Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s by Philip K. Dick: Martian Time-Slip / Dr. Bloodmoney / Now Wait for Last Year / Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said / A Scanner Darkly
edited by Jonathan Lethem
I enjoyed volume one of the Library of America Philip K. Dick editions enough to go straight on to the second, which contains five novels. They fall into two distinct periods, so I'll cover them in two separate reviews. The first three are all works of the mid-1960s—Martian Time-Slip (1964), Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along after the Bomb (1965), and Now Wait for Last Year (1966)—and in fact, they overlap with the novels published in Library of America's Four Novels of the 1960s. (This post is part of my series about books that won the Hugo, plus related books. It ties in because Dick won the Hugo for The Man in the High Castle.)
 |
|
Collection published: 2008 Novels originally published: 1964-66 Acquired: August 2014 Read: April 2022 |
I recently read a post about Philip K. Dick in r/printSF, where someone criticized his prose and characterization. A bunch of defenders of Dick swooped in to explain that, yes, his prose and characterization were bad... but the other aspects of his books made them good anyway. My reaction was, "Hold on! You guys are his 'defenders'!?" I feel like sf fans often don't know what characterization is, and these "defenses" prove it... because how many writers in 1960s sf or even contemporary sf match Dick for characterization? All of Dick's characters feel like real people to me, with their little obsessions, their fragile self-images, their internal contradictions, their neediness. What makes his books work, in my opinion, is that even though they are set in the future, their protagonists feel like people from now, where "now" is both the 1960s and the 2020s. People trying to do jobs they hate, support families, deal with prejudice, make it through bad marriages. I like the real workaday aspect to his characters, especially in Martian Time-Slip and Now Wait for Last Year. These are people on Mars or during an interplanetary war, yet they are ordinary people trying to get done whatever needs to be done. Now Wait for Last Year, in particular, is a triumph: I found the ending surprising but uplifting and fascinating, and not something that fits with the stereotypical image of Dick. A real portrait of character and character growth.
Similarly, people praise Dick for the disconcerting nature of his books. You're reading a story about some perfectly ordinary guy on Mars, and then suddenly the guy realizes he can see through people's skin and that everyone around him is a fake, or time starts skipping back and forth. This all done incredibly matter-of-factly, which is what makes it so effective... how does this happen if not through Dick's prose? I never once felt while reading a Dick novel that I read a clunky turn of phrase; Dick writes smoothly and without showing off. This is what makes his stuff work as a writer, because the creepy, weird stuff is as matter-of-fact as everything else. As I said in my previous reviews of Dick, I think he really captures the dissociated aspect of modern life, which has only gotten worse in the sixty years since these novels were written. I don't feel like I can see people's skin... but I do feel alienated from the people around me. The way people fall through time, in both Martian Time-Slip and Now Wait for Last Year, is very well done.
Something I don't think Dick gets praised for enough is his worldbuilding. I really enjoyed the early chapters of Martian Time-Slip, before the weirdness ratcheted up. I found its depiction of a new society, its interplay with the old, all compelling and realistic; I like the idea of a corrupt union man being one of the major players on a Martian colony, and its focus on humdrum things like land speculation. New world but same old bullshit. I also like that Dick reuses a lot of worldbuilding elements from book to book even when the books clearly don't take place in the same fictional milieu; it lets you quickly orient yourself. The exploration of how a great leader might extend his greatness via time travel or alternate selves, similarly, is a great idea the Dick plays with well... and he does so without getting bogged down in technical details, or committing to one interpretation of events, or anything else that might drain the weirdness from it.
I will say that I found Dick's postapocalyptic novel, Dr. Bloodmoney, the least interesting of the seven Dick novels I've read so far this year. Decent characters, some neat concepts, but I feel like no character was strong enough to grab me. But Dick published an astounding seventeen novels in the 1960s (if I am counting correctly), so it's not too surprising if they are not all winners.
I read an old winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel every year, plus
other Hugo-related books that interest me. Next up in sequence: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said / A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
No comments:
Post a Comment