SF Masterworks #55: Philip K. Dick, Time Out of Joint

Another day, another Dick... no wait, that sentence ended in a scary visual place... So anyway, Time Out of Joint is another one in the long list of PKD books in the SFM series, and another one considered to be among his best. The novel definitely promises a lot, but whether it delivers, or not, is a question of perspective.

The year is 1959. Ragle Gumm is a bachelor "between jobs", who lives with his sister's family in an idyllic neighborhood in small-town America. He contributes to his household by repeatedly winning the "Where will the little green man be next?" daily competition in the morning paper. In fact, he wins that competition every day. And that is not the strangest thing that happens to him. As the novel progresses, his reality continuously shifts. Objects disappear, to be replaced by pieces of paper with the object's name written on them. While playing in an abandoned building, his nephew finds a magazine that talks about a movie star that he has never heard of, and a phone book listing telephone numbers that do not exist. Ragle's '59 seems to differ from what we remember by a lot of other little ways as well, but it is the way everything seems to be centered around him that in the end makes him question his own reality. And that leads to a devastating effect.

Time Out of Joint is the first PKD book to portray characters whose world unravels around them. It is also unique in its '59 setting, as Dick usually preferred an imagined future (even if at times that future was the late 90s). That makes for a strange read, especially if you've read his works before. Dick's description of the time is perfect (not a big surprise, as the book was written in that same year), and I've always had a soft spot for the 50s. They are such a wonderful setting for all sorts of supernatural and horrific events with their happy sunny neighborhoods, happy housewives with happy smiles and happy kids playing with happy dogs while their happy fathers went to their happy work... Creepiness is bound to ensue, and ensue it does in Time Out of Joint.

The plot is energetic and to the point. The book reads very fast, even though for the most part it just shows us Ragle and his daily dawdling, and the mystery surrounding him doesn't allow you to not read the next page.

Ask me where Time Out of Joint fails. Come on, ask me. You know you want to.

Because the book does fail miserably, and for one simple reason - it explains. And the explanation isn't good enough. As much as I hate weirdness for the sake of weirdness, there has to be a level of mystery that remains untouched, some sort of uncertainty to make the reader doubt whether he has understood what it's all about. Time Out of Joint doesn't let you have that. Around its last third, it bluntly explains what the big deal is, why it's all happening and why it's happening to Ragle... And it doesn't make sense. Or rather, it mostly does, but the explanation is neither good, nor engaging enough. It actually has a Heinlein feel to it, and as much as I like Heinlein, a mixture between him and Dick is one hell of a no-no.

In the end, I guess Time Out of Joint was a necessary first step in the road that would lead to such glorious reality-bending works as Ubik, Martian Time-Slip and A Scanner Darkly, but what bugs me is that before Dick forgot to be very stoned and decided to uncharacteristically explain everything in a really failing way, the book is actually amazingly good! The atmosphere works, the mystery works, it all works! But then explanations happen, and with them - unsavory conclusion. Is Time Out of Joint a good novel? I'd still mostly say yes. It is worth reading, and is surely among Dick's better works. But - just like the overhyped The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - it is not "masterwork" material. I am beginning to think that there is a very specific order in which Philip K Dick's works are to be read if one wants to enjoy the most of them...

SF Masterworks #52: Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

I'd read a lot of Dick when I finally got to The Three Stigmata... It is obvious to everyone who looks at the SFM list, that there are way too many PKD books there and it's not possible that all of them are masterworks. Still, this particular title is counted among Dick's very best, so I had high hopes for it.

The story is set in the near future. Under UN authority, humanity has been forcefully made to colonize every habitable planet and moon in the Solar System, while Earth's temperatures rise to levels that could not sustain life. In the colonies, people live empty, hopeless lives with no ambition or purpose, barely scraping by. The only thing that keeps them sane is the drug Can-D which allows them for a little while to live in an imaginary perfect world defined by the miniature "layouts" developed by one of Earth's mightiest corporations. However, when genius industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip and brings with himself the alien drug Chew-Z which is a hundred times more powerful than Can-D, the whole game changes. But is Eldritch really what he appears to be? Who gave him this drug? And what exactly does Chew-Z do?

