Autofac
science fiction novelette by Philip K. Dick
"Autofac" is a 1955 science fiction novelette by American writer Philip K. Dick that features one of the earliest treatments of self-replicating machines (and Dick's second, after his 1953 novelette Second Variety). It originally appeared in the November 1955 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, and was reprinted in several collections, including The Variable Man published in 1957, and Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities published in 1984.
It was adapted by Travis Beacham for an episode of the 2017 TV series, Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, with the same name as the short story.
Plot
Three men wait outside their settlement for an automated delivery truck. Five years earlier, during the Total Global Conflict, a network of hardened automatic factories ("autofacs") had been set up with cybernetic controls that determine what food and consumer goods to manufacture and deliver. Human input had been lost, and the men planned disruption to try to establish communication and take over control. They destroy the delivery, but the truck radios the autofac and unloads an identical replacement, then prevents them from reloading items. They act out being disgusted with the milk delivery and are given a complaints checklist. In a blank space, they write improvised semantic garble—"the product is thoroughly pizzled".
The autofac sends a humanoid data collector that communicates on an oral basis but is not capable of conceptual thought, and they are unable to persuade the network to shut down before it consumes all resources.
“Autofac” enters the record as science fiction novelette by Philip K. Dick. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Autofac, science and fiction can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q387362. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1953, 1957 and 1984.
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This entry incorporates text from “Autofac” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.