Gather Yourselves Together

Gather Yourselves Together is one of the earliest Philip K. Dick novels and, although full of occasional typos and some awkward passages, is actually an endearing tale of a love triangle in China after the Communist victory. Three Americans left behind as representatives of the Company learn about themselves, relationships between men and women, and adulthood. Two of them, an older man and a young woman, Verne and Barbara, were once lovers (Verne taking her virginity some years earlier), and Carl, a blonde "boy" (and virgin) who sounds a lot like Philip K. Dick himself, is left with the two. Like all of Dick's subsequent realist fiction, the fundamental problem of love and relationships between men and women are fleshed out in all their problematic ways, as the three characters struggle to make sense of themselves and their lot in a rapidly changing world. Communist China, the end of the American company, and their shifting realities and recollections of life in the US intersect almost seamlessly in this early work. Unfortunately, perhaps too much time is spent on some of the characters' recollections, but one cannot help but find Barbara Mahler to be one of the most interesting female characters of PKD. She's fundamental to the story, and her own sense of herself as a woman with sexual agency and development brings to mind Mary in Mary and the Giant. This is a frustrating and endearing novel worth a read for a hint at some of the common themes throughout PKD's later work.

Deus Irae

Deus Irae is one of the stranger Philip K. Dick novels. Coauthored with Roger Zelazny, it's quite brief, and although quite seamless, feels disjointed by the length of time the writers took to complete the novel. Nonetheless, it feels like something of Dick's. One of the main characters, Tibor, is a phocomelus, a human without limbs, which also appeared in another of Dick's works. Of course, in a post-apocalyptic setting, one needs new religious cults and moorings, so the Servants of Wrath compete with Christianity to make sense of the wasteland world. Although much could be said about this short novel and its ruminations on the meaning of life, religion, and Christianity, I am unsure how to begin tackling it...but perhaps its hilarious take on religion and the question of truth or validity for the dissemination of religious ideas is the best take-away. Phildickian sense of humor drives this absurd tale of a limbless man on a pilgrimage, and only Dick could make that work.

Voices From the Street

Dick's Voices From the Street is a hot mess. One of his posthumously published realist novels set in 1950s California, the novel begins with some of the exact same passages used in another of his realist novels. Furthermore, he recycles some of the same names, occupations, and character types here, with a TV salesman, the universe of small retail, and an unhappy marriage. However, where Voices From the Street departs from PKD's other realist novels is the omnipresence of fascism, in the shadows and bulging at the seams. In this novel, the unlikable "Nordic" protagonist, Stuart Hadley, meets a woman whose small literary magazine turns out to be a fascist rag. Despite her having an affair with an African-American millenarian movement leader, she also had met Oswald Mosley and echoes many of the common fascist interpretations of the ills of modern society.

Of course, anti-Semitism and race play a major role, despite her relationship with a black man. For a while, Hadley is attracted to her, and her fascistic worldview, even going as far as employing anti-Semitic slurs against his old high school friend, David Gold. Hadley, who has ambition, creativity, and is unhappy with the way of the world, oscillates between the fascist persuasion of modern life, and that of the religious cult (while also attempting bourgeois existence, for a stint). Ultimately, the fascist persuasion loses, but Dick's novel might provide some utility for understanding the fascist predicament and its threat to the future of humanity in his science fiction novels. Indeed, the appeal of fascism to middling sectors of society with declining status, the bankruptcy of American life during the Cold War (as well as the Korean War), plus Dick's perpetual questioning of the meaning of reality means Hadley questions the social fabric of his time, while fumbling repeatedly along the way. Examples abound, such as Hadley's rape of Marsha, his initial pull toward the fascist persuasion of modern life.  

