Nick and the Glimmung

Philip K. Dick's Nick and the Glimmung is Dick's only children's novel and a sequel of sorts to Galactic Pot-Healer, one of his strangest 1960s novels. As a fellow cat lover, this children's novel is an enjoyable read of a family forced to either give up their cherished cat, Horace, or emigrate to a colony on a different planet. Needless to say, the family chooses to keep their cat and leave the overpopulated Earth. Unfortunately, for children's fiction, this novel is rather bare and doesn't capture as much of the sense of wonder one would expect from Dick (especially after reading Galactic Pot-Healer). However, if read as a continuation of Galactic Pot-Healer's planetary eternal struggle between Glimmung and anti-Glimmung, one can read the novel as a dualist tale calling for the harmony of light and darkness. Nick, as the child protagonist who ultimately restores the balance, is the child hero who, driven by his love for his pet cat and his determination to resist the totalitarian government on Earth for it, is the hero. Interpreted in this light, Dick's children's novel fits in quite well with his other work in its metaphysical and moral dilemmas, plus the role of children and animals in 'sniffing' out the simulacra from the real.