thumb|July 1952 issue of Planet Stories
"Beyond Lies the Wub" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was his first published genre story, originally appearing in Planet Stories in July 1952. It was first collected in The Preserving Machine in 1969, and was included in The Best of Philip K. Dick in 1977. It was the title story for the first volume of the original edition of Dick's collected stories. Translations of "Beyond Lies the Wub" have appeared in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish; and the story has been included in more than a dozen anthologies. Richard Bleiler likewise concurred that the story was indicative of "the direction that his career was to take".
References in other works
The theme of the Wub was revisited by Dick in his later short story "Not by Its Cover" (1968), which has been described as a "loose sequel" to the 1952 story.
In The Zap Gun the image of a "Venusian wub" is used in a maze game as a creature trapped in a maze to which the player becomes telepathically and empathically connected.