As with many of Philip Dick's stories, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is dependent on its ambiguity. After the first ingestion of Chew-Z by a character in the novel, the reader is left unsure of whether anything that follows is real or not. Problem is, apart from the titular three stigmata, there is not really any surreal element in the book, anything that makes you care whether what goes on is real or imagined. And by the end of it - around the time when reality-shifting turns into mind-swapping and time-traveling - you realize it actually doesn't matter.

Stylistically, the book is not among Dick's best as it suffers from his typical intention-declaring characters syndrome and a lot of really chunky prose, but it's not among his worse ones either. The author's favorite SF tropes - space colonization, precognition and campy human evolution - are all present, but for some reason Dick doesn't seem to care about any of them. They don't play a significant role in the story, and he makes no attempt to develop them in any meaningful way. His sole focus is the characters' questioning of their reality, but he somehow doesn't go the whole way there either. What the novel lacks, is focus. Something - a concept - around which to rotate the whole thing.

To be perfectly honest, after all the hype I've read for The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, I sort of expected more from it. Perhaps the fact that I recently read the hellishly mediocre Our Friends From Frolix 8 - which is basically a draft for the Stigmata... - didn't help either. Thing is, the book has always been praised for the way it blurs the lines between reality and illusion. And don't get me wrong, the mindfraking that goes on there is at times pretty impressive. Unfortunately, I can think of at least four other Dick books that do the same, and do it better. I guess its value lies in the fact that it is among the first of his works to actually delve deep enough into the topic.

Is The Three Stigmata... a masterwork? I would say not. It lacks the punch of The Man in the High Castle, the psychotic uncertainty of Martian Time-Slip, the aggressive schizophrenia of A Scanner Darkly, and the sharp purpose (not to mention the sheer number of ideas) of Ubik, although it makes claims to all of those. As a point of origin for Dick's later classics, it certainly has a significant place in his bibliography and I wouldn't argue that it's among his better works, and definitely worth reading. But to me the book has not aged well, especially in comparison to others of Dick's novels.

SF Masterworks #57: Philip K. Dick, The Simulacra

Philip K. Dick is perhaps the most visionary American SF writer of the 20th century.  From the late 1950s until his death in 1982, Dick wrote over forty novels, several of which dealt with issues of authority, identity, deception, and the mutability of perceived reality.  In previous novels discussed here, Dr. Bloodmoney (1965), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), and The Man in the High Castle (1962), Dick developed these themes in stories that were often fast-paced, frentic, and seemingly on the verge of dissolving into a textual mess.  In his 1964 novel, The Simulacra, Dick has written perhaps one of his stranger, more frayed narratives.

The Simulacra is set in the mid-21st century.  The United States and the former West Germany have merged to form the United States of Europe and America.  The government has dissolved into a sort of byzantine council, with a First Lady, Nicole Thibodeaux, who is actually a line of actresses (currently at number four) who portray the feminine half of the United States.  An android simulacra has become Der Alte, or the "old man" that presides/reigns in public with Nicole.  Psychotherapy has been banned, except for one psychologist, Dr. Egon Superb, who is permitted to practice his banned profession on a patient who is convinced that he has lethal body odor.  There is a neofascist who wants to takeover the USEA and he uses his mysterious position within the ruling USEA council to further his plot.

Confused yet?  There is so much happening in The Simulacra that it would be difficult to keep track of everything easily.  In fact, it appears that the main idea behind this novel is to point out that beyond the surface level of paranoia and deception lurks deeper levels of mendacity, treachery, and equivocation.  Compounding these levels of duplicity at the highest levels of the USEA government is a complex social structure divided into the "Ges" and "Bes"; those who know many of the secrets surrounding Nicole and her cabal and those who do not.  It is in this morass of dissimulation and prevarication that the stories of Kate (the fourth Nicole), Egon Superb, Bertold Goltz, and Richard Kongrosian unfold.

