"The Variable Man" is a science fiction novella by American writer Philip K. Dick, which he wrote and sold before he had an agent. It was first published in the British magazine Space Science Fiction (British version) Vol. 2 No. 2, July 1953, and in the American version on September 1953, with the US publication illustrated by Alex Ebel. Despite the magazine cover dates it is unclear whether the first publication was in the UK or in the United States where magazines tended to be published farther ahead of their cover dates than in the UK. The Variable Man can be found in several collections of Dick's short stories, including The Variable Man and The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford. Copyright status "The Variable Man" is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between January 1, 1950 and December 31, 1963 but copyright was not renewed with the United States Copyright Office within a year period beginning on December 31 of the 27th year of the copyright and running through December 31 of the following year. When renewal registration was not made within the statutory time limit copyright expired at the end of its first term and protection was lost permanently. Plot summary The human race has achieved space travel and begun to spread out from Earth, but is limited by an old and corrupt Centauran Empire, ruled from Proxima Centauri. The Empire fully encircles the Terran solar system and will not let the humans grow beyond it. Terra and the Centauran Empire effectively become locked in a cold war, with each side watching the other but neither side attacking. Terra uses the almost prophetic SRB machines to calculate their chances to win a war versus Centauri and updates these calculations with each new development. Eventually Terra comes up with a concept for a bomb, called Icarus, that Proxima cannot defend against because it travels at faster-than-light (FTL) speeds. Icarus started as an experimental transport device, but the build-up of mass near light speed caused a huge explosion when the first prototype returned to sub-light speed, destroying the inventor and most of his equipment. Development of Icarus as a weapon alters the calculated odds in Terra's favour. There are two problems; the first is that a second FTL device has not yet been made to work, and the second