If There Were No Benny Cemoli

Short story by Philip K. Dick

"If There Were No Benny Cemoli"
Short story by Philip K. Dick
December 1963 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science-fiction
Publication
Published in	Galaxy Science Fiction
Publication type	Magazine
Publication date	1963

"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in the December, 1963 issue of Galaxy magazine with illustration by Lutjens.^[1]

"The Proxmen rebuilding war-torn Earth want to prosecute its leaders for war crimes. Benny Cemoli would be the biggest catch of all, if they could just find him. -- Steven Owen Godersky^[1]

Plot summary

On the tenth anniversary of a devastating atomic war on Earth, more Proxima Centaurians arrive to continue the rebuilding of the planet. A war crimes tribunal is looking for names of war criminals and a surviving homeopape of The New York Times seems to provide an answer. Benny Cemoli.

Themes

Per Darko Suvin, "If There Were No Benny Cemoli" has the theme of the "transformation or transubstantiation of classical European fascism into new American power".^[2]

Reception

Algis Budrys said that Dick's story "is, as usual, markedly individual, and distinguished for his ability to draw fine-line social caricatures paradoxically freighted with verisimilitude".^[3]

References

^ ^a ^b Levack, Daniel (1981). PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography, Underwood/Miller, p. 100. ISBN 0-934438-33-1
^ Suvin, Darko (March 1975). "P.K. Dick's Opus: Artifice as Refuge and World View (Introductory Reflections)". Science Fiction Studies. 2 (1): 8–22. JSTOR 4238905 – via JSTOR.
^ Budrys, Algis (August 1965). "Galaxy Bookshelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 186–194.

External links

If There Were No Benny Cemoli title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" on the Internet Archive

Philip K. Dick

Novels

Gather Yourselves Together (1950)
Voices from the Street (1952)
Solar Lottery (1954)
Mary and the Giant (1954)
The World Jones Made (1954)
Eye in the Sky (1955)
The Man Who Japed (1955)
A Time for George Stavros (1956)
Pilgrim on the Hill (1956)
The Broken Bubble (1956)
The Cosmic Puppets (1957)
Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)
Nicholas and the Higs (1958)
Time Out of Joint (1958)
In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)
Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960)
Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)
Vulcan's Hammer (1960)
Dr. Futurity (1960)
The Man in the High Castle (1961)
We Can Build You (1962)
Martian Time-Slip (1962)
Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1963)
The Game-Players of Titan (1963)
The Simulacra (1963)
The Crack in Space (1963)
Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)
The Zap Gun (1964)
The Penultimate Truth (1964)
The Unteleported Man (1964)
The Ganymede Takeover (1965)
Counter-Clock World (1965)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966)
Nick and the Glimmung (1966)
Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
Ubik (1966)
Galactic Pot-Healer (1968)
A Maze of Death (1968)
Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969)
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
Deus Irae (1976)
Radio Free Albemuth (1976; published 1985)
A Scanner Darkly (1977)
VALIS (1981)
The Divine Invasion (1981)
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
The Owl in Daylight (unfinished)

Collections

A Handful of Darkness (1955)
The Variable Man (1956)
The Preserving Machine (1969)
The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973)
The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977)
The Golden Man (1980)
Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities (1984)
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987)
Beyond Lies the Wub (1988)
The Dark Haired Girl (1989)
The Father-Thing (1989)
Second Variety (1989)
The Days of Perky Pat (1990)
The Little Black Box (1990)
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1990)
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1990)
The Minority Report (1991)
Second Variety (1991)
The Eye of the Sibyl (1992)
The Philip K. Dick Reader (1997)
Minority Report (2002)
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)
Paycheck (2004)
Vintage PKD (2006)
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011)