At first, these subplots bear little relation to one another.  Nicole/Kate's need to maintain the deception that she has inherited from her previous Nicole imitators is a matter of state security:  if the veil of who really runs the USEA were to be revealed, the entire socio-political structure would be in grave danger.  Yet more and more people, the "Ges," have to be in the know in order to maintain the deception.  This leads to cynical exchanges, such as this one between two "Bes" who wonder about "Nicole":

'Loony Luke,' Ian said, 'have you ever met Nicole?' It was a sudden thought on his part, an intuition.

'Sure,' Luke said steadily.  'Years ago.  I had some hand puppets; my dad and I travelled around putting on puppet shows.  We finally played the White House.'

'What happened there?' Ian asked.

Luke, after a pause, said, 'She - didn't care for us.  Said something about our puppets being indecent.'

And you hate her, Ian realized.  You never forgave her.

'Were they?' he asked Luke.

'No," Luke answered.  'True, one act was a strip show; we had follies girl puppets.  But nobody ever objected before.  My dad took it hard but it didn't bother me.'  His face was impassive.

Al said, 'Was Nicole the First Lady that far back?'

'Oh yes,' Luke said.  'She's been in office for seventy-three years; didn't you know that?'

'It isn't possible,' both Al and Ian said, almost together.

'Sure it is,' Luke said.  'She's a really old woman, now.  Must be.  A grandmother.  But she still looks good, I guess.  You'll know when you see her.'

Stunned, Ian said, 'On TV - '

'Oh yeah,' Luke agreed.  'On TV she looks around twenty.  But go to the history books...except of course they're banned to everyone except Ges.  I mean the real history texts; not the ones they give you for studying for those relpol tests.  Once you look it up you can figure it out for yourself.  The facts are all there.  Buried down somewhere.'

The facts, Ian realized, mean nothing when you can see with your own eyes she's as young-looking as ever.  And we see that every day.

Luke you're lying, he thought.  We know it; we all know it. (p. 117)

 Notice the self-deception contained within the passage.  Even when the evidence should be obvious that there are cover-ups, several people in this society willingly deceive themselves rather than question the discrepancies within their government.  Although it is difficult to judge with certainty due to Dick's opaque writing, it appears that in scenes such as this that Dick is criticizing the often sheep-like acceptance that citizens have for governments that are corrupt and deceptive.  This is further evidenced in the Goltz subthread, where he tries to engineer a neofascist coup d'etat of the government, a government in which he is a secret member.  Surrounding this is the enigmatic relationship of Dr. Egon Superb and the mentally ill Richard Kongrosian.  Kongrosian is convinced that he has lethal body odor and it is through Superb's efforts to restore a sense of rationality to a world that apparent has become more and more full of maladjusted people that provides yet another level of irrationality to a story that is already full of the strange and twisted.

Although there are some connections between these subplots, Dick purposely does not create a tight interweaving.  Instead, each is left with frayed edges of uncertainty about what is really occurring behind the scenes.  It is these mostly-unwitnessed elements that provide The Simulacra within its inconclusive and yet fittingly strange conclusion.

Is The Simulacra worthy of being considered a "Masterwork?"  Not really.  It is a minor, flawed piece that contains several of Dick's weaknesses as a writer and not enough of his strengths.  Although The Simulacra is purposely left disjointed, even in that disjointedness there is a sloppiness in character, plot, and thematic execution that is not as prevalent in his more famous stories.  Here, the point of there being deceptions behind deceits is constructed well, but behind that lurks the sense that there is a pointlessness to the novel that detracts from some of its fine qualities.  Unlike the three novels of his mentioned at the beginning of this review, The Simulacra lacks the thematic unity necessary to make this hodgepodge of paranoiac scenes more than just a scattershot of ideas that fail to coalesce into something more than the sum of its part.  The Simulacra is interesting only in seeing how some of the ideas here were developed with greater success in several of Dick's other novels from the 1960s.  It is not a quality work on its own and thus should not be recommended for reading unless the reader already has some understanding of Dick's other novels.

