The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike

This PKD novel is a tale of Negroes, Jews, Neanderthals, and marital strife in rural Marin County. Like some of Dick's other realist fiction, certain plot points and settings are recycled. Here, for example, the idea of planting a fake artifact over land and community disputes (like in The Penultimate Truth) is used. Furthermore, like The Simulacra, a community of 'chuppers' (or Neanderthal-like people) in Northern California is repeated. However, where this novel gets interesting for fans of PKD are the questions of racism, marriage, and anti-Semitism. Leo Runcible, one of the major characters, and a Jew in a lily-white rural Marin County community, must deal with the anti-Semitic remarks and social discrimination Jews of the time experienced. Moreover, despite serving in World War II, and making a fuss about defending the rights of African-Americans, Runcible begins a conflict with neighbor Walt Dombrosio because the latter invited an African-American mechanic (and friend) into his home when Runcible's friends were visiting (Runcible was hoping to sell a home to his friend and involve him with the future development of Carquinez). Unfortunately, Dick only uses the black mechanic as a prop for understanding the way racial and social prejudices of the time impact the two dysfunctional married couples at the center of the novel. 

Rape, abortion, alcoholism, racism, and the dilemma of loving and understanding another person abound in this novel, particularly with Walt and Sherry Dombrosio. Sherry, the product of an upper-class family, belittles and controls her husband, works outside the home against his permission, and Walt must confront the gender battles of the day, and like everyone else in the community, must confront the larger social totality which defines and limits their actions while trying to find some principles to abide by. Runcible attempts this through the noble effort of purchasing the water company and improving sanitation, and perhaps like the Indian relics they find and the ersatz Neanderthal-like residents of the more recent past, they're trapped with the fundamental uncertainty of the world around them. Will Carquinez experience "development" and invasion of the city? What about the negative impact of capitalist development on the environment, the dying descendants of the oyster farmers? Regardless of how one feels about the battle of capital and labor, simulation and reality, this realist novel is a hilarious account of rural life in Marin County. 

Franco de mi Amor

Beautiful. I haven't listened to Congolese music in quite some time, but this is very catchy. It is a lovely tribute to one of the legends of the Congolese music scene, including the immortal song, "Mario."

The Cosmic Puppets

Philip K. Dick's The Cosmic Puppets is not really science fiction. If anything, it's more fantasy with overtones of Zoroastrian dualism. Ahriman and Ormazd's cosmic battle is centered in Millgate, where the former has successfully isolated and created an illusion town for the last 18 years. Former resident Ted Barton returns, with the help of Ormazd's daughter, and they eventually restore the former city (although the cosmic battle between the God of Light and Evil continues). Since this novel explores the question of what is reality, and the narrator is unsure of his existence, I couldn't help but think of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, but there's no totalitarian government or threat (besides the manifestation of Ahriman). Instead, we get a short novel that perhaps takes too long to establish the mythological/cosmic forces at play. Indeed, Cosmic Puppets may be one Dick's novels one could easily skip, although it does resemble some of his later mystical novels (Divine Invasion, for example) where religious forces and the question of idealism versus materialism make it difficult to establish with certainty what is truth or permanent. However, the 'true' town of Millgate reappears, even after Ted Barton stops remembering it (wishing for it)...And one your symbolic representation of something resembles the actual object, perhaps the distinction is lost? Either way, this is an enjoyable albeit uneven adventure into the mind of PKD.

Confessions of a Crap Artist

Confessions of a Crap Artist has successfully inspired me to pursue PKD's other non-science fiction novels. It possesses the perfect mix of heart, humor, tragedy, and social reflection with some of the same themes and topics as Dick's science fiction. The only non-science fiction novel of Dick I had read prior to tackling this engaging novel of Jack, his sister, and his brother-in-law in rural Marin County, was The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Here, however, we are treated to country life in Marin County (with occasional trips to San Francisco and the Bay Area) and the likely OCD Jack Isidore, who resembles several protagonists in the oeuvre of PKD (mentally ill, socially awkward, working odd jobs, dominated by a woman). His willingness to hear out any idea, apply it to his scientific method, and focus on what is real (or, eternal) separates him from his sister, Fay, her husband, Charley, and the young man Fay eventually has an affair with, Nat Anteil. 

