Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (66 page)

24. The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (w. 1960, p. 1984). See Chapter 5 as to the Harcourt Brace contract under which Teeth (and Humpty Dumpty in Oakland, below) was produced. Teeth is Phil's most thoroughgoing exploration of the lusts, grudges, and terrors that preside in the hell of an unhappy marriage. A shifting third-person focus takes in the lives of two very different yet equally miserable West Marin couples: Walt and Sherry Dombrosio, who have a competitive marriage (resembling that of Phil and Anne), and Leo and Janet Runcible (inspired by a neighboring Point Reyes Station couple who are no longer alive). When sharp-tongued Sherry takes a PR job in Walt's company, the territorial violation drives Walt to rape her in order to make her pregnant and take her out of the work force. The subsequent fight over Sherry's desire for an abortion is as pitiless a marital quarrel as you will find in any novel. Leo and Janet Runcible dwell in a different purgatory: Janet is an obedient wife broken in spirit, and Leo a driven realtor with moral courage. His act of conscience, taking him to the brink of bankruptcy, is to establish a sound water system for "Carquinez" (based on Phil's work on a petition campaign to improve the Point Reyes Station water system). Contacts between the two couples are minimal, but, as is the way with neighbors who hate, they make those contacts count. Late in life, Phil agreed with editor David Hartwell, who had expressed interest in Teeth, that it needed a rewrite-he would get to it after finishing The Owl in Daylight. Rating: 6.

25. Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (w. 1960, p. 1987). The bitter lives of two Bay Area working-class men are depicted in unflinching detail; the worst toll of poverty, it seems, is that it corrodes the capacity to love and trust. See Chapter 5 as to the Harcourt Brace contract under which Phil recast his lost 195 5 novel, A Time for George Stavros, to produce this book. He told third wife Anne: "Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is a novel about the proletarian world from the inside. Most books about the proletarian world are written by middle-class writers." Aging Jim Fergesson, who owns a car-repair garage, fears having a heart attack (Phil had like fears at the time of writing) and decides to sell the biz. Along comes slick capitalist Chris Harman to talk the old guy into investing the proceeds in a Marin County development. Jim is a gnarly but decent working stiff (inspired by Herb Hollis). Al Miller, the moody young used-car dealer next door to the old man's garage, pops goofballs when his nerves fail him-which is often enough to confine him to an impoverished, powerless existence. Jim and Al are almost friends, but their mutual despair is too deep. Their wives, who cannot help them, are minor figures in the narrative. The plot descends into Al's murky, fearful world, while sleazy Chris turns out to be a great guy. Jim dies of that heart attack he was worrying about. A straight-up bourbon novel. Rating: 4.

26. The Man in the High Castle (w. 1961, p. 1962, Hugo Award 1963). See Chapter 5. Rating: 9.

27. We Can Build You, originally titled The First in Your Family (w. 1962; p. November 1969 as A. Lincoln, Simulacrum in Amazing, with the final chapter written by editor Ted White; p. 1972 by DAW minus White's final chapter. White contends that Phil approved his chapter, which Phil denied; surviving letters support White's position). Two Phildickian entrepreneurs resolve to get rich quick by building robot simulacra modeled after famous Americans, but they soon learn that their simulacra know more about reality than they do. See also Chapter 5. Build is an odd SF/mainstream blend set in the no-longer-future of 1982. Partners Maury Rock (based on Berkeley friend Iskandar Guy) and Louis Rosen decide Civil War nostalgia is hot and build simulacra of Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's secretary of war, and of Lincoln himself. Build was written just after the Civil War Centennial; Phil's friend Will Cook, a western writer, was a Civil War buff, and Phil had just visited Disneyland and seen its Lincoln simulation. One of Build's highlights is the debate between the Lincoln sim and greedy tycoon Sam Barrows on what is human-with the human, not the machine, denying the existence of the soul. But Phil's real focus, plot smokescreens aside, is the tormented affair between Louis and Maury's young daughter, Pris Frauenzimmer. Build is Phil's most intense exploration of his "dark-haired girl" obsession. Pris Frauenzimmer ("womankind" and "whore" is Louis's dual translation from the German) is that obsession full-blown. But Build is frequently funny and wise, and the Lincoln sim ranks with Mr. Tagomi as one of Phil's finest characters. Rating: 6.