Short stories

"Beyond Lies the Wub" (1952)
"The Gun" (1952)
"The Skull" (1952)
"The Little Movement" (1952)
"The Defenders" (1953)
"Mr. Spaceship" (1953)
"Piper in the Woods" (1953)
"Roog" (1953)
"The Infinites" (1953)
"Second Variety" (1953)
"Colony" (1953)
"The Cookie Lady" (1953)
"Impostor" (1953)
"Paycheck" (1953)
"The Preserving Machine" (1953)
"Expendable" (1953)
"The Indefatigable Frog" (1953)
"The Commuter" (1953)
"Out in the Garden" (1953)
"The Great C" (1953)
"The King of the Elves" (1953)
"The Trouble with Bubbles" (1953)
"The Variable Man" (1953)
"The Impossible Planet" (1953)
"Planet for Transients" (1953)
"The Builder" (1953)
"Tony and the Beetles" (1953)
"The Hanging Stranger" (1953)
"Prize Ship" (1954)
"Beyond the Door" (1954)
"The Crystal Crypt" (1954)
"The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" (1954)
"The Golden Man" (1954)
"Sales Pitch" (1954)
"Breakfast at Twilight" (1954)
"The Crawlers" (1954)
"Exhibit Piece" (1954)
"Adjustment Team" (1954)
"Shell Game" (1954)
"Meddler" (1954)
"A World of Talent" (1954)
"The Last of the Masters" (1954)
"Upon the Dull Earth" (1954)
"The Father-thing" (1954)
"Strange Eden" (1954)
"The Turning Wheel" (1954)
"Foster, You're Dead!" (1955)
"Human Is" (1955)
"War Veteran" (1955)
"Captive Market" (1955)
"Nanny" (1955)
"The Chromium Fence" (1955)
"Service Call" (1955)
"The Mold of Yancy" (1955)
"Autofac" (1955)
"Psi-man Heal My Child!" (1955)
"The Hood Maker" (1955)
"The Minority Report" (1956)
"Pay for the Printer" (1956)
"A Glass of Darkness" (1956)
"The Unreconstructed M" (1957)
"Null-O" (1958)
"Explorers We" (1959)
"Recall Mechanism" (1959)
"Fair Game" (1959)
"War Game" (1959)
"All We Marsmen" (1963)
"What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" (1963)
"The Days of Perky Pat" (1963)
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" (1963)
"Waterspider" (1964)
"Novelty Act" (1964)
"Oh, to Be a Blobel!" (1964)
"The War with the Fnools" (1964)
"What the Dead Men Say" (1964)
"Orpheus with Clay Feet" (1964)
"Cantata 140" (1964)
"The Unteleported Man" (1964)
"The Little Black Box" (1964)
"Retreat Syndrome" (1965)
"Project Plowshare (later "The Zap Gun")" (1965)
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966)
"Holy Quarrel" (1966)
"Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)
"Not by Its Cover" (1968)
"The Electric Ant" (1969)
"A. Lincoln, Simulacrum" (1969)
"The Pre-persons" (1974)
"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" (1974)
"The Exit Door Leads In" (1979)
"Rautavaara's Case" (1980)
"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980)
"The Eye of the Sibyl" (1987)
"Stability" (1987)

Adaptations

Films	Blade Runner (1982) Total Recall (1990) Barjo (1992) Screamers (1995) Impostor (2001) Minority Report (2002) Paycheck (2003) A Scanner Darkly (2006) Next (2007) Screamers: The Hunting (2009) Radio Free Albemuth (2010) The Adjustment Bureau (2011) Total Recall (2012) Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 2036: Nexus Dawn (2017) 2048: Nowhere to Run (2017) Blade Runner Black Out 2022 (2017)
TV series	Total Recall 2070 (1999) The Man in the High Castle (2015) Minority Report (2015) Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams (2017) Blade Runner: Black Lotus (2021)

Films

Blade Runner (1982)
Total Recall (1990)
Barjo (1992)
Screamers (1995)
Impostor (2001)
Minority Report (2002)
Paycheck (2003)
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Next (2007)
Screamers: The Hunting (2009)
Radio Free Albemuth (2010)
The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
Total Recall (2012)
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
- 2036: Nexus Dawn (2017)
- 2048: Nowhere to Run (2017)
- Blade Runner Black Out 2022 (2017)