The book isn't about aliens, it's an entirely normal book. The main character just interprets every phrase relating to a body part literally, and thinks it's talking about aliens. It's just a humorous short story, not a whole lot to it beyond that.

Thank you.

I went back and read the italicized lines only. I got the joke now.

Don't forget to reread the punchline in the last sentence too ;)

Philip K. Dick is having a little fun with a badly written paperback story or novel he must have found somewhere, and writing a cool science fiction story out of it. It is humor.

From the preface: "A little whimsy, now and then, makes for good balance. Theoretically, you could find this type of humor anywhere. But only a topflight science-fictionist, we thought, could have written this story, in just this way…."

Don’t read it so literally. Lots of ways to interpret it. Cultural relativism, correlation vs causation, overconfidence, conclusions in isolation, etc. I think it drags in just a bit too long but it did make me chuckle.

If you take English language literally, it becomes alienating. Now take the nail out of that head!

same here LOL.

Here's my trippy understanding.

> I had had enough of the thing. I want to hear no more about it. Let them come on. Let them invade Earth. I don’t want to get mixed up in it.

> I have absolutely no stomach for it.

The author is finally mutated and someone took his stomach as well ?

He did not realize it because, someone stole his brain ?

> He did not realize it because, someone stole his brain ?

Daaaaang, I never considered that.

He is nitpicking in a funny way that the word 'eyes' was used when 'gaze' was meant.