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Peak, the former jazz musician and religious founder of the Udi religion, as is the inevitable California setting and historical references (Pike, religious cults, the Watts Riots).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.