source of the pall under which the town suffers.

A weird child with unnatural powers confronts him, he finds his routes out of town are blocked, and sees what seem to be ghosts.

His memories, and those of another man who lives on the town’s fringe in poverty, can puncture the glamour that glosses over, and suppresses, the real place, the once-vital people. He discovers two ancient gods, one of light and life, the other of shadow and entropy, vie for not only control of the town, but of the entire universe.

Only his memory’s details can restore balance.

This is conceptual science fantasy focused on some of PKD’s most consistent concerns, from epistemology to cosmology to the nature of existence. It reads like a brilliant fable with occasionally wonky language but is well worth diving into, especially for readers who like their minds expanded.

/ Gene Stewart

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The Cosmic Puppets Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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