Along the way, we are treated to a series of events told from the perspective of the aforementioned characters, posing deep questions about the meaning of marriage, family, free will, loyalty, love, and mental illness. And much like the dream house Charley and Fay build in rural Marin County, each of them fall for something that brings more problems than expected. Tragically (and hilariously), Jack falls into a UFO cult that believes the end of the world will occur near the end of April 1959, but he's possibly the most sane and selfless individual in the novel, suggesting some of the profound religious and spiritual themes of PKD's later work. Both in his willingness to believe and his service for the animals on Charley and Fay's property (plus taking care of their daughters), Jack by far possesses the most redeeming qualities. For a portrait of life in 1950s California, plus seeing Dick's other themes and ideas in realist fiction, this is essential.

Zap Gun

Unfortunately, Zap Gun feels like a dud in Philip K. Dick's vast oeuvre. While introducing some of the Christian elements and themes that preoccupy his later work (agape, caritas) and drug-induced trance, plus a hilarious sub-plot involving a Surley Febbs with a Napoleon complex, this tale of a fake Cold War between the Sino-Soviet Bloc and the Wes-Dems falls flat in other ways. The chitinous life-forms from Sirius, which are invading earth through satellites that are taking entire cities hostage for slave labor, are never depicted. Unlike Now Wait for Last Year or Clans of the Alphane Moon, no alien characters are depicted at all, and the full threat of the invasion feels undercooked. However, the aforementioned sub-plot is quite amusing, as are the numerous references to comic books and the absurdity of the Cold War (instead of developing real weapons, Lilo and Lars, the two mediums who design weapons, know that they are meant to be plowshared and East and West are not really at war). As Cold War arms race parody, this works, but perhaps not PKD at his best. 

The Man Who Japed

I finally finished The Man Who Japed. I attempted to read it 2 years ago, but the clunky prose turned me off. It's one of Dick's earlier novels, and there is an aura of incompleteness to the narrative. However, it's Dick's humorous insight at its best, as a totalitarian society is gradually unraveled by Alan Purcell, who "japes" the statue of the morally conservative founder of the regime. Striking a balance between the lack of moral inhibitions in the Resorts run by psychoanalysts and the Morec regime established after nuclear war (founded by a South African, and clearly a reference to the Dutch Reformed Church and the Protestant ethic), the novel concludes hilariously with a Swift-like "jape" at the expense of the Morec regime's founder and moral rectitude. All in all, an entertaining read which hints at some of the humorous elements in Dick's darker novels. 

Clans of the Alphane Moon

Although not his best work, Clans of the Alphane Moon is a hilarious self-referential novel about Dick's marriages (several, many not ending well), his workload (Chuck, the central character, writes scripts for simulacra), and the narrow boundary between mental health and psychosis. As someone who wrote similar novels about precogs, psionic powers, and time travel involving schizophrenia, Clans takes this interest in new directions. A colony of various schizophrenic types have formed an autonomous society on a moon in the Alpha system by rebelling against the hospital (which was established there to provide psychotherapy for the schizophrenics settled there by Terra). Now, after 25 years of isolation from Terra, a mission led by Chuck's psychologist wife is sent there to provide therapy, reassert Terran authority (a war between the Alphane race and Terra recently concluded, not to mention ongoing tensions between the US and the USSR), and impose therapy on the various clans of schizophrenic inhabitants. Chuck and his wife, who separate after years of acrimony, predictably duke it out on this moon in the later parts of the novel, after a series of manipulative moves and quirky characters (including a slime from Ganymede that communicates telepathically) culminates in a final showdown over the state of their marriage. Where this novel's hilarity reaches its peak is Chuck's use of alien drugs to stay up all night and write (scripts for Bunny Hentman's show, and scripts for the simulacra sent to accompany his wife to the lunar colony), something Dick must have meant as a humorous self-referential commentary on his own use of drugs to stay up all night and write science fiction novels (and support his wife). Despite it all, one sees through the fateful reunion of Mary and Chuck that effort, persistence, and selflessness are necessary for a marriage to work, and mental illness is more of a continuum and capable of change. Indeed, the the paranoid schizophrenic, Gabriel Baines, can change. 