SF Masterwork #73: The Man in the High Castle

Few works are more synonymous with the alternate history subgenre than Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. Starting from the question “What if the Axis Powers had won the war?”, Dick portrays a version of the 1960s very different than our own. A conquered America is split between Japan and Germany, the two dominant superpowers who happen to have engaged in a Cold War of their own, complete with the threat of nuclear annihilation. Anti-Semitism is still rampant in the German state and Americans struggle to adjust to the cultural changes introduced by the conquering pair. A Jew hiding from Nazi persecution participates in the fabrication and forgery of “authentic” American artifacts to be sold to unknowing Japanese collectors. His ex-wife hopes to track down and protect the author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a book of resistance propaganda portraying a present in which the Allies had won the war.

The Man in the High Castle is a clear example of alternate history at its strongest, but at the same time it manages to be so much more. Alternate histories, at their cores, represent a combination of reality and potentiality; challenging the bedrock of immutable history through the simple question of “What If?.” Although Dick does address this question as it relates to the outcome of World War II, he seems more interested in the relationship between history and reality itself than the specifics of an America occupied by Imperial Japan. The details are there, certainly, but as the book progresses they seem to fade more and more into the background.

Instead, Dick focuses his literary energy on the trio of subplots mentioned above. The links between these threads are tenuous at best and while there are brief moments of excitement, the majority of the book is fairly dry. Dick forgoes thrilling chase scenes or pulpy gunfights, opting instead to use his characters as philosophical surrogates in his own examination of the various ways the past can shape the present. This results in a startling depth to Dick’s work, one which elevates The Man in the High Castle from a simple alternate history to a definitive genre Masterwork.

The quiet scenes in which the characters contemplate their reality are the highlights of the book and fortunately there are many. Dick utilizes multiple methods to kindle these thoughts, ranging from the monologue of a rich counterfeiter who argues that it is not the actual history of an object that matters but rather the belief surrounding it to the a connoisseur of American antiquity weighing the artistic merit of a unique but abstract creation. The most effective device however, is Dick’s fictional novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a doppelganger for The Man in the High Castle itself. He returns to this book within a book repeatedly, using the in-universe alternate history to self-referentially analyze the allure and impact of an imagined reality. In true PKD fashion, all of this talk of belief and actuality ultimately creates an atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty, inviting the reader to read and reread passages which at first seem innocuous.

While Dick’s alternate vision of America must be praised for its depth and relative originality, the quality of the text itself varies throughout. I would hesitate to say the book was an easy read. Not because of the philosophical questions Dick raises (though they do inspire distraction) but rather a consequence of the often clumsy prose that demands careful rereading and the disjointed narrative style that prevents the reader from fully immersing in the work. It’s difficult to conclude if the sometimes awkward language is the fault of Dick himself or merely the result of fifty years of change, but the difficulty of reading the end result is still the same.

Even ignoring the sometimes problematic prose, the weight of years has surely reduced the shock value this book must have once produced. Published in 1962, The Man in the High Castle originally spoke to an audience for whom World War II was a distinct memory, not a history lesson. The culture being replaced was their own, not some version of American life that has changed significantly in the past fifty years. Now, half a century later, the story still resonates with readers but significantly less so than it must have with the men and women to which a Nazi-dominated globe was a frightening possibility.

On a surface level, the narrative and some of the more cosmetic attributes of The Man in the High Castle show signs of wear. However, the deeper aspects of the book feel no less poignant, provoking the same questions of reality, culture, perception and history that likely elevated it to win the 1962 Hugo Award so many years ago. A true genre must-read, Dick’s Masterwork is a book that speculates about speculation itself.

SF Masterworks #4: Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

World War Terminus has been and gone, leaving an Earth where radioactive dust keeps the few survivors who haven't emigrated inside for parts of the day; an Earth where real animals are now status symbols; an Earth where renegade androids are 'retired' by bounty hunters.

