Post by Mezzaphor on Jul 11, 2014 1:26:19 GMT
More PKD. A bit ago I read Counter-Clock World, and this week I finished Clans of the Alphane Moon.
I'm hardly the first person to notice this, but Dick's everyman characters are much more down-to-earth than most SF authors'. They're not politicians or warriors or lantern-jawed intrepid explorers. They're blue-collar types, or small business owners, or entrepreneurs. And they're overweight, or going bald, or otherwise not conventionally attractive. (I guess that's why Hollywood keeps wildly changing the stories every time they adapt one of Dick's novels. Dick writes parts for character actors and leaves no room for A-list leading men.) And then they get caught up in weird, action and espionage-packed plots. Other authors would have this result in the protagonists suddenly unlock their inner badass and save the day. But not Dick. No, his protagonists go up against enemies who completely outclass them, and they fail. Sometimes they can come out ahead, by keeping their wits and saying the right things to the right people. Other times, they don't even manage that much, and they're left wondering what's the point.
It's a recurring theme in Dick's work that acts of empathy and kindness to other individuals are just as important (if not more important) than saving the galaxy or whatever other grand space opera plot is playing in the background. I guess the protagonists' failure to be badass ties into this. Sometimes, in the face of interplanetary war, "Love thy neighbor" is the only thing an everyman can do.
Counter-Clock World is another novel that Dick adapted from a short story ("Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday", I think). The premise of both is that, thanks to something called the Hobart Phase, time is flowing backwards (though human consciousness continues moving forwards). So people now rise from the dead, grow progressively younger, and eventually get unborn. From that premise, the two versions go in very different directions. The short story involves a middle-management data eraser discovering that the Hobart Phase itself was going to be un-invented soon, but the novel involves a controversial religious leader returning from the dead, and the violent fallout from the political groups who'd rather he stayed dead. Amusingly, several scenes from the short story are still in the novel, so the bits that were foreshadowing originally are now just red herrings or background flavor.
Clans of the Alphane Moon is kind of a misspent premise, I think. The premise is that an offworld mental hospital got cut off from Earth for decades, so all the mental patients escaped and formed a somewhat functioning society, with clan divisions based on their mental illnesses. However, the plot is about a writer for the CIA, back on Earth, who's going through a nasty divorce. His wife is a remarkably hatable character, so I can almost understand why the protagonist decides to use a mission (to reestablish contact with that mental hospital colony) as an opportunity to kill her. The plot is pretty interesting, but it leaves very little space for the action on the mental patients. They truly deserve a novel to themselves.
And once you know a little bit about Dick's own life, the plot with the writer takes on an unmistakeable aura of wish fulfillment.
I'm hardly the first person to notice this, but Dick's everyman characters are much more down-to-earth than most SF authors'. They're not politicians or warriors or lantern-jawed intrepid explorers. They're blue-collar types, or small business owners, or entrepreneurs. And they're overweight, or going bald, or otherwise not conventionally attractive. (I guess that's why Hollywood keeps wildly changing the stories every time they adapt one of Dick's novels. Dick writes parts for character actors and leaves no room for A-list leading men.) And then they get caught up in weird, action and espionage-packed plots. Other authors would have this result in the protagonists suddenly unlock their inner badass and save the day. But not Dick. No, his protagonists go up against enemies who completely outclass them, and they fail. Sometimes they can come out ahead, by keeping their wits and saying the right things to the right people. Other times, they don't even manage that much, and they're left wondering what's the point.
It's a recurring theme in Dick's work that acts of empathy and kindness to other individuals are just as important (if not more important) than saving the galaxy or whatever other grand space opera plot is playing in the background. I guess the protagonists' failure to be badass ties into this. Sometimes, in the face of interplanetary war, "Love thy neighbor" is the only thing an everyman can do.
Counter-Clock World is another novel that Dick adapted from a short story ("Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday", I think). The premise of both is that, thanks to something called the Hobart Phase, time is flowing backwards (though human consciousness continues moving forwards). So people now rise from the dead, grow progressively younger, and eventually get unborn. From that premise, the two versions go in very different directions. The short story involves a middle-management data eraser discovering that the Hobart Phase itself was going to be un-invented soon, but the novel involves a controversial religious leader returning from the dead, and the violent fallout from the political groups who'd rather he stayed dead. Amusingly, several scenes from the short story are still in the novel, so the bits that were foreshadowing originally are now just red herrings or background flavor.
Clans of the Alphane Moon is kind of a misspent premise, I think. The premise is that an offworld mental hospital got cut off from Earth for decades, so all the mental patients escaped and formed a somewhat functioning society, with clan divisions based on their mental illnesses. However, the plot is about a writer for the CIA, back on Earth, who's going through a nasty divorce. His wife is a remarkably hatable character, so I can almost understand why the protagonist decides to use a mission (to reestablish contact with that mental hospital colony) as an opportunity to kill her. The plot is pretty interesting, but it leaves very little space for the action on the mental patients. They truly deserve a novel to themselves.
And once you know a little bit about Dick's own life, the plot with the writer takes on an unmistakeable aura of wish fulfillment.