The Penultimate Truth

PKD's The Penultimate Truth involves time travel, post-World War III apocalypse, world government propaganda, quasi-feudal relations on the Earth's surface of the elite ideas men who supply the government propaganda (plus their armies of robots from World War III and newer models), and the vast majority of humanity living in subsurface tanks because of the surface government's lies. However, due to the numerous internal power struggles and conflicts between different power-hungry individuals on the surface, the Agency which, uniting the former USSR and US, thereby ruling the world and rewriting history in the process, creating some rather bleak associations between Nazi Germany and the Fuhrer Prinzip and the current regime), the strength of the regime is waning and no one knows how the subsurface population will react to the news. Like other PKD novels, the Cold War fears and dystopian themes abound, but there is a fundamental moral ambiguity about resolving the conflict and the what path society will take. As one can see in Counter-Clock World or The Simulacrum, the very forces against the major antagonist possess questionable motives, since Lantano, Brose, Runcible, Foote and Adams are not heroic in any sense of the term. Nicholas, the unlucky schmuck character type common in PKD's work, comes closest to being the protagonist, but the aura of moral ambiguity lingers for him, too. Perhaps, when compared to his numerous similar novels, The Penultimate Truth lacks the tighter writing and religious themes of his better known novels, but this is another thought-provoking read that tackles some of the same fundamental problems as his more illustrious novels. 

Counter-Clock World

PKD's Counter-Clock World is another one of his lesser known yet fascinating novels which intimates his future leanings in the 1970s and 1980s. Bishop Pike, for instance, is alluded to in this 1967 novel as a major influence on Anarch Peak, the former jazz musician and religious founder of the Udi religion, as is the inevitable California setting and historical references (Pike, religious cults, the Watts Riots). Racial tensions also play a role in this future dystopian America. The Western United States is predominantly white and opposed to the Udi religion, whereas the Free Negro Municipality dominates the eastern part of the former United States. However, Hell breaks loose when Anarch Peak is "reborn" as a result of the Hobart Process (time is being reversed, so that those who have died in the past are eventually returning to life). Various groups want Anarch Peak (some prefer dead, others alive) so that his experience of rebirth does not topple the social order (or will be used by the Free Negro Municipality's leader, Raymond Roberts, to strengthen the religion and bring forth new doctrines which will usher in a new age). However, the novel ends in a slightly ambiguous manner, one that is also profoundly Christian in some ways (while also influenced by ecumenical concerns, idealism, and African-American history and religious culture) in that selflessness on the part of Sebastian Hermes, the 'messenger' of God (through the rebirth process, and slight psionic powers), may help propagate a new sense of faith and belonging. 

As is the standard fare for Dick, gender roles and problematic marriages abound, as do the bureaucracies (the Library, which eradicates knowledge, thereby defeating the original purpose of a library) which overwhelm the common person, Martian colonization plans, and a small company struggling against the big players in the industry (Sebastian's vitarium). Like his future novels, Dick's neo-Platonic Christianity (with some influences of Orientalism, as well as rejections of dualism) is displayed in an early form, before his own theophany in the 1970s. That Dick was already exploring these topics in the 1960s points to the persistence of such thinking while establishing an early framework for his late novels, especially the beautiful Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Fundamentally, Sebastian Hermes, like the female protagonist in that novel, searches for redemption. And Philip K. Dick always sought it through these 'ordinary' or mass man characters. 

Vulcan's Hammer

Vulcan's Hammer is a less rewarding PKD novel than his better known work, but still an entertaining read on the pitfalls of technocracy and rational bureaucratization. The "iron cage of rationality" under the Unity world government (which feeds data to Vulcan 3, a computer that is sentient, to administer world government after a series of wars devastated the planet) has led to backlash in the form of a world movement (partly organized by an earlier model of the computer/AI) known as the Healer Movement, led by the charismatic Father Fields. Although this novel does provide an example of the limitations of technocracy, it also acknowledges the potential limits of charismatic and other sources of authority from non-bureaucrats. In the end, it's not clear who really 'won' since Vulcan 3 was sentient and acting in the interests of self-preservation against forces which were also willing to use any means possible to achieve their end. However, the novel does suggest a possible alliance with technocracy and democratic forms of governance as Barris, the protagonist (and a typical Dick hero, a bureaucrat who is unhappy in the larger organization he is a part of, struggling to find something close to "reality"), works out a compromise with Fields to salvage parts of Vulcan 3 to aid in the post-revolutionary government. Technology, and the technocrats, have a place in the future, but only as long as manual labor is equally valued and all have a voice besides members of the vast Unity bureaucracy. Needless to say, the development of advanced AI capable of destroying the world is also to be avoided, since it will act in the interests of self-preservation and destroy the entire world again if replicated.