The near future. The earth is overpopulated. The government has introduced strict laws against pets. Dogs and cats are now prohibited. Nick Graham's family doesn't want to lose their black cat Horace. They are forced to emigrate to the Outer Worlds - to the remote Planet of Plowman, which is inhabited by uabs, verges, spiddles, nanks, trobs and printers. Glimmung also lives there - evil from the depths of a burnt-out dead star. Glimmung, who weaves the web of fate and because of which the world ages. For the first time, the novel that Philip K. Dick wrote to his children is published in Russian.