28. Martian Time-Slip, originally titled Goodmember Arnie Kott of Mars (w. 1962, p. August 1963 in shorter form as All We Marsmen in Worlds of Tomorrow, p. 1964). Life in the bleak Martian colonies bears a striking resemblance to business as usual on modern-day Earth. See Chapters 2 and 5. In the parched Martian colonies, grasping Arnie Kott is the chief of the powerful plumbers' union (based on the fifties Berkeley Co-op Phil despised for its wrangling politics). The little guy, repairman Jack Bohlen, is a onetime schizophrenic who still lives with schizophrenia's aftereffects. An autistic kid, Manfred Steiner, slipslides helplessly forward and backward in time, into realms of entropy and death. The key source for Phil's ideas on schizophrenia-in Time-Slip and throughout his last two decades-was Swiss analyst Ludwig Binswanger, whose study of a schizophrenic, "The Case of Ellen West," terrified Phil when he read it in the early sixties. Phil used Binswanger's term tomb world (schizophrenic self-entrapment) in several sixties SF works; Jack Bohlen describes mental illness as "a moldering, dank tomb, a place where nothing came or went." In an October 1976 letter to Dorothy, Phil wrote: "In the hospital I had the occasion to reread my '64 novel MARTIAN TIMESLIP. I found it weak dramatically (weak in plot) but extraordinary in its ideas. I stripped the universe down to its basic structure. I guess I always do that when I write: analyze the universe to see what it's made over. The floor joists (sp?) of the universe are visible in my novels." Phil made contradictory claims for most of his works, but this assessment strikes me as just. Rating: 9.

29. Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (w. 1963, p. 1965. Phil had proposed two titles: In Earth's Diurnal Course and A Terran Odyssey). A post-nuclear holocaust idyll that is one of Phil's warmest and most accessible novels. See Chapter 1; also see The Earthshaker, above, as to possible mainstream antecedents. Of course, the garish title was Ace editor Wollheim's attempt to cash in on Kubrick's film Dr. Strangelove. Strange to say, Dr. Bloodmoney bears some resemblance to Hardy's Wessex novels-a rich tableau of pastoral life in West Marin County. The details, from mushroom gathering to town meetings, are direct takes from Phil's early-sixties days in Point Reyes Station. Kindly shrink Doctor Stockstill is based on Dr. X, Phil and Anne's psychiatrist. The "labyrinthitis" suffered by teetering Doctor Bluthgeld (blood money-inspired by A-bomb father Edward Teller) as he walks across U Cal Berkeley was drawn from Phil's own high school classroom horrors. Set in a 1981 post-nuclear holocaust world, Dr. Bloodmoney resolutely avoids realism as to the effects of the blasts and fallout. Rating: 9.

30. The Game-Players of Titan (w. 1963, p. 1963). After aliens take over Earth, the surviving humans are governed by a cosmic version of Monopoly that determines not only which lands they occupy but also whom they will sleep with. See also Mary and the Giant, above. GamePlayers is a twisting, gripping tale that borrows certain plot elements of Solar Lottery (a societal Game; evasion of telepathic probes) but replaces straight-arrow Solar protagonist Ted Benteley with Pete Garden, a typical leading man in Phil's sixties SF: suicidal, overly fond of pills and alcohol, compulsively drawn to destructive women. It's the twenty-second century; a war between America and China, in which Hinkel radiation (designed by Nazi Bernhardt Hinkel) was used as a weapon, has left most of the survivors sterile. And Earth has been conquered by the "vugs" from the Saturn moon Titan. To spur population growth, the vugs have designed The Game, which mates humans randomly. Only Bindmen (property owners) can play; wagering deeds on the spin of the Game wheel is what the action's all about. Phil got the deeds from Monopoly and the spinning wheel from Life. Pete Garden (Marvin Gardens would have been too obvious?) is the first to realize that among his fellow humans might be simulacra spies for the vugs. Unfortunately, this realization comes shortly after Pete has ingested "five Snoozex tablets," "a handful of methamphetamine tablets," and a few drinks. When Pete sees that his shrink (who is asking him when the world first started to seem unreal) is a vug, is it psychosis brought on by the speed-liquor mix, or is it the truth we humans are afraid to face? And don't overlook the possibility that psychosis lowers defenses and may have given Pete involuntary telepathic powers. In the big final Game, speed helps Pete pull off the ultimate bluff. Rating: 6.

31. The Simulacra, originally titled The First Lady of Earth (w. 1963, p. 1964; a portion of this novel was adapted for use in "Novelty Act," a story p. February 1964 in Fantastic). Of all Phil's novel plots, this may be the most complex. To say that a German drug cartel manufactures simulacra presidents who hold figurehead power while beautiful Nicole Thibodeaux, the first lady, really runs the show is only to hint at its intrigues and capers. Alas, The Simulacra is a fascinating work that wastes too many of its best ideas. In the twenty-first century the United States of Europe and America-essentially, Germany and America merged-is ruled by a delightful couple: Rudy Kalbfleisch (cold flesh) der Alte (the Old One), a simulacrum, and Nicole Thibodeaux, the glamorous, cultured First Lady (inspired by Jacqueline Kennedy) who struggles against plots to topple her benignly indifferent autocratic regime. Among the plotters are two German cartels that show up often in Phil's sixties SF: the A. G. Chemie pharmaceutical house and the Karp u. Sohnen Werke, which manufactures the finest in sims (including der Alte). The Earth population is divided between the elite Ges (Geheim- nis), bearers of the truth about der Alte, and the Bes (Befehaltrager), who merely believe and carry out instructions. (Similar truth-based elite/ masses distinctions occur in The Zap Gun and The Penultimate Truth, both w. 1964.) Loony Luke is making a fortune selling rocket jalopies that allow desperate families to emigrate to Mars. Al Miller runs a Loony Luke lot; his friend Ian Duncan is in love with Nicole's TV image. Meanwhile, Richard Kongrosian, the virtuoso schizoid psychokinetic piano player, can't cope with public appearances anymore. So many balls in the air-all dropped by the novel's abysmal fade-out ending. But certain scenes, as when Kongrosian's psyche is engulfed by the outside world, rank among the best of Phil's sixties work. Rating: 7.

