The Zen Gun

Philip K. Dick Award, 1984

ebook / ISBN-13: 9780575102149

Price: £2.99

ON SALE: 25th July 2013

Genre: Fiction & Related Items

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

Pout, the chimera, half-man, half-ape, was incorporated into one of the plants or vice versa. He was jammed into a squatting position, while the stems, entering at his buttocks, merged with his legs, his arms and his torso, emerging at knees, elbows, and through his abdomen and thorax. A large, yellow-petalled flower seemed to frame his face.

It was his face that rivetted Ikematsu’s attention, while the chimera squirmed in dumb distress, glaring with huge piteous eyes. For in that face, set into it as if set in pudding, was the zen gun. The gun was his face, or a part of it. The barrel pointed straight out in place of a nose… the stock merged with and disappeared into Pout’s pendulous mouth.

Ikematsu leaned toward the chimera. “How you loved your toy! Now it is truly yours!”