It's the end of an off week, and I've been debating how to round things out. I decided it was time to follow up on a post from a while ago, on Philip K. Dick. Last time, I was looking at two particular Philip K. Dick anthologies, one of which I admitted ridiculously limited familiarity with. This time, I'm back for a rematch, with a marginally better grasp of what I'm talking about, and I'll be going through in more detail some of the best, most interesting and in some cases most frustrating stories from Philip K. Dick, starting with some from the first volume of his collected stories.
"Beyond Lies The Wub"- This one is best known as Dick's first publication, in the July 1952 issue of the notorious Planet Stories (the source for the image above). Last time, I allowed it as a "classic" with obvious reservations; now, I'm ready to admit I was still doing it a disservice. An expedition to Venus buys a creature called a Wub from the natives, which looks like local livestock. It proves to be an intelligent and very talkative creature that wanted to come along. Alas, the captain wants to kill the creature, not because it's a potentially dangerous organism that might have ulterior motives, but because he wants to eat it. It doesn't sound like much from a synopsis or even a casual reading; on closer examination, however, it's an early glimpse of Dick in top form and an unnerving tale to boot. This is true tragedy and horror, where the comic twists only add to the perversity of the proceedings.
"The Skull"- Possibly the first Dick tale to deal with religion, and already showing his uneasy relationship with Christianity. A convict is offered a pardon in return for killing the founder of a cult, centuries in the past. The best that can be said is that this probably didn't seem as obvious in 1952.
"The Defenders"- And this gives us an even more definitive Philip K. Dick "twist", except that the big reveal is that things are a lot better than they seem. Humans in underground bunkers rely on robots to continue fighting a war that has wiped out the surface world, but the machines are reluctant to let them back in the loop. It's an interesting take on artificial intelligence, but it just doesn't feel quite right for Dick.
"The Piper In The Woods"- A psychologist is sent to investigate why the staff of an outpost on another planet keep deserting. It's subversion even more harmless than "The Defenders"; next...
"Meddler"- And another time travel tale. A top secret project has been looking into the future, but when the future keeps looking worse, they must send someone to the future to learn the fate of humanity. What starts as a fascinating and forward-thinking take on history, fate and the observer effect ends as a routine monster yarn. The only surprise is that Dick couldn't do better.
"To Serve The Master"- Now I'm into The Philip K. Dick Reader with one I mentioned last time. Centuries after an apocalyptic war that most have forgotten a young man discovers a damaged robot during his errands for his impoverished colony. The bot tells him of a time when machines did the work and let humans live in luxury, until killjoys decided to do away with robots. Finally, the boy helps repair the bot, only to discover that his elders have been keeping back the other side of the story. I have rated this one highly because its exceptional brutality and an especially sympathetic protagonist, but it's another tale that feels just a little off. To me, it feels like a rare occasion where Dick let his antiauthoritarian leanings overcome the natural directions of a story. As usual, there is one side that is clearly lying and one side that could still be wrong. The problem is that there is no logical reason for the side that won to be silent until it is possibly too late, beyond the fact that it provides a dilemma for the hero. What's disappointing is that in a Dick story, the police, politicians and other authority figures are normally sincere and rational even if they are in the wrong. Worse the outward plot convenience undermines the very themes that set it in his body of work. The point of propaganda is that you don't just keep your side from hearing an opposing view; you tell your version first and loudly and often thereafter. Dick of all people knows this better than anyone. Without that anchoring reality, it's little if anything more than a poignantly beautiful misfire.
"Exhibit Piece"- A nice one I don't believe I had read until after my original post. A man living the Eisenhower suburban dream starts to see signs that his world isn't what it appears to be, and he just might know more about it than he admits to himself. This is a satirical tale that feels all the more savage in light of the surge of 1950s nostalgia around the time of Dick's posthumous renaissance, now fading into more distant memory. It also offers an apt window on the overlapping worlds of collectors, model builders, and history enthusiasts, always in uproar over minutiae at the expense of deeper truth.
"War Veteran"- A visitor from the future arrives amid tensions between Earth and colonies on other planets, telling a tale of a war that will end in disaster for Terra. This is another Dick tale with a happy ending that is poorer for it. Given his known clashes with at least one editor, that might well be the case. Even allowing for that, I suspect that this is one that the author didn't know what to do with. On top of that, it's definitely longer than it needed to be.
"Shell Game"- Now this is what counts as a good and fun Dick story. The shipwrecked descendants of a starship crew are ever vigilant against attacks from Earthmen sent to bring them home, even though they never seem to find conclusive prove that the invaders were real at all. Meanwhile, a search of the wreck reveals that its original destination was a colony dedicated to treating the insane. It's an absurd yet intriguing premise, engaging characters, and dialogue that "works" even if it's not particularly good, in short, everything Dick was about.
"Explorers We"- Moving on from the stories in the collections I discussed last time, this just might be the most completely despairing of all the author's stories. The first expedition to Mars returns to Earth, but nobody is happy to see them. At face value, it's almost routine for Dick, yet very effective and even more vicious than "To Serve The Master". The imitation humans believe they are human, the humans won't believe they are anything but a threat, and everything that we see is certain to happen again.
"Holy Quarrel"- Just one more, and one of my personal favorites. The nuclear arsenal of the United States is under the control of a computer whose judgment is unquestioned, until it directs an attack on our own soil. The only apparent explanation is, it doesn't like gumball machines. What's truly amazing is that this 1966 story was written relatively late in Philip Dick's career and arguably at the very end of his term as a regular contributor to science fiction magazines. Just when he was winning highbrow respect with his novels, he took the time to write a tale as completely silly as this. Hey, you gotta be you.
That just leaves the question, where does all this fit in whatever I've hoped to do with this particularly misbegotten feature? To me, there is a "myth" of Philip K. Dick that I cannot find in his actual work. Pop culture has wanted to make Dick an intellectual, a prophet and a visionary, which he was by all means, but not a fallible writer who could be wrong, dated or just goofing off. I tie this especially to the fact that his fame has rested on his novels rather than his stories. Make no mistake, his short fiction is absolutely great, yet it is unquestionably a product of the 1950s-'60s pulp market. That, in turn, should never have been a bad thing, and probably wasn't except to the brand of self-conscious, self-doubting sophisticates who wanted science fiction to be in but not of mainstream pop culture. I hope my lineup will provide just a little more perspective. (While I'm at it, here's a couple links for others' reviews, on "To Serve The Master" and "Holy Quarrel" respectively.) That's all for now, more to come!
Image credit American Literature.
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