32. Now Wait for Last Year (w. 1963, rew. circa 1965, p. 1966). A tottering but lovable world leader utilizes his all-too-human wits and wiles to stave off the takeover of Earth by Nazi-like aliens. See Chapters 2 and 6. The hypochondriacal, heart-of-gold world dictator, Gino Molinari, held a special place in Phil's heart, alongside Glen Runciter in Ubik and Leo Bulero in Palmer Eldritch. According to Phil, Molinari was a composite of Christ, Abraham Lincoln, and, most prominently, Mussolini. Mussolini? Phil saw him as a precursor of existentialism: putting the deed above ex post facto justifications. To Phil, for whom theorizing was life, the contrary position was heady food for thought. But Phil had no sympathy for fascist rule; High Castle speaks for itself. Rating: 7.

33. Clans of the Alphane Moon (w. 1963-64, p. 1964). Clans answers the age-old question, what would happen if the inmates ran the asylum? In this case, the asylum happens to be a remote moon in the Alphane system, but that's no reason to overlook the remarkable resemblance of the goings on there to life on our officially sane Earth. See Chapter 6. Norman Spinrad observes of Clans: "[T]he psychotic inmates of a lunar mental hospital revolt and manage to form a functional society that runs by a clinical caste system. [ ... ] Partly it is parody, but it is also a description of how divergent and even crippled individual consciousnesses can synergize into a functional whole. It could be Dick's bedrock paradigm for the human condition." The lunatic clans include the Pares (rigid paranoids: the leaders, who live in Adolfville); Manses (manics: inventors and cruel warriors, who live in Da Vinci Heights); Skitzes (schizophrenics: visionary mystics, who live in Gandhitown); Heebs (hebephrenics: manual laborers and ascetic mystics, also in Gand- hitown); Polys (polymorphic schizophrenics: the most cheerful and eventempered, because at times their fluctuations bring them close to normality); Ob Corns (obsessive-compulsives: useful functionaries); and Deps (depressives: listless souls who live in Cotton Mather Estates; no clan likes the Deps). Unfortunately, too little of Clans is devoted to the clans, and too much to cumbersome plotting between the Terran CIA and the alien Alphanes. Tossed about in all this is Chuck Rittersdorf, the archetypal hapless Phildickian protagonist, whose brilliant psychiatrist wife, Mary, shows contempt for his job as a hack programmer of CIA propaganda simulacra (a job with a strange resemblance to writing SF for a living). The most memorable character is Lord Running Clam, a telepathic Ganymedean slime mold (inspired by Phil's Marin County mushroom hunting) who holds, with Saint Paul, that caritas is the greatest virtue. Clans is an uneven novel, but there's nothing else like it. Rating: 7.

34. The Crack in Space (first half w. 1963 and p. July 1964 as "Cantata 140," in F & SF; second half w. 1964; entire novel p. 1966). In the future, politicians develop a truly radical means of combating overpopulation and underemployment: They freeze excess citizens and await better times. But a strange crack in space may or may not have opened the way to an alternate world that could be populated by thawing the multitudes. Crack is a rarity among Phil Dick novels-a truly dull book. Not that there aren't some interesting ideas: Phil's throwaways could serve as an entire plot for lesser writers. Take the entity George Walt-mutant twins with two bodies but joined by a single brain (George gets the right hemisphere, Walt the left). One of the twins (which one is uncertain) died at birth, and the other was so lonely that he constructed a synthetic replacement. As in Dr. Bloodmoney, the trauma of Jane's death is transposed into a remarkable mutant life form. The main plot of Crack concerns the perils faced by black presidential candidate (and former "newsclown") Jim Briskin. Phil's title for the first-half novelette, "Cantata 140," refers to a Bach work entitled "Wachet auf' ("Sleepers, awake"). The sleepers here are millions of people (mostly blacks) living in suspended animation because there are no jobs. A well-intentioned liberal tale. Rating: 2.