"Rautavaara's Case" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

by American writer

Philip K. Dick Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928March 2, 1982), often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his l ...

. It was first published in 1980 in '' Omni'' magazine and subsequently in the 1985 short story collection ''

I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" is a short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. The short story was first published in ''Playboy'' in December 1980, under the title "Frozen Journey". Plot summary In the story, a man (Victor Kemmings) regains c ...

''. The story was also included on '' We Can Remember It For You Wholesale'', volume five of the ''Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick'' in 2003. The story is about Agneta Rautavaara, a young Finnish technician, who dies in an accident while working on a space vessel with two other technicians. However, a rescue team from

Proxima Centauri Proxima Centauri is a small, low-mass star located away from the Sun in the southern constellation of Centaurus. Its Latin name means the 'nearest tarof Centaurus'. It was discovered in 1915 by Robert Innes and is the nearest-kno ...

gets there in time to save Rautavaara's brain and impose artificial life support on it. In her damaged brain, Rautavaara goes through a series of experiences that draw on the conceptions of

afterlife The afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body. The surviving ess ...

held by herself on the one hand and the Proxima Centauri natives on the other. A theme of the story is whether it is ethically right to keep a human on life-support if they exist only as a mind, with their body paralyzed or otherwise destroyed.

External links

Page at Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Short stories by Philip K. Dick 1980 short stories Fiction set around Proxima Centauri Works originally published in Omni (magazine) Religion in science fiction {{1980s-sf-story-stub