101 pages, Paperback
Published July 25, 2026 by Wide Books
Lord Running Clam, that’s Mister Clam if you're nasty. Sometimes at the Oscars they say it was just a certain filmmaker's year. Winner of both the lifetime Achievement award and Best Book for the Pink Beam Companion was Lord Running Clam. In PKD circles, you might know LRC under his third variety title, David Hyde. In the 90s, when Paul Williams fell out of doing the PKD society newsletter, Lord Running Clam (named after the slime mold character of Clans of the Alphane Moon ) picked up the mantle of keeping PKD fandom/ studies going in a variety of ways. His role in writing Pink Beam Companion (or the online version) alone makes him important, and it deserved recognition for the level of research that went into it. Well, I know LRC as a deep student of PKD who has been obsessed with his work since the 90s, I didn’t know he wrote fiction.
So it was a surprise when Lord Running Clam was passing out an entire novella he had written at the 4th International Philip K. Dick Fest in Fullerton. In the introduction, it is mentioned that the guests of honor at the 2026 had all written novellas. That was true-ish: Sarah Langan and Brian Evenson, two of the three guests of honor, did, and LRC was close enough (since he was getting a Pink Beam award for lifetime achievement, he figured he would get in on the fun).
Great idea. In Time’s Rabbit Hole is a work of what we call Pink Beam fiction, a work that plays with Phil Dickian concepts; in this case, the meta-reality time-travel novel in which LRC becomes a character in the story. Not only that a sorta meta-trip where LRC gets lost on a time-travel trip trying to get to the fest.
Along the way, he goes back and forth in time and meets a robot named Asshole. “I went closer to see a grease-stained and grimy, once-shiny, large egg-shaped machine sitting in a hoop atop a ball-wheeled metal tripod. Under the dirty surface was painted in faded red letters the word Asshole.
I yelped, “Asshole? What? You're not…”
“yes, your lordship, it is indeed I, Asshole, which is what you named me long ago after your Ukrainian friend.”
“Well, I'll be cornswaggled ha, that's great. Now you're a robot; tell me what's going on these days?”
It is not long before the two try to go back in time to destroy the orange spray-tanned Form Destroyer from ever being born. The journey is funny for sure. There are Dickian easter eggs, tips of the hat to members of the PKD community, but other SF writers are referenced, like the chapter called Time is the Simplest Thing. “Yes, sir! Time, as the great Clifford D. Simak wrote Time is the simplest thing; everything that has motion leaves a trail, a trace of its activity. And time, as you doubtless know, is defined by characteristic motion. Time passes it never stops. Ever since its initial expansion in the Big Bang, time has been going outwards as a part of the expanding universe of matter…”
This is a raw book; LRC admitted in the introduction that he did limited editing in part to keep the secret that it was happening. It adds to the unhinged nature. I think folks who know LRC, and will hear the book in his voice, will enjoy this the most. I had fun reading it and laughed several times; what more can you ask for in a one-sitting novella?
I am not even sure if this one is for sale, or was just a giveaway at PKD Fest, but I am very happy to have it on my shelf.
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