In the first chapter we meet Rick Deckard, one of these bounty hunters, as he argues with his wife before work about which setting to put their mood organs on. He then tends to his electric sheep and dreams of owning a real animal. Immediately, we are introduced to one of the main themes of this novel: that of reality. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick explores thoroughly the concept of reality - by showing us androids who could almost pass for human if not for a lack of empathy; and a whole business set-up to provide for electric animals; and the theory of Mercerism.

I was struck by the bleak tone, and the fact that Mercerism - a pseudo-religion - is one of the few aspects of life to give people hope, since this could be said to be a false hope. At one point Deckard thinks the following: "This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die. Eventually the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another, finally the name 'Mozart' will vanish, the dust will have won" and this idea that the world is gradually crumbling shows us why people cling to Mercerism, and the status of owning animals as a way to make it through each day.

I have to confess that I was somewhat reluctant to pick up both my first Masterwork in this project and my first Philip K. Dick novel, I don't quite know why. Perhaps because the story is so well-known thanks to Bladerunner; perhaps because I have always been reluctant to pick up the classics of the genre, out of a fear that they would be extremely dry and unreadable. I'm happy to report that the reverse is true - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was extremely readable, at times very tense and atmospheric. There was a particular scene later in the book where an android coldly mutilates a spider and observes its ability to run that made me literally shudder. I was surprised that this novel still has such power and intensity after such a long while of being published.

I really enjoyed the absurd humour that provided such a difference in tone to the bleak hopelessness that prevails throughout most of the rest of the novel. The fact that Isidore was unable to tell the difference between a real cat and an electric animal made me squirm a little with discomfort, but I also appreciated the dark humour. The whole presence of the electric animals was amusing, and yet somehow sad and desolate.

PKD's writing is compulsive and spare, but at times it does meander into somewhat melancholic psychedelia, where PKD becomes more rambling and less punchy. There were a couple of passages that I felt could have been removed entirely to make the novel read better.

Altogether, though, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction triumph, and certainly deserves its place in the Masterworks list. It can be read on so many different levels - purely as a psychological thriller or as a social commentary about what defines a human being. It is definitely worth multiple reads to fully enjoy the experience. Recommended.

SF Masterworks #32: Philip K Dick, Dr Bloodmoney

Philip K Dick provides an afterword for this edition of Dr. Bloodmoney where he shares his amusement at some of the predictions he got wrong. Key amongst these assumptions was the immediacy of the end of the world which Dick felt was almost inevitable at the time and was expecting at any moment. Sixty-six years on, the world still hasn't ended so I am able to bring you my thoughts on this particular Masterwork.

The novel is divided chronologically in the first half, between Emergency Day when the bombs fell and its aftermath seven years later. This is more effective because both periods are treated as present rather than using flashbacks and the reader is expected to follow the shifts through the text rather than having a device like dated chapter headings. The earlier period is dropped as events in the later parts of the novel take over. The reader follows a number of characters through both time periods as their lives are changed forever and through the human drama of a rural community. Typically we never really get an outside explanation of why the bombs fell and how the end of the world as we know it came about, all we ever know is that the paranoid Bruno Bluthgeld believes that it's all his fault.

On E-Day, Hoppy Harrington is starting his job at the TV repair shop to the annoyance of salesman Stuart McConchie, Dr Stockstill is trying to help Bluthgeld with his paranoia and Mr & Mrs Dangerfield are about to be launched into space to orbit the earth. Seven years later, the same people are largely doing the same things: Hoppy is still repairing things, Stuart is still a salesman, Dr Stockstill wants to help people and Walt Dangerfield is alone in space broadcasting to the word, the last person keeping them all connected.

