Sci-Fi and the Uncanny

This story freaked me out more than Phillip K. Dick’s other stories, probably because of how it was impossible for people to tell the difference between the real father and the “father-thing”. What made this story just that much more alarming was how it continued to escalate and ended with the kids resolving to burn the bamboo where the “larvae” were. That is the other disturbing part of the story, how these kids are forced to act as adults, to take somewhat violent action and initiative against something that basically ate the real father. Also, parts of this story contained aspects of the “uncanny”, or so it seemed to me. The bodies of the father and the larvae that “hatched” were controlled by the metallic millipede alien thing in such a way that when Charles’ mother was out of the room, the body of the father-thing deflated, making it seem like a shell or inanimate object. As long as that metallic millipede is alive, so are its “children” but even while they’re “alive” the alien controls their actions. This made me think of the uncanny in that the father-thing is obviously familiar in that it looks like the father but at the same time this familiarity disturbs us because, in actuality this thing is flesh-eating-metallic-bug-spawn and could not be more unfamiliar to us earthlings. It is this combination of elements of the uncanny and science fiction genre that make this story ultimately, very, very creepy.