Dr. Futurity

Philip K. Dick's Dr. Futurity is an early novel in his oeuvre but quite interesting. Written in the 1950s and published in 1960, Dick's novel is clearly inspired by decolonisation in Asia and Africa as well as confronting the history of white supremacy and colonialism throughout the Americas. Dick always struck me as one of the more progressive white 'fathers' of science fiction, despite some of his issues with women and perhaps inappropriate "racial humor" in A Scanner Darkly, Ubik and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. In this tale, Parson, a doctor, in the early 21st century is transported to the 2400s, a world dominated by mixed-race people organized in tribes. Whites are no longer around (everyone is "amalgamated"), death is accepted to maintain society and keep population levels lower, and there are small prison colonies on Mars. Parsons, finding out that medicine is illegal in this civilization, finds out things are far more complicated than they should be and has to, through more time travel, ensure history doesn't change. Despite its anticolonial and antiracist stance, the novel does not, ultimately, rewrite history and kill the explorers and conquistadors, but the novel's attention to details of ethics, life and death, cultural relativism, and exploration of timelines are interesting to compare to his future work. For example, time travel in Now Wait For Last Year is employed in a more compelling and intriguing setting (time travel through drugs) but never explained in this novel. The plot is, compared to his later great works in the 1960s, underdeveloped, too. In the end, we're treated to a liberal retelling of the Pocohantas myth in which the white man and the "Indian," Loris, actually do feel for each other.