Exhibit Piece is a 1954 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 short story by Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick

Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...

. The story is an early exploration of the concept of shifting realities, so common in the writer's fiction later on. The protagonist is a future historian of the 20th century and finds himself shifting in time from the future to that time period. At first it is unclear whether he is merely a man from the past imagining a future life, or vice versa.

The story is clearly resolved, with the conventional device of a 'time gate' explaining that the man has in actuality moved in time. This is unlike Dick's later fiction, in which the concept of a fixed 'reality

Reality

In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...

' became increasingly ambiguous.