It’s a typical PK Dick book. Huge global catastrophic events form a backdrop to small human dramas; Bonny Keller's string of affairs, little Edie's relationship with her brother (a little unusual since he lives inside her), Hoppy's meglomania. Meanwhile, references to what happened are vague and uninformative, with only the various characters viewpoints being offered as explanation. Some refer simply to the disaster, others mention bombs, the sky is a little darker and both people and animals are mutated but there is no omnipotent narrator detailing whether it was in fact a war, who started it, what the extent of the damage is. There are brief references to other countries, Japan at one point it's suggested may be further along in rebuilding than America, but the nearest thing to global information is Dangerfield in his satellite.

Dr. Bloodmoney, written in the early sixties, is at once very dated and still futuristic. The technology is old but although in some ways it plays a significant role, it's not invasive in this essentially human story. At the same time it's still possible to imagine a series of events that would lead us back to smaller, more rural communities, reducing the populations of cities to the levels of villages and small town. Maybe we no longer believe nuclear war would leave us this way, but something could and it's never explicitly nuclear in Dr. Bloodmoney.

Female characters play a smaller role than they might now, the two significant adult women being the continually unfaithful Mrs Keller and the intimidating Mrs Raub, not exactly positive role models. Dick was already pushing the boundaries for the era though with Stuart as a sympathetic black male lead and additionally Edie, being a child, is not constrained by gender roles and so provides a strong positive female character. Although clearly informed by events at the time, the space race and the Cold War, those sensibilities are not explicit, so while Dr Bluthgeld may represent the enemy and evil it is not such a specific enemy as Russia, rather a more general representation or madness and evil in humanity. The result is that the book feels charmingly dated but the reading experience is largely unaffected by that.

It's a quirky, sometimes funny, sometimes chilling read and in spite of the circumstances overall it presents an optimistic view of humanity. The general feeling is that most people will try to rebuild communities and carry on with their lives. Of course, there is always the risk of a perfectly good horse getting eaten by the war vets who live under the ferry jetty. When Stuart returns to his horse drawn car after a trip to buy parts and discovers just the inedible bits left, his sorrow over the loss is contrary to what we have seen of him so far and while the scene is delivered with humour it's also quite touching.

One of my favourite passages begins with an example of Dick's dry humour and although it has no real relevance to the plot, it humanises a side character and provides some insight into what these characters are experiencing:

'”Listen my friend”, the Veteran said, “I got a pet rat lives under the pilings with me? He's smart; he can play the flute. I'm not putting you under an illusion, it's true. I made him a little wooden flute and he plays it, through his nose... it's practically an Asiatic nose-flute like they have in India. Well, I did have him, but the other day he got run over”.'

The image of a rat playing a nose flute will stay with me and make me smile for some time.

Dick talks in the afterward about the characters representing the best and worst of us all and it is possible at times to relate to all of them, even little Edie with her brother inside her, in spite of the strangeness of her situation her relationship with him is utterly typical of siblings, the petulance of their bickering comfortingly familiar:

'Ominously, Bill said,”if you don't, I'm going to go to sleep for a whole year.” He was silent, then. “Got to sleep, then,” Edie said. “I don't care. I have a lot of other people to talk to and you don't.” “I'll die, then, and you won't be able to stand that, because you'll have to carry a dead thing around forever inside you,”.'

When we finally see a little honesty in Bonny Keller's internal dialogue we find something that makes her suddenly more human:

'The world is so innocent,she thought to herself. Even yet after all that has happened to us. Gill wants to cure me of me – restlessness. Stuart McConchie can't imagine what I could wish for that I don't have right here. But maybe they're right and I'm wrong. Maybe i've made my life unduly complicated...maybe there's a machine in Berkeley that will save me too.'

Having read the author's comments, I shall leave you finally with some of his own final thoughts about this still extremely enjoyable and poignant book.

“I am proud of the people in this novel. And as I say, I would like to number myself as one of them. I once pushed a broom on the sidewalk of Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley and I felt the joy and sense of busy activity and industry that Stuart feels, the excitement, the sense of the future. And, as the novel depicts, despite the war – the war that did not in fact happen – it is a good future. I would have enjoyed being there with them in their microcosm, their postwar West Marin world."