Puttering About in a Small Land

The quest to complete every novel written by Philip K. Dick is nearly at an end. This week, I finished Puttering About in a Small Land, one of Dick's posthumously published realist novels set in 1950s California. Unlike the rest of his realist fiction, this novel takes place in Los Angeles and Ojai, and much of it is centered on the drive between a boarding school near Ojai and Los Angeles, a drive I have a certain familiarity with when accompanying relatives to Ventura County. Like his other realist novels, this one revolves around marital infidelity, personal relationships, and small men fighting against big currents. Here, Roger Lindahl, who has moved through life and lacks the drive to make it, has depended on various women while managing to screw up each opportunity given to him. However, his wife, Virginia, and her mother, have given him the support needed to launch a small-scale television store in LA. Naturally, Roger ruins everything by having an affair with Liz Bonner, a married women with children at the same school Roger's son, Gregg, attends. 

While this novel does deliver a denouement close to the satisfaction of Dick's other non-science fiction novels, it takes far too long to build momentum. In addition, the flashback chapters, to life in Arkansas during the Depression and the 1940s in D.C. or LA during World War II, were a bit clumsily handled by PKD. However, unlike some of his other novels, Mexican migrant workers and "pachucos" of LA make an appearance, adding another dimension to the complex social relations of postwar California. Although Roger Lindahl is a racist, his disdain and aggression is primarily directed at African-Americans, while he eventually learns to take a risk and offer a ride to hitchhiking Mexican farmworkers. However, this novel is perhaps too similar to Humpty Dumpty in Oakland, particularly in the 'low ambition' of Al Miller and Roger, who both flee from their problems (and, in so doing, violate social conventions). Like many a PKD protagonist, Lindahl can't compete with the new forces changing the ways businesses operate. Indeed, perhaps even more a reflection of the changing times, it is his wife, Virginia, who is the one who sees the changing tides and adapts, while her husband continues to "putter" as the world moves. In this sense, Puttering About brings to mind several of Dick's better works and the the individual 'mass man' struggling to make his way. 

Humpty Dumpty in Oakland

Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is one of Philip K. Dick's stranger realist novels. Although it is, for the most part, entertaining and brings the Bay Area to life, the dialogue of the African-American characters does not ring accurate or authentic. Perhaps due to my disjointed readings of the novel, it also failed to coalesce, although the protagonist, Al Miller, does resemble several phildickian protagonists in his "everyday people" manner, who must confront larger corporate and business threats, the petty social divisions of his era, and force himself to stand for something instead of letting life pass by. The encroachment of development, suburbia, and the impersonal corporation descend into Marin County, as well, making flight from the homogenization wrought by American capitalism more difficult than ever. Ironically, one of the drivers of this process, Chris Harman, is searching for the remnants of a folk culture to record for his music label, and things take on a life of their own as small business confronts big business. Al and his paranoid perception of reality, matched by the dying Jim Fergesson's decline, lead to unexpected paths. Ultimately, Al does make a choice in his life, running off with the African-American realtor who always looked out for him. As to be expected, the typical Phildickian protagonist defies conventions, challenging the fantastical nature of reality.

The Game-Players of Titan

The Game-Players of Titan is a typical Dickian novel blending suicidal male protagonists with romantic troubles, paranoia, drug-induced hallucinations, unstable realities, psionic powers, alien political factions, and a dystopian, post-apocalyptic (and depopulated) world ruled by players of a board game resembling Monopoly and poker. Needless to say, it is also hilarious because of the petty feuds among the few humans left and their bratty auto-mechanic cars and machines. Despite it's inconclusive ending and rather slow beginning, this novel picks up where amnesia and a few plot twists throw the reader off the edge of their seat. The vug aliens from Titan and the remaining human populations of Terra continue the status quo, although the extremist faction persists, leaving the future of humanity uncertain (despite many expecting birth rates to soar after Peter Garden's team in California defeats the game-players of Titan). Much like his other novels, one may detect here a push for solidarity and cooperative practices for the survival of the species, and it is only after Garden's wife, Carol, becomes pregnant, that he truly pursues a selfless devotion to his group of California Bindmen and the fate of the planet. Thus, far from being one of his better novels, like Galactic Pot-Healer, it's comic nature and consistent ruminations on the meaning of marriage, community, and survival in the worst circumstances provides for interesting reading. 

Eye in the Sky

Dick's Eye in the Sky is a novel on so many things, such as simulated reality, the Cold War, McCarthyism, religious fundamentalism, race relations (Bill Laws, an African-American with an advanced physics degree, is screwed in all the universes imagined by the whites in the group), mental illness, and psychology. Ostensibly about the fuzzy nature of reality and imagination, the 8 characters who experience the accident with the Bevatron are forced to experience reality as seen by others in the group, including a retired soldier (as well as a religious fundamentalist and racist whose fierce religion combines Islamic and Christian fundamentalist concept), a neo-Victorian middle-aged woman, a paranoiac, and a Communist. However, what is most interesting of this, is how Dick shows the limitations of each of the aforementioned idealist formations of reality.  However, we see how the Communists attacked individualism (the "cult") through McFeyffe's false accuations against Marsha Hamilton, bringing to mind Richard Wright's experiences with the Communists in Chicago (he wanted to be a writer, to express himself, but the Party wouldn't allow it). Perhaps this helps explain Dick's personal inclinations and political sympathies, since he's certainly sympathetic to left-wing causes (such as Jack Hamilton's friendship with Bill Laws, and defending Laws against the segregationist Silvester) and critiques of corporations and capitalism, he's also drawn to the significance of individual experience and rejecting larger groups. 

Perhaps this explains a pattern in Dick protagonists being alienated men working for large outfits or the government, or, alternatively, small business owners struggling against the chains and the dangers of postwar US capitalism.  Thus, Dick could poke fun at Communist interpretations of American society as overrun with debauchery, class exploitation, hedonism, and Chicago gangsters while expressing sympathy for the masses, an appreciation for the importance of religion or spirituality (without a fatalistic Islamic God), the necessity of the arts, and a sense of trust for one's environment and in others. In other words, Dick was too noncomformist and open-minded to the 'weird', the spiritual, and the idealist conceptions of the world to ever fit in with some of the American Left of the 1950s, nor could he stomach the religious conservatives, segregationists and military warlords of the postwar military-industrial complex. Significantly, like his later famous novels of the 1960s-1980s an openness to a a spirtual renewal may be expressed here through the encounter with God in one of the reality simulations experienced in the novel. More will be said later....

Mary and the Giant

An early novel by PKD, Mary and the Giant features a young woman adrift in a small California town of the 1950s. Mary is not sure what she wants, like many young people, but she rejects the mainstream aspirations and habits of her peers and community. She feels a certain affinity for African-Americans since they too are excluded from the mainstream, but despite her relationships with various men, she doesn't find what she's looking for. Tweaney, her African-American lover and singer, falls short. She also rejects her fiance Dave Gordon, who accepts the status quo and doesn't deviate from the mainstream. Joseph Schilling also falls short. However, what interests me the most about this realist novel of Dick, is the use of jazz. Jazz operates as an aura of urban cool and popular taste that rejects the mainstream. Jazz is urban. Jazz is Negro. Through Paul Nitz, her final lover in the novel, Mary experiences bop jazz, as well as life in San Francisco. The tiny town of Pacific Park couldn't hold her, so the big city wins in the end. Jazz and jump provided the context for black-white intimacy, Mary's independence from her family, and, ultimately, her liberation. Classical music, the genre preferred by Schilling, though stimulating to Mary, loses to the jazz musician Paul Nitz and the chance to break out of the mold represented by the genre. The battle between the urban and rural in California plays out in this novel (a pattern in some of Dick's realist fiction), but here the musical element predominates. Sure, Dick's Mary has a rather condescending view of African-Americans at times, but jazz as a symbol of a very American fixation on breaking from the confines of society and establishing oneself are powerful themes. All in all, a sweet and casual read, but not unworthy of one of the 20th century's greatest science fiction authors. One truly feels the turmoil of young adulthood and sailing adrift.

The Broken Bubble

The Broken Bubble was one of Dick's realist novels published posthumously. It's prose is awkward and clunky. The four central characters, two couples, brings to mind the more successful Confessions of a Crap Artist. However, 1950s San Francisco truly emerges as a character in this novel, and intergenerational conflict between teenagers (with their affiliated gangs, clubs, maltshake diners, skating rinks) and the older generation sheds a fresh light on Philip K. Dick. Presumably, his teen characters reflected some of his fan base (science fiction readers of the day), and perhaps he wrote this novel with that in mind? Indeed, one of the teens writes a science fiction short story himself and despite its corny nature, one cannot help but think Dick was defending some of the virtues of the genre for moral value. In spite of the novel's horrendous depictions of the struggle of married life and selflessness, Jim Briskin (not the same first black president Briskin in Crack in Space) sticks by his ex-wife while Art and Rachael struggle through with their marriage. Unfortunately, most of the minor characters and subplots are not as seamless as they should be, so the whole narrative is disjointed. But as an early example of Dick's writing and with a San Francisco setting, one sees how the rise of the teenager complicated life in American culture of the time. 

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. 

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.

The Simulacra

Philip K. Dick's The Simulacra explores much of the same themes and tropes as his other novels of the 1960s. Prehistoric human species, time travel, intrigue, time travel, World War II, nuclear war, and the obsessive fixation on the real and the artificial drive this novel. While it seems like a typical PKD novel of the decade, the ending is less clear-cut than some of his other work. Furthermore, intrigue between various cartels and government departments in this totalitarian society (Matriarchal, and guided by the Magna Mater figure of Nicole) bring down the government and the population of the United States of Europe and America must confront "reality." This novel actually brought to mind a point from Jeremy Jenning's book on Sorel, in particular the distinction between artificial nature, artificial nature, and human knowledge of the world. If I remember correctly, Sorel's point was that experimentation to progress scientific knowledge was "artificial nature" because it reproduced "natural nature" but in controlled settings, shaped by human knowledge. Perhaps the distinction between the simulacra/ersatz world and that of actually-existing conditions in this 21st century dystopian novel point to the limitations of human reasoning to understand the difference, and social myths (such as the Great Mother figure and its mythic/archetypal connotations) as a basis for a post-apocalyptic government will end in ruin. Perhaps this is the limitations of social myth as a basis for metaphysics?

The Crack in Space

The Crack in Space is one of those lesser known but intriguing Philip K. Dick novels. Reading it today, one can see how Dick was struggling to see solution to the second-class citizenship reserved for African-Americans and other people of color. Set in the late 2000s (ca. 2080, I believe), this world is currently overpopulated but the Cols ("Coloreds" or POC) outnumber whites. Whites, however, have dominated US politics and the first Black man with a chance of becoming president, is running on the Liberal Republican ticket (The States Rights Democrats are clearly descendants of the Dixiecrats, while the other party represents a fusion of liberal Republicans and Northern Democrats).

The Liberal-Republican party supporters willing to vote for Jim Briskin, the black candidate, sound a lot like the stereotypical white liberals who supported Obama in 2008 and 2012, while the States Rights Democrats have ties to a white nationalist group, CLEAN, and resembles the GOP under Obama's presidency. Dick even understands the mentality of the 'lower fringe' of white America, which is more supportive of CLEAN.

Long story short, the novel twists and turns in surprising directions (accompanied by hilarious dialogue and frustrated realistic personalities of workers in the 21st century) and contact with a race of hominids from an "alter-Earth" forces humans to rethink the divisions of race. Their brush with these 'Peking Man' types ("Pekes") helps the humans come to terms and do the unlikely: vote for a black man. However, Dick is too clever to let it end on these optimistic terms. The problem of overpopulation and lack of work continues, and electing a black president will not save the world.

In this regard, I find Dick's novel fascinating since it conflicts so much with what I believe happened after Obama's first election. The hopes, fervor, dreams of a post-racial America were omnipresent back then. However, while Dick shows in the concluding chapter some degree of interracial solidarity with Cols and Caucs celebrating Jim's victory, the absolute uncertainty of the world continues. Thus, despite this novel's structural problems, it provides a fascinating science fiction prediction of the